The identity issue: Digital risks of proxy IDs in Kenya’s online economy
With refugees facing limited job opportunities in the formal sector, online work might seem like the answer. Workshops run in collaboration with the Innovation Service explored the particular challenges, risks, and vulnerabilities experienced by refugees accessing online livelihoods.
By Dr Margie Cheesman (Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London) and Dr Andreas Hackl (Lecturer in the Anthropology of Development at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh)
The digital inclusion of refugees offers important opportunities for improving their access to information, financial services, and livelihood opportunities. At the same time, this digital inclusion poses new challenges and risks: sensitive data about refugees can be misused, scammers can trick refugees engaging online, and online discrimination and harassment are widespread. Concerns about digital risks are currently high because a growing number of refugees are engaging with web-based income opportunities.
One of the main reasons why the internet economy is quickly gaining relevance is the steady growth in demand for work on digital labour platforms. Yet another reason is the exclusion of refugees from formal work opportunities in host countries.
Exclusion from formal and decent work
In Kenya, as in most countries around the world, refugees are still far from enjoying the same labour rights as their hosting communities. Although refugees in Kenya have the right to work, this is often limited by administrative and technical barriers to access work permits that allows them to engage in formal employment. Relying on humanitarian aid payments is insufficient and unfulfilling for many people and their households. But the available livelihood opportunities are scarce and often feature precarious conditions in the informal sector.
Some 84% of refugees in Kenya reside in refugee camp complexes, while the remaining 16% live in urban areas, with an estimated 87,000 individuals living in Nairobi. While decent income opportunities in camps are particularly restricted, refugees living in urban areas must often resort to informal casual work or street hawking. They mostly do not have access to formal decent work because they lack basic identity documents, cannot obtain work or business permits, and face discrimination in the labour market.
New legislation now indicates change, but not without barriers. The Refugee Act formally recognizes refugees’ right to engage in employment or enterprise, however their options are still limited by bureaucratic hurdles and mobility restrictions.
Online work as an alternative?
Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that the internet economy is viewed as a place of possibility and opportunity for people based in refugee camps and urban settings who are struggling to make an income. Often supported by digital skills training and a wide range of aid-funded initiatives, refugees in Kenya are increasingly turning to online work, including in fields such as language transcription, image and data annotation, and other forms of online freelancing or microwork. The perceived benefits of web-based work are that it can be done from one’s home in one’s own time — at least if one has a computer, a stable internet connection, and the right skills.
The reality of refugees’ experiences paints a more complex picture, however, as they face many access-related challenges and risks. One of the main challenges affecting refugees in digital jobs and livelihoods emanates from their regulatory exclusion from key enablers of digital jobs and livelihoods — including SIM cards, financial services, and digital platforms. This is largely due to a lack of recognized identity credentials among refugees that would satisfy the Know Your Customer (KYC) and Customer Due Diligence (CDD) requirements of mobile operators, financial service providers, or digital platforms.
These layers of exclusion can force refugees to use insecure and informal workarounds, resulting in a variety of risks. A key problem has been refugees’ use of proxy IDs from Kenyan citizens or account holders abroad to access SIM cards, mobile money accounts, and digital platforms.
Collecting experiences
To better understand the challenges refugees face with online work, social anthropologists Andreas Hackl and Margie Cheesman worked with UNHCR’s Innovation Service to organise workshops in Kenya, in September 2022. The workshops involved focus groups with Nairobi-based refugees and asylum seekers, who discussed their concerns, priorities, and demands, as well as organisations and advocacy groups that are currently involved in supporting refugees with digital income opportunities (including RefuSHE, WUSC, and Konnexio).
Risky workarounds
Many refugee participants in the focus groups highlighted how regulatory exclusion forces them to make use of risky workarounds. This includes the use of a proxy SIM card, mobile money account, or platform account registered using another person’s identity. Some must purchase or borrow access to Kenyan citizens’ accounts — whether from a friend, a distant acquaintance, or through social media networks. Others buy accounts for digital labour platforms registered under another person’s identity on the internet. All of this results in a range of cross-cutting risks, as is articulated in refugees’ testimonies below.
