Outsourced in ‘Silicon Savannah’

Open-plan offices, bright neon lights, headphones, monitors. Thousands of violent videos, advertisements, and cute animal videos flicker across the screens in rapid succession. This is the daily routine for many content moderators in Kenya who work for subcontractors for platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram to identify inappropriate content – and thus protect social media users from the worst images.

The work of the moderators is extremely stressful. “We often had to watch videos at double or triple speed on several screens at the same time,” wrote Sonia Kgomo, a former content moderator, in a guest article for the ‘Guardian’ last February. The South African native and her colleagues moderated content in Kenya for the Facebook company Meta. Many employees in the industry suffer from sleep impairments or symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. This is also shown by a survey conducted by the international trade union UNI Global Union among more than 200 moderators from countries such as the Philippines, Turkey, Mexico, and Kenya. “The work is depressing, and you have no time for social contacts. The pay is low,” reports a presenter from Nairobi, for example.

With a monthly wage of 40,000 Kenyan shillings (KES), equivalent to around 264 Euro, the presenters earn more than the minimum wage of 15,000 KES on average. But in big cities like Nairobi, the money is barely enough. After deducting rent, food and transport costs, according to trade union calculations, only about 5,000 KES, or just over 30 Euro, remains for electricity, water, medical care, education and other expenses. “The work is demanding, the rules are constantly changing, and mistakes jeopardise the targets on which a large part of the salary depends,” explains Benjamin Parton, head of the IT division at UNI Global Union. Employees are often paid per clip processed, not per hour.

In Kenya, so-called ‘business process outsourcing’ companies (BPOs) handle business processes for corporations such as Meta and Bytedance (TikTok). According to estimates, thousands of people in Kenya work in the industry – not only in content moderation, where content from sub-Saharan Africa is primarily reviewed. This is because the country has developed into a digital hub in the region recently. There are no concrete figures due to the opaque business practices of the subcontractors. Among the BPOs operating in Kenya are European companies such as Majorel, based in Luxembourg.

“Companies benefit from a global system that focuses on maximising profits through wage differences and weak occupational safety measures in the Global South,” criticises Joanita Najjuko. The Ugandan is an expert in the digital economy and a member of the pan-African Nawi AfriFem collective. ‘This deepens the global divide and reproduces colonial patterns of exploitation, which are now being digitised,’ she emphasises.

State-sponsored tech boom

The subcontractors are part of a tech boom in ‘Silicon Savannah’ that is driven by government subsidies. Originally, the term referred to a technology hub in southern Nairobi, but today it stands for Kenya's transformation into an innovation-driven knowledge economy. According to market analysis firm Business Monitor International, the East African country's IT sector has grown by an average of 10.8 per cent annually over the past decade. This year, the digital economy is expected to account for 9.24 per cent of gross domestic product.

The government plans to continue investing massive sums in digital infrastructure and the education of young people in the coming years. President William Ruto wants to make Kenya a leading technology centre in Africa. Tax incentives are to be used to attract more tech companies. A finance bill passed in April is particularly controversial. It provides for the corporate tax rate to be reduced by half to fifteen per cent.

However, growth forecasts are currently moderate and public debt is high. To service the loans accumulated over the past ten years, for example to China, the state must increase its revenues. A plan from the previous year that envisaged a tax increase on staple foods was withdrawn by the government after protests in which several people were killed.

In June, stagnating real wages and high living expenses led to large demonstrations in Nairobi. Labour law also lags the changes brought about by digitalisation. The constitution guarantees human rights, the right to strike, freedom of association and collective bargaining. However, the labour laws of 2007 are no longer fit for the digital economy, criticises a lawyer from Nairobi who wishes to remain anonymous.

She has been fighting for years for better rights for platform workers. Many subcontractors rely on bogus self-employment, which means that employees have no protection against dismissal, she says. In addition, occupational health and safety regulations were developed with traditional occupations in mind and do not yet consider the considerable psychological strain of content monitoring, for example.

This is also evident in a lawsuit filed by content moderators against Meta. They accuse the tech giant and its subcontractor Majorel of violating their right to dignity and health. A labour court allowed the lawsuit to proceed last year – a breakthrough, as trade unions emphasise because it was the first time that a multinational corporation based abroad was held liable for the working conditions of a contractor. “But the government is now in the process of changing the laws in favour of the companies,” explains Parton from the UNI trade union. Meta and Majorel did not respond to a request for comment.

New trade union organisation

A new trade union alliance was founded in Nairobi this year. Conten­t mo­de­ra­tors are fighting together for better working conditions not only in Kenya and South Africa, but also in the Philippines, Mexico, Turkey, and Ireland. As a first step, the alliance published a catalogue of measures to protect employees. It calls for realistic performance quotas, independent psychological support, the right to organise in trade unions, and limits on the exposure time to stressful content. “Technology companies must take responsibility and make moderation safe,” emphasises trade unionist Parton.

Platform expert Najjuko also calls for a binding convention from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) for digital platform work. “And we need laws that are not just on paper, but ensure that large technology companies comply with labour standards throughout their entire value chain,” she emphasises. She believes that countries in the Global North have a responsibility here, because it is not only tech companies such as Bytedance and Meta and their users who benefit from the outsourcing of content moderation, but also subcontractors based in those countries.

A German version of this article was published in the weekly newspaper WOZ.