Parasitic Capitalism in East Africa as Digital Working Creates Neo Africa

By Timothy Wahome

Strategists have repeatedly warned that the on-surge of a digital gig economy will deprive the creators’ backyards of handy manpower-as they concentrate fully on the digital companies’ math regalia. However, the biggest concerns are that, despite the worker vacuum these 24-hour companies create, once they flourish, they do little to develop the region in which they ‘operate,’ with the nitizen-approved excuse that by virtue of being online, they are in a global village and can thus develop any part of the earth: tongue in cheek for personal enrichment through the cloak of the World Wide Web.

In East Africa, the future is as bleak. In fact, Kenya, according to an Internet hosting company based on the continent, ranked back in 2017, as conceited as this may eventually turn out to be in coming years, as having the best Internet connectivity in the continent. Be it as it may, and as much as the youth are flocking to SEO-related informal careers, leaving manual work to old men, and as much as the region, with severe economic deprivation is becoming the farcical no country for old men and young men alike, but for the monied few, a new dark reality is revisiting the East African digital world slowly.

Hear it now:

As youth flock to digitized editions, contribute tons of copywrite material in exchange of a few dimes, most of which go to their local outsourcing agents, who in turn sell it, sometimes in 1000% profit to their rich clients in the West, the pension of the post-college writer, designer, videographer or artist is becoming a pipe dream.

For one, once the fortunes of the agents and their outsourcing companies nod for the sunset of retirement due to the lucrativeness of parasitizing on talented yet monetarily inconvenienced youth who can’t break the shackles if they want to put bread on the table or pay for their university fees, these companies abandon their workers in ex-ma-china fashion. Because there is usually no contract, per se, the worker cannot resort to legal representation and has to hunt for the next netizen-boss online who he will never see or even eschew (due to barrage of work) until he discerns a blank screen on where the former site used to be.

Therefore, even as East Africa blossoms in cyberspace and creates jobs for people who otherwise would not ever dream for a bed of roses for lack of jobs for which they have studied in the formal sector, it is an early call for a future of parasitic capitalism in the digital context of the region…..