Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber, said something important at the Abundance360 Summit in March 2026. Not the part about turning Uber from a $4.5 billion annual loss into a $10 billion earner. Not the part about partnering with Waymo and Nvidia and 20 other autonomous vehicle companies.

The important part was this:

"10 to 15 years from now, this is going to be a real issue. It is a big, big societal question that we're going to have to struggle with."

He was talking about robotaxis replacing human drivers. He was talking about the 7 million people who currently drive and deliver for Uber every month. He was talking, whether he intended to or not, about the hundreds of thousands of drivers across South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, and Tanzania whose livelihoods are built on a platform that is actively engineering its own human-free future.

At Uhuru AI, we think this conversation needs to happen in Africa now, not when the robots are already on the road.

The Scale of What Is at Stake

Uber operates in eight African countries. South Africa alone has around 20,000 active drivers and delivery people, with more than 2.1 million users across 25 cities. Kenya is Uber's second-biggest market on the continent. Egypt is the only African country where Uber holds the dominant market position. Across the continent, Uber has facilitated over one billion rides since launching in 2013.

But the numbers that matter most are not Uber's numbers. They are Africa's.

Gig workers represent approximately 85 percent of Africa's total workforce. In countries like Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and the Central African Republic, that figure exceeds 90 percent. Ride-hailing accounts for roughly 24 percent of Africa's gig economy activity. South Africa's youth unemployment rate sits at around 60 percent. These are not abstract statistics. They represent the economic reality of a continent where formal employment is scarce and platforms like Uber function as a de facto employment system for millions of people.

For these workers, the question "are Uber drivers in Africa safe from robotaxis?" is not a tech policy question. It is a food-on-the-table question.

What Uber Is Actually Building

To understand what is coming, you need to understand Uber's strategy clearly, because the company itself is not hiding it.

Uber is not building autonomous vehicles. They are building the platform that sits on top of all autonomous vehicles. They currently have partnerships with more than 20 AV companies, including Waymo, Nvidia, WeRide, Pony.ai, Avride, and Zoox. They are targeting robo-taxi operations in 15 cities by the end of 2026. Through their partnership with Nvidia, they are working toward deploying 100,000 autonomous vehicles globally and aim to be the world's largest facilitator of autonomous trips by 2029.

In Austin and Atlanta, Waymo robotaxis on the Uber platform are already completing more daily trips than 99 percent of human Uber drivers.

This is not a distant vision. It is operational today, in American cities, at scale.

Khosrowshahi is explicit about the endgame: "You can imagine the majority of our trips being fulfilled by robots of some kind. Probably not 10 years from now, but you go 15 to 20 years from now, you're going to start getting there."

He also said something that received less attention but arguably matters more: "I think AI will be able to replace the work that 70 to 80 percent of humans can do. Ten years is not a lot of time for society to adjust to that kind of an impact."

Why African Drivers Have More Time Than American Drivers

The honest answer to "are African drivers safe?" is: for now, probably yes. But for the wrong reasons.

Autonomous vehicles require specific conditions to operate reliably. They need well-marked roads, high-quality maps, predictable traffic patterns, and a relatively structured environment for their sensors and algorithms to interpret correctly.

Africa, in large parts, does not offer this.

African cities are characterised by potholes, faded road markings, informal vendors occupying road space, pedestrians walking in traffic, livestock crossing roads, mixed traffic with minibus taxis cutting unpredictably, and neighborhoods that are simply not mapped to the precision level that AV navigation systems require. Academic research on AV deployment in developing markets is blunt about this: current AV algorithms require structured road infrastructure that does not exist in most African cities.

There is also an economic factor. One of the key drivers of AV deployment in rich markets is the cost of human drivers. In San Francisco, an Uber driver is expensive. In Johannesburg or Lagos, the lower cost of human labor reduces the urgency for platforms to replace them. AVs will go where the economics are most compelling first.

This means African drivers likely have a longer runway than their counterparts in the United States, Western Europe, or the Middle East, where WeRide is already operating robotaxis commercially in Dubai, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi.

But here is the problem with that framing: a longer runway is not safety. It is borrowed time.

The Uber Driver Transition Pitch and Why It Falls Short in Africa

Khosrowshahi has a prepared answer for the displacement question. Drivers, he says, will transition from labour to capital. Instead of driving vehicles, they will own and manage fleets of autonomous vehicles that operate 24 hours a day. From worker to fleet entrepreneur.

In theory, this is a reasonable path. In practice, for most African gig drivers, it is not accessible without significant structural support.

Fleet ownership requires capital. Most Uber drivers in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria are operating on thin margins, many unable to verify that their gross earnings even exceed the minimum wage after vehicle costs, fuel, and maintenance. Research into Uber and Bolt's operations across Africa has found that driver contracts frequently lack transparency about earnings structures, and that many drivers have no formal social insurance or employment protections.

The driver-to-fleet-owner pitch assumes access to financing, financial literacy, and investment infrastructure that the majority of African gig workers do not currently have. It also assumes that the autonomous fleet management business will remain accessible to small individual owners rather than being captured by institutional investors. Uber's own CEO has suggested that financial players similar to Blackstone will likely own the autonomous fleets, generating around nine percent yields. That is not a narrative built for informal workers in Soweto or Kibera.

The Safety Net Gap

When robots do eventually reach African roads in significant numbers, the workers they displace will need somewhere to land.

