Disclaimer: Radio Workshop is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that’s not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. The official record for Radio Workshop’s podcast stories is the audio.

Lesedi: It is 3:00 PM on a Monday. Goodnews is weaving through Lagos traffic on his small 50 cc motorbike and is on his way to pick up a mango smoothie.

Goodnews: I’ve arrived at a restaurant. I’m going in now to pick the order and in, and in less than five minutes I’ll be out.

Hello. Good afternoon.

Lesedi: The mango smoothie is not for him. Goodnews delivers food for a company called ChowDeck, an app known for its efficiency. They get food to customers in less than 30 minutes. Goodnews turned on the app to start his shift at 10:00 AM and this is order number six. He hopes to do 10 deliveries before the app shuts down at 10:00 PM.

Goodnews: If I’m able to deliver those 10 orders. I’ll be paid 3000 naira as bonus.

Lesedi: That’s an extra 3000 naira at the end of the day. About $2, but only if he completes all 10. Goodnews tries to finish each order as quickly as he can.

Goodnews: It’ll take me about 15 minutes to get there.

MUSIC 

Lesedi: Goodnews wears a green and yellow ChowDeck t-shirt. He’s got a helmet on and has a pouch around his neck to hold his phone. The food he’s carting around is placed in a small bag hanging on the scooter’s handles. Before he heads out, he updates the ChowDeck app and then puts the next destination in Google Maps.

Goodnews: I’m actually inside unilag, but I missed my way. So I’m trying to communicate with the customer to, to guide on how to locate where she is. We, we’ve talked, so I’m moving to the location now.

Lesedi: Goodnews does most of these deliveries close to unilag, the University of Lagos. He waits for a few minutes until the customer arrives and then passes over the mango smoothie.

Goodnews: I just delivered now to the customer. She has given me the code. 4 9 7 3. Alright, that’s it. I’m done.

Lesedi: This order took him about 40 minutes to complete and he made a thousand naira. 66 cents. He’s got six hours left to meet his target for the day, but just as he returns to his usual waiting spot, dark clouds form in the sky.

Goodnews: Okay. Uh, as, as, as you see, the weather is very bad. It is about to rain. In fact, it’s drizzling. It is nature of the work. So I, I’ll use my rain coat as well as my phone pouch, but the work has to go on.

MUSIC 

Lesedi: The rain will slow him down, but ChowDeck offers riders a bonus to drive in the rain, so he keeps going. With bonuses. Goodnews makes decent money as a ChowDeck rider. But the job isn’t perfect.

Goodnews: I can’t, I can’t say I’m totally happy with the, with, with, with, with how it is, but it’s helping. Yeah, it’s helping. It’s not perfect.

Lesedi: I’m Lesedi Mogoathle and this is Radio Workshop. ChowDeck is a Nigerian tech company. It’s relatively new, only four years old, but already over 1 million people use it. ChowDeck employs more than 20,000 riders. It’s the largest food delivery app in Nigeria. ChowDeck is part of Nigeria’s growing gig economy.

For riders, they promise a flexible, fast paying income, and you don’t need an advanced degree. For many young people who can’t find office jobs, delivery work is their best option. ChowDeck riders can earn up to 600,000 naira a month. That’s around $400. And in a country like Nigeria where more than half of the working population makes less than a hundred dollars a month, that’s a lot of money.

But the gig economy can be tough. The International Labor Organization says that gig work often means low and unpredictable pay without proper oversight. On top of that, they’re warned that workers end up being controlled by opaque algorithms that they don’t understand. But how does all of this translate for a delivery rider in Lagos?

To start, our reporter, Mo Isu spoke to tech writer Ngozi Chukwu, who just so happens to be getting her ChowDeck delivery at the time of this interview.

Ngozi: Hi, are you, are you here?

Chowdeck Rider: Yeah, yeah, I am…

Ngozi: okay. Thank you.

Lesedi: Ngozi is a reporter for TechCabal, a Nigerian media outlet that covers tech news. Like many young people in Lagos, Ngozi orders from Chow Deck almost every day.

Ngozi: 4 0 6 5…

Lesedi: Today, she’s having amala, a Yoruba dish made from yam flour. It’s one of the most popular items on the app.

Ngozi: I can’t wait to eat it. I love the amala from here because the gbegiri has that creamy flavor.

Lesedi: Ngozi has reported a lot on food delivery and the gig economy. She’s spoken to many riders and users of apps like ChowDeck. We asked her what it was about these apps that made them so attractive to young people.

