Motorcycle Taxis, Extended Lockdown, and Inequality at Work in Kampala, Uganda.
This article is adapted from Motorcycle Taxis, Extended Lockdown, and Inequality at Work in Kampala, Uganda by Richard Mallet, Hakimu Sseviiri, Lillian Asingura, Disan Byarugaba and Geofrey Ndhogezi, with permission.
After two years of lockdown, Kampala’s boda sector has gone through significant changes. Known for employing thousands supporting all facets of the economy and being the second largest labor market after agriculture, the sector faced restrictions and digital transitions during the lockdown. The changes exposed new forms of dependency on the sector whilst some old ones were dropped.
Qualitative data from boda riders through the lockdown reveal how the boda workforce has been reworked by ‘selective exits’ and ‘substitution effects’, socio-economic unevenness within the city’s motorcycle taxi sector, and also sheds light on a new, broader configuration of urban inequality in the making.
Who are the boda riders?
Boda riders are motorcycle taxi operators. In Uganda, they offer the most agile mode of transport to city dwellers and most convenient transportation in areas with the poorest road networks. The majority of boda riders are male youth but all ages are significantly represented, while the female operators are nearly non-existent in the industry.
Boda riders are generally viewed as illiterate people who can’t have access to more decent jobs. However, our study revealed that only 1% of the 370 interviewees received no formal education while the rest are fairly educated in relation to the general population, with some even having completed university. High unemployment rate makes many people, including university graduates, opt for bodaboda work, either as their full time or part-time job to make ends meet.
Motorcycles are readily available for whoever wishes to do the job. The most common way of joining the industry is through the Kibaluwa system where individuals rent out motorcycles to willing riders, usually at 10,000 Ugx per day, a practice common among boda riders themselves as well as the middle class individuals targeting a side income.
There’s also an arrangement where individuals and companies offer motorcycles to riders on hire-purchase, the method that has enabled most boda riders to become motorcycle owners despite the high interest rates accompanied.
The minority who owned the motorcycles prior to the entry into the industry either used savings from their previous jobs or sold their belongings, including inherited land, to buy the motorcycles.
Boda riders generally organize themselves in groups at spots known as stages where they pick up passengers, and are expected to return after dropping the passengers. However, there are boda riders who work entirely out of that arrangement. These, locally known as Lubyanza, keep riding around — picking and dropping passengers. Though the Lubyanzas’ behaviour is often resented by those who work from stages, it is the style of work used by ride-hailing companies like SafeBoda. The disruptive companies give app-bodas a broader customer base since they have access to both online and offline passengers.
While the best earning boda riders can make upto 50,000 Ugx a day in revenue, a lot of their income goes to motorcycle maintenance as their motorcycles are intensively used. Their work also exposes them to frequent crashes, the occupational hazard which also gives them terrible injuries as well as create significant expenses.
How did the lockdown affect the bodaboda industry?
Despite its vibrancy, the motorcycle taxi industry was the last sector to regain full capacity operations after 22 months of the lockdown, curfews and other temporary measures to curb the spread of coronavirus. This caused changes in the boda workforce as some long time boda riders quit the industry and new ones joined. A situation we divided into two different phenomena:
- Selective exits
What started as an outright ban on all movements as a way to curb the spread of coronavirus, and later easing to allow only transportation of cargo but not passengers and eventually curfew-restricted passenger movements, caused relocations whereby people moved to areas where they expected some support and hope for survival.
Boda riders, whose work is mainly to carry passengers, could not have supportive work in the time when only cargo ferrying was permitted for limited hours in a day. So many opted for difficult work such as brick laying for survival, with the hope that they would return to boda riding when the situation improves. Others changed jobs permanently while many, especially those who were riding motorcycles on Kibaluwa and hire-purchase arrangements lost access to the motorcycles. The main reason behind the loss of access was inability to make the agreed daily payments, leading to repossession of the motorcycles. For those on the Kibaluwa arrangement, the motorcycle owners either sold the motorcycles or started to ride themselves to fend for their own families. So the boda riders who were previously riding these motorcycles remained helpless.
2. Substitution effects
For a long time, the boda industry has been open to new entrants from all backgrounds. While the majority join due to lack of access to more decent jobs, there are those who join purposely to supplement their income, as part-time riders and others as Kibaluwa bosses. While this is normal and familiar, the lockdown pressures saw a new wave of workforce joining the boda industry in significant numbers as a means for survival, following closure of businesses and termination from jobs.
While we would expect the boda industry to have fewer workers after the quitting of some long time boda riders, interviews revealed that new entries were in direct proportion to exits as teachers, students, security guards, car drivers, factory workers, and other jobs affected by the lockdowns.
One interviewee, a former teacher who delights in the boda job that he joined during the lockdown, attests to the willingness to continue as a boda rider. This points to the likelihood that many of the new entrants will stay as full time or part time boda riders, some may go back to their pre-pandemic roles, and others may quit bodaboda and venture into new fields. So one major effect came up: the already swollen boda workforce started to outweigh the demand, further pushing the already meager earnings down. This is so because many of the boda riders who quit the boda industry due to lack of access to motorcycles during the lockdown, would surely swing back to their familiar source of income after the lockdown. Studies elsewhere show that incomes reduced by around a third between early 2020 and October 2020.
Among those who joined the boda industry during the lockdown as a survival strategy, many bypassed the usual entry procedure. They either had their own motorcycles, were capable of buying at least second hand motorcycles, or paying upfront for the hire-purchase arrangement.
Joining boda stages did not matter to them. They largely adopted the Lubyanza style as some embarked on app-based work. This left the long held purpose of stages ignored.
Conclusion
The COVID crisis has reaffirmed the role of Uganda’s boda sector as a vital space of popular economic activity even when it is subjected to months of lockdown.
As salaries in the wider economy dried up, and more formal employment terminated, many urban residents found survival in the “dirty work” of passenger ferrying and cargo delivery.
Through its ability to pick up the slack when loss or uncertainty occur elsewhere, boda work exhibits a degree of dependability that further challenges prior framings of informal economic activity as marginal, transient, and disconnected from core economic and political structures.
But although the boda economy provides livelihoods and incomes to a huge number of people, including in times of crisis, it does not work equally for everyone.
Ultimately, Kampala’s boda sector is a place of layered, multidimensional inequalities, expressed not just in the uneven distribution of earnings and guarantees of work among an ever diversifying workforce, but also in the way that particular kinds of boda labor are being incorporated into digitally mediated systems of consumption and provisioning for the city’s growing middle class.
