In 2022, Kenya did something no other African country had done: it told ride-hailing platforms exactly how much they could take from their drivers.
The Digital Taxi (Owners, Drivers & Passengers) Regulations set a maximum platform commission of 18%, mandated transparent terms for driver activation and deactivation, established licensing requirements, and gave drivers explicit rights over their data. For an industry accustomed to setting its own rules, and adjusting them unilaterally, this was a sharp intervention.
Three years on, new data from Ipsos Strategy3’s 2025 multi-country Gig Economy Study offers a window into what the regulatory shake-up has actually produced. The picture is more nuanced than either platform critics or free-market advocates might prefer.
Platforms adapted
The commission cap didn’t drive platforms out of Kenya. It forced them to restructure.
With a ceiling on what they could extract per ride, platforms had to find other ways to maintain margins, and more strategically, to retain drivers in a market where 53% of them depend on ride-hailing as their primary income. The result has been a wave of bundled services designed to reduce driver costs, deepen loyalty, and make the platform relationship stickier.
Bolt’s partnership with M-Kopa is the most visible example. Through this arrangement, drivers can access affordable vehicle financing, addressing what has historically been the single largest barrier to entering ride-hailing. You can’t drive for a platform without a car, and in a market where formal credit is scarce, asset financing through a platform partner effectively functions as onboarding infrastructure.
The “Bundle Ya Deree” programme extends this logic further. Drivers who participate receive weekly fuel discounts at Shell outlets, targeting what multiple respondents in the Ipsos study identified as their heaviest operational cost. One Nairobi-based driver captured the tension directly: driving keeps food on the table, but fuel prices make sole dependence on it increasingly difficult.
These aren’t acts of corporate generosity. They’re rational responses to a regulatory environment that limits revenue extraction and forces platforms to compete on driver experience instead. That distinction matters. Because it suggests the regulation is working roughly as intended, even if imperfectly.
EV push and cost restructuring
The commission cap also appears to have accelerated interest in electric vehicles. Not because the regulation mentions EVs, but because it changed the economics of driver retention.
When platforms can’t increase their cut, the alternative path to growth is expanding the driver base and increasing ride volume. Both are easier when drivers’ operating costs are lower. Two-wheelers and electric motorcycles, led by platforms such as Bolt and Spiro in Kenya, offer exactly that: lower fuel costs, reduced maintenance, and higher net earnings per ride.
The Ipsos focus groups captured this shift in real time. Drivers discussed the cost advantages of electric vehicles over petrol cars in practical terms — not as an environmental aspiration, but as a business calculation. One participant noted that electric vehicles dramatically reduce operating costs compared to fuel-powered alternatives. Others described adopting a business mindset focused on cutting costs wherever possible.
This isn’t a green transition driven by policy mandate or consumer preference. It’s a cost optimisation strategy that happens to align with sustainability goals. Which may, in practice, be a more durable foundation for EV adoption than top-down incentives alone.
The broader ecosystem response
Beyond platforms and drivers, Kenya’s regulatory move has catalysed a wider institutional response.
The Ipsos report notes that Kenya is increasingly recognised as a regional leader in digital and gig economy policy, with think tanks and policy bodies pointing to ride-hailing regulation as a reference case. The Ajira Digital Programme, a government initiative, had trained over 516,500 people in digital skills by April 2024. The Jitume Digital Hub initiative had established 117 centres with around 28,000 users by mid-2024. While neither programme targets ride-hailing specifically, they signal a broader recognition that digital platform work requires institutional support, not just regulatory constraint.
Financial inclusion infrastructure has deepened in parallel. The majority of ride-hailing earnings in Kenya flow through M-Pesa, creating verified transaction histories that open access to micro-credit, savings tools, and insurance products. The World Bank’s Global Findex Database shows that 40% of sub-Saharan Africans now hold a mobile money account, up from 27% in 2021. Formal savings reached 35%, a 12 percentage-point increase over the same period.
For drivers, this means that platform work doesn’t just generate income, it generates a financial identity. That identity, built on transaction records and payment consistency, is increasingly the bridge between informal earning and formal financial services.
What other markets are watching
Kenya’s approach is being observed closely for a simple reason: it offers the first real test case of platform regulation in an African gig economy at scale.
Nigeria and South Africa, the other two markets in the Ipsos study, have not implemented equivalent commission caps. In both countries, ride-hailing functions more commonly as supplementary income (75% of Nigerian drivers and 70% of South African drivers treat it as secondary). Whether that’s a cause or consequence of different regulatory environments is an open question, but the contrast is instructive.
The Kenyan model suggests that capping commissions doesn’t kill platform markets. It restructures them. Platforms invest in driver retention. Ancillary services emerge. Cost innovation accelerates. And drivers, at least some of them, gain marginally better terms within a system that still fundamentally depends on their labour.
It’s not a revolution. But for the 1.55 million gig workers in Kenya’s billion-dollar platform economy, and for the regulators across the continent watching from Lagos, Johannesburg, Accra, and Dar es Salaam, it’s the closest thing to a working blueprint.
Whether other markets adopt it , and whether Kenya’s model holds as platforms evolve, is the next chapter of this story.
Data covers Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, with 250 survey respondents per country, supplemented by focus groups and in-depth stakeholder interviews. Additional sources: World Bank Global Findex 2024, GSMA, KNBS, KEPSA.