Ngozi: A very big or common thread was it’s, it saves, you know, me time. Cooking can be distracting and having an app where you could just order food. People underestimate how much of a weight like that lifts from like a young person. People who are like, even married and say like, they have kids and like people, it just like, it offers more flexibility for like people who have lives they want to live.

Lesedi: For young people like Ngozi who are trying to stand out in the highly competitive Nigerian job market, ChowDeck is a productivity tool. It keeps her on task and away from the pots and not stuck in the endless Lagos traffic. But like all consumer products, Ngozi says ChowDeck has a responsibility to its users. That’s the restaurant owners and customers. But also the riders.

Mo: What kind of accountability question should we be asking a company of ChowDeck’s size and ambition?

Ngozi: It would mostly be around, um, employee welfare. I mean, like the business is powered by the delivery riders, and I think that accountability would be about how are they handling like the riders as human resources.

MUSIC 

Lesedi: We are back with Goodnews outside a popular supermarket in a part of Lagos called Yaba. Our reporter, Mo Isu spent the day with Goodnews and 12 other ChowDeck riders.

Goodnews is 33 years old. He grew up in a small town in the Niger Delta region. His parents were both farmers and they raised him together with his twin brother and two sisters. Goodnews, studied engineering at university. He said he chose engineering for its practicality, not because it was his passion.

Goodnews: I, I told myself that after school, I’ll have to, I’ll have to switch to what gives me joy. Yeah. I have to go back to writing because that’s what I like. I’m a writer.

Lesedi: Goodnews, loves to write. He especially loves poetry. He submitted his poems to publications, hoping to make a career out of it. But the writing world in Nigeria is very competitive.

So in 2022, Goodnews made the decision to move to Lagos. The whole idea of Lagos scared him. About 2,000 people move to the city every day, all hoping to find better opportunities. But all Goodnews found was a bunch of low paid security jobs, and that’s how he first heard about ChowDeck.

Goodnews: So, you know, security guards receive visitors. I, I think a ChowDeck rider came to deliver, uh, an order. So when I, when I saw them come, I saw it as, as an opportunity to inquire from them. So it was through, it was through that interaction that I got interested,

Lesedi: Goodnews, decided to try his luck with ChowDeck. When he reached out to a rider supervisor at the company, he was immediately accepted. They told him to download the app. It’s pretty easy to become a rider. A bicycle and a smartphone are all you need to get started. Goodnews filled out a recruitment form and went through the onboarding process. At first, he delivered with a bicycle, but a few months later he switched over to a scooter. Now he completes orders faster and is less exhausted at the end of the day,

Mo: So do you earn more money now from ChowDeck than you did from that job?

Goodnews: Uh – of course I do.

Mo: How much more? Times two? Times three?

MUSIC 

Goodnews: Uh, I, I think I can say time times three. Can say times, yeah, times three.

Lesedi: With the salary he gets from ChowDeck, Goodnews can send money home to his family.

Goodnews: So I have, I have siblings, I have a mother, I have a father. And you know, from time to time I do send them money. So they’re, so they’re depending on me somehow.

Lesedi: Goodnews says he’s found his rhythm. He works seven days a week and tries to meet as many milestones as he can to get those bonuses. Most of his orders go smoothly. He gets the request, makes the pickup, and delivers it. But sometimes things don’t work out. Like a few weeks ago when he received an order for two portions of suya. Suya is like this super delicious Nigerian street food. It’s grilled beef covered in a local spice called yaji.

Goodnews: I got, I got to the customer’s location, I delivered. So after leaving the customer’s location, the customer called me and said that that what he hope, uh, ordered are not complete.

Lesedi: Goodnews asked the customer to reach out to ChowDeck support. His job was just to deliver. A few minutes later ChowDeck blocked him on the app. There was a miscommunication between the restaurant and the customer, but it was Goodnews who took the fall. Goodnews called the supervisor to explain the situation, all while losing precious time and money.

Goodnews: So it was after the explanation that they had to unblock my app. So, you know, situations like that, I, I really wish that they would give fair hearing to both parties for when issues come up. That’s what happens all the time.

Lesedi: He says it often feels like ChowDeck cares more for the customers than they do for the riders. Mo asked him if this is fair…

Goodnews: It is not. It is not. And, and I would really love for them to improve on their services. I would really love for them to improve.