Please note that all names of discussion participants have been changed, due to protection concerns.
Losing money with proxy mobile money accounts
In a group discussion between colleagues from a RefuSHE online work training programme, Mary — a woman in her early 20s whose family had fled their country years ago and who had since been in protracted asylum procedures in Kenya — described an experience shared by many: exploitation by an unreliable proxy MPesa (mobile money) account owner.
There are websites that have work but they are not verified and we try to avoid them. Websites that have legit work, data entry jobs, you still can’t apply with the alien ID. The only way is to use all the information — phone number, email, ID — belonging to another. Last time I did this, I told my Kenyan friend the amount I will be paid, the money would pass through her MPesa and she would forward it to me. We agreed I [would] give up 10% to her and get the rest. I started the job. So many small tasks, you are sitting and clicking. After one month, on Slack — we communicated there — I asked for the money and she blocked me and I never got the money. I cannot report this because it will look like she is the one who is doing the job.
Getting kicked off proxy platform accounts
Refugees aiming to work online were compelled to use proxy accounts not only for mobile money accounts or SIM card acquisition, but also to register accounts on online work platforms, since their refugee ID would usually not pass the required identity verification.
Patricia, a single mother of two, described how online work platform account owners often sell their account profiles but then close them once they have received a fee:
Upwork, it’s one of the cheapest accounts to buy. But some accounts, like SA Shack, it’s the most expensive. Someone is approved on a platform and then they sell their account second hand, some good accounts can go for a lot of money. But you can’t trust it. Some people keep on selling the profile. I had a friend who wanted to start working online, they had this new Upwork account. The account owners know it is such a challenge for us getting a job and getting paid. They can ask us for whatever they want. My friend sent the money to buy the account and on top of that she agreed to do some jobs on it before getting paid, so she could get the first positive reviews. But owners sell accounts and then close them on purpose to make money. My friend lost 50,000 Kenyan shillings [KES] and all that time went down the drain. As for me, I made a lot of losses from this so I stopped working online. I bought four accounts, one for 25,000 KES. It got locked out after around 6 months, then I bought another account at 15,000 KES. After a month it was locked out.
Facing suspension due to information mismatches
Beyond the risks emerging from using proxy accounts, Mary, Patricia, and several other young refugee workers described how mismatches between the proxy account information they used for MPesa and the information on their digital labour platform accounts could also lead to blocking and suspension from both mobile money and work platforms. This meant losing substantial amounts of money and time:
So with the information of the person who gave you access to the work account, when you are trying to change the payment account information, the platform is immediately notified and the account is suspended. My account was suspended, and I lost around 100 USD for my work on WritersHub. You just do it because you are desperate for money, and then just like that everything is gone.
What can be done?
The risks these refugees face could be avoided through reforming restrictive regulations: equipping refugees with universally recognized IDs, giving them full access to SIM cards and financial services such as mobile money, while also revising stringent ID verification rules for online platform accounts. Without these changes, vulnerable refugees are forced to take risks and use proxy IDs and accounts.
Importantly, the risks of using proxy accounts are only some of many digital risks refugees currently face online, including cybercrimes, scams, and harassment. Some of these risks are amplified by refugees’ fear of authorities and the legal ambivalence of their digital livelihoods.
As Mary highlighted, it seems pointless to dispute or complain to platforms or the authorities about financial losses, scams, and exploitation since the proxy ID strategy is not strictly legal — and many refugees are nervous about legal repercussions. As Patricia put it: “The biggest challenge we face as refugees is to ensure we are doing the right thing. But you cannot fight for your right, and yet it is your right.”
Testimonies such as these clearly show that refugees have a unique kind of vulnerability in a digital economy. Mitigating risks in the future will no doubt require reforms to current exclusive regulations that create the need for workarounds in the first place. But it will also require awareness raising and training programmes that can help users identify and avoid these risks.
This project was made possible with the help of funding by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
