Foreign Tech Firms Take Advantage of Zimbabwe & Africa’s Data Workers

By Ross Moyo

Zimbabwe Data workers including those from Cape to Cairo dotted across Africa are being taken advantage of for exploitation by their Foreign tech employers.

This follows a study across Africa For workers in Africa, where the digital economy isn’t all it’s made out to be like the 2023 Africa Tech Festival, which exposed these malpractices.

Fast foward to Still, the news of the death of one Nigerian content moderator, Ladi Anzaki Olubunmi, who was found dead in her apartment in Nairobi, Kenya this very month on 7 March 2025, which came as a shock. While the circumstances of her death are still unclear, it has renewed calls for wider systemic change. Her death has sparked condemnation from the Kenyan Union of Gig Workers, which demanded an investigation.

From 2015, TechnoMag investigated the central role of African data workers in building and maintaining artificial intelligence (AI) systems, acting as “data janitors”. According to TechnoMag’s study and research the publication found that companies rarely acknowledge the use of human workers in AI value chains, thus they remain “hidden” from the public eye. In other words, the world of AI is built on the toil of human workers most people are unaware of.

It is these Africa’s data workers who are being exploited by foreign tech firms with Data workers in Africa often having a hard time facing job insecurities including temporary contracts, low pay, arbitrary dismissal and worker surveillance and alarming physical and psychological health risks. The consequences of their work can include exhaustion, burnout, mental health strain, chronic stress, vertigo and weakening of eyesight.

According to this investigation Data work includes text prediction, image and video annotation, speech to text validation and content moderation.

Data work is built on labour arbitrage , exploiting the fact that workers earn less and have less protection in some countries than in others.

The big technology firms often outsource this work to the global south, including African countries like Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda and Madagascar, and also India and Venezuela. The result is complex production networks that are generally opaque and shrouded in secrecy.

These Workers and researchers have issued many warnings about data workers’ health. Despite numerous court cases in multiple jurisdictions, nothing much has been done to address these issues either by tech companies or by regulators.