Between the Cloud and the Commons: A Pan-African Feminist Framework on the Gig and Platform Economy

In “Between the Cloud and the Commons,” writers Selam Mussie, Omolara Oriye, and Najjuko Joanita from the Nawi Afrifem Collective contend that the rising globalization of Western digital technologies has allowed for the infrastructural domination of material, economic, and labour power across Africa and the Global South — all of which has implications for the global care economy. Critically, their work exposes how the promises of “innovation,” “flexibility,” and “connection” that are espoused as part of global digitalization actually operate by colonizing the racialized worker. This framework serves then both as analytical tool and invitation to rethink how we live, work, and build in the digital age, from a place of African feminist possibility.

The Nawi Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective (The Nawi Collective) is a Care Economies in Context Africa partner.

Citation

Mussie, S., Oriye O., Joanita, N. (2026). Between the Cloud and the Commons: A Pan-African Feminist Framework on the Gig and Platform Economy. https://nawi.africa/written-resources/between-the-cloud-and-the-commons-a-pan-african-feminist-framework-on-the-gig-and-platform-economy.

Excerpt from the intro

At the heart of our framing is the belief that the “future of work” in Africa cannot be left to algorithms or market logic alone: it must be forged by the people whose labour, time and lives are intimately shaped by it. To explore these dynamics, the paper brings together four interlinked pillars:

Digitalisation, Labour & Power – exploring how digital platforms organise work, reproduce neoliberal structures, and shift economic and social risks onto
workers while presenting these arrangements as flexible “choices”.

Social Reproduction & Care – revealing how unpaid, feminised labour sustains digital economies and how the home, the body and the relational space become
sites of production.

Structural & Epistemic Violence – tracing how coloniality, data colonialism and gendered norms continue to define who is visible, safe, and valued in the
platform economy.

Feminist Agency & Transformative Futures – emphasising worker-led organising, collective imagination, and emerging efforts to build digital economies rooted in care, solidarity and justice.