MUSIC 

Lesedi: The life of a delivery rider in a city like Lagos is challenging. There are no dedicated bike lanes, and Lagos is notorious for its lawless roads. People run red lights, they drive the wrong way and change lanes manically. The riders also have to deal with Area Boys, men who hang out at strategic locations and try to extort money from them. Another rider Mo spoke to said ChowDeck actually got the Area Boys on his route to stop bothering him. But for Goodnews, small wins like this aren’t enough. Just a few weeks ago, he was on the way to deliver an order when a motorbike almost drove into him. To avoid a collision, Goodnews, swung his bike to the right and ran into a parked bus.

Goodnews: Had to cancel the order because I was, I was seriously injured. I had to cancel it.

Lesedi: He reported the incident on a support group chat. A few minutes later, the order was reassigned to a different rider who picked it up while Goodnews went to get treated at a nearby clinic.

Goodnews: And up until today, I’ve not, I’ve not, I’ve not even, I’ve not even seen a call from somebody tell that, “Okay, I’m calling from support. We heard you had accident,” and all of that, you know, to show, to show support. Nothing like that came. They don’t do anything. They don’t.

Lesedi: According to Goodnews, when there’s an accident, you are pretty much on your own. He says the company doesn’t care about the safety of its riders.

Goodnews: When, when the desire is there to do better, you will do better. But, but, but they don’t have that desire, that’s the problem. They don’t, they don’t, they don’t want to, they don’t want to improve because they, they feel that, they feel that riders are, are, are stranded. They need them more.

Lesedi: Earlier this year, ChowDeck made some changes to the app. They stopped assigning orders manually and started automating this process. Some riders felt this also meant less access to support personnel. Goodnews says now there’s no one he can reach out to to talk about his grievances.

Bukola: The best that these, uh, gig workers have sometimes is WhatsApp groups where they come together and talk. ‘Cause I have spoken to a lot of gig workers who say they don’t even know whom to complain to.

Lesedi: Bukola Adebayo is the West Africa correspondent for Context News and has reported extensively on the gig economy in Nigeria. She says, companies like ChowDeck should have health insurance that covers the kind of injuries riders are likely to face

Bukola: It’s a no brainer that if in the course of delivering a service for a company, you incur an injury, there should be a health system that allows you to be able to seek care immediately.

MUSIC 

Lesedi: We contacted ChowDeck to get their side of the story. They told us they do provide personal accident insurance for all their riders, and they always have, but all the riders Mo spoke to say they’d never heard anything about having access to insurance. Fair work Nigeria is a research initiative that evaluates and rates the working conditions of digital platforms.

In 2023, they released a report rating the working conditions of gig workers in Nigeria-based tech companies. They tested 12 companies against their five principles: fair pay, fair conditions, fair contracts, fair management and fair representation. Only two companies scored any points at all. ChowDeck scored zero on all five principles. Bukola says, for things to improve, the government needs to step in.

Bukola: The overall responsibility lies with the government to provide the legislation to provide the room for riders to be seen in terms of legislation that they can use to hold companies like ChowDeck responsible.

Lesedi: Without government regulation, riders like Goodnews are more likely to be exploited and are not given the same rights as more formal workers.

Bukola: Gig work is work. It’s not other work than any other work. A gig worker is working as a medical doctor is working and they deserve the same level of protection.

Lesedi: In the meantime, Goodnews hustles to make his deliveries as quickly as possible. When Mo leaves him at about 6:00 PM he heads out into the rain for his next order.

Goodnews: I just picked up an order going to Igbobi. But I, I’ll just have to go because, uh, the order does not have to stay long on the app. So I, I’ll use my rain coat as well as my phone pouch, but the work has to go on. Almost six. Yeah, this is order number, this is other number eight.

Mo: Good luck. I’ll check up on you later.

Goodnews: Okay. Thank you very much.

MUSIC 

Lesedi: Mo gets a text from Goodnews at 10:30 PM. He says he met his 10 order challenge, but only just managed because no one else wanted to work in the rain. When Goodnews finally made his way home, he spent the rest of the night writing.

This story was reported and produced for Radio Workshop by Mo isu. Special thanks to the journalists who shared their reporting with us Ngozi Chukwu from TechCabal and Bukola Abebayo from Context News. This episode was edited by me Lesedi Mogoathle, with assistance from Bethel Habte. Original music by Qhamani Sambu at Edible Audio in Cape Town. Sound Engineering by Jo Jackson and Mike Rahfaldt.

Jo Jackson is our managing producer. Mike Rahfaldt is our executive producer. Vuyo Lutseke is our executive director. This episode and the work of Radio Workshop would not be possible without the support of Luminate. Special thanks to Rob Byers. And thanks to Hindenburg for supporting our projects across Africa with audio editing software. We can only do this work because of your support, you can make a donation at radioworkshop.org.