South Africa has a Universal Basic Income Coalition made up of civil society organisations and trade unions pushing for a progressive basic income for those aged 18 to 59. The debate has shifted from "if" to "how and when." Kenya is running one of the world's largest UBI experiments through GiveDirectly, a long-term cash transfer programme reaching tens of thousands of households.

These are real efforts. But they exist against a backdrop of severe fiscal constraints. South Africa's debt burden, high public sector wage bill, and strained service delivery budgets mean that a meaningful universal income programme is a long way from implementation at scale. The same applies across most of the continent.

The paradox of the African gig worker's situation is stark: they are temporarily protected by the very infrastructure deficits and low labor costs that keep them economically vulnerable. And when the technology does arrive, they will face displacement without the safety nets that developed markets, however inadequately, are beginning to put in place.

What Africa Is Not Doing That It Should Be

No African country currently has a dedicated regulatory framework for autonomous vehicles. South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria are all at various stages of electric vehicle policy, which is a different problem. The regulatory conversation about AVs, driver displacement, platform accountability, and gig worker protections is largely not happening at the policy level on this continent.

There are no binding requirements for platforms like Uber to disclose their autonomous deployment timelines to the governments of the countries where they operate. There are no transition funds being established. There is no coordinated policy discussion about how Africa will handle the disruption when it arrives.

Meanwhile, Uber is investing R5 billion in South Africa over the next three years, primarily targeting EV fleet expansion and infrastructure. That investment is not inherently bad. But it is worth asking who benefits from it and on whose terms.

Existing regulations like POPIA (South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act) give some data rights to individuals in the context of automated decision-making, but were not designed with autonomous vehicle deployment in mind. The regulatory gap is real, and it is not being filled fast enough.

The Questions African Policymakers, Platforms, and Workers Need to Ask Now

The window to shape this transition is open now. It will not stay open indefinitely.

For governments:

What disclosure requirements should platforms operating in African markets have around autonomous vehicle deployment timelines?
What transition support structures need to be in place before robotaxis arrive, not after?
How should AV data collection and processing be governed in the context of existing privacy law?
Is there a role for sovereign investment funds or development finance institutions in ensuring that fleet ownership remains accessible to local workers rather than captured entirely by international capital?

For platforms:

What is Uber's actual commitment to African driver welfare during the transition to autonomy?
Is the driver-to-fleet-owner pathway real, and if so, what financing mechanisms are being put in place specifically for African markets?
What transparency will be provided to African governments and workers about deployment timelines?

For drivers and worker organisations:

The time to organise around this issue is before the economic pressure hits, not during it
The UK Supreme Court's ruling on driver classification created a legal pathway that South African and Kenyan courts are now examining
Collective bargaining about transition terms, fleet ownership access, and data rights is possible, but requires coordinated action now

For African businesses and professionals:

Understanding which roles in your sector are on the automation trajectory is not optional
The gig driver story is a visible, concrete version of a much broader dynamic playing out across every knowledge-work sector
Building skills and business models that compound over time rather than depend on a single platform or role is the only durable strategy

The Bigger Picture

The robotaxi question for African Uber drivers is ultimately a specific instance of a much larger question: how will Africa navigate an era of rapid AI-driven automation without the social infrastructure, policy frameworks, and capital access that wealthier countries have?

Khosrowshahi estimates AI will eventually replace the work of 70 to 80 percent of humans. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report projects that automation will eliminate 92 million jobs globally while creating 170 million new ones, for a net gain of 78 million. But that net gain assumes that the right skills, policies, and transitions are in place.

For a continent where 85 percent of workers are in the informal sector, where youth unemployment exceeds 60 percent in some countries, and where the digital skills gap is real and growing, the "net gain" framing requires serious scrutiny.

African workers are not only at risk of being displaced by the technology. They are also being used to build it. Kenyan data workers are earning as little as $2 per hour labelling the training data that powers AI systems controlled by companies based in San Francisco and Beijing. The economic value created flows out while the disruption stays home.

This is not an argument against technology or against Uber. It is an argument for honesty, urgency, and preparation.

What Uhuru AI Is Doing About It

At Uhuru AI, we believe the most important thing we can do as an African AI company is to tell this story clearly and consistently.

We build AI-powered automation solutions for businesses across Africa. We know better than most that AI and automation create real value. We also know that the transition costs are real, and that they fall disproportionately on those with the least protection.

Our position is not fear-mongering. It is clear-eyed assessment. The disruption is coming. African workers deserve the same quality of warning, preparation resources, and policy advocacy that workers in wealthier markets receive. They deserve it earlier, because the runway is shorter than the current calm suggests.

The question "are Uber drivers in Africa safe?" has an honest answer for now: probably, for a few more years.

The better question is what we are doing with those years?

Sources:

Dara Khosrowshahi, Abundance360 Summit, March 2026
Business Insider Africa, September 2025
Sagaci Research, Ride-Hailing Services in Africa, 2024
Brookings Institution, Africa's Growing Gig Economy
ODI: 2.5 Million Jobs at Risk in Kenya
WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025
GiveDirectly UBI Kenya Programme
Black Sash Universal Basic Income Coalition, South Africa
POPIA.co.za
Fortune, Diary of a CEO podcast, February 2026
Academic research: PMC, Springer, INFORMS on AV deployment in developing markets

Uhuru AI is a South African AI and automation agency. We build intelligent systems for businesses that want to grow. We also believe African businesses and workers deserve honest, grounded analysis about where technology is taking us.

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