Ethiotime1
Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: Nigeria’s new president expels the central bank governor, the EU offers Tunisia a $1 billion lifeline in exchange for controlling migration, and Egypt expels a Dutch museum, denouncing its “Afrocentrism.”
The legal troubles of Meta, Facebook’s parent corporation, in Africa look set to continue after a Kenyan court ruled that Meta can be sued for unfair dismissal and blocked the sacking of 184 African tech workers hired as Facebook moderators.
The lawsuit alleges that Meta and its third-party contractor Sama fired workers illegally in January after failing to issue them with appropriate redundancy notices as required by Kenyan law. The case has potentially global implications for tech workers, including sacked employees in Twitter’s only African office who are pursuing legal action.
Sama, a U.S.-based outsourcing company, quit content moderation services in January following a lawsuit alleging worker exploitation and union-busting.
Meta argued that it does not employ Sama’s sacked staff. A judge in Nairobi disagreed. On June 2, the court said the moderators did Meta’s work, used its technology and platform, adhered to its metrics, and therefore Sama was “merely an agent … or manager.”
“There is nothing in the arrangements to absolve the first and second respondents as the primary and principal employers of the content moderators,” the 142-page ruling read.
“We fundamentally disagree with this interim ruling and we have appealed it,” a Meta spokesperson told Foreign Policy by email.
It is the latest in a series of significant blows to Facebook’s parent company, which is facing three court cases overall in Kenya—the first cases brought by workers to be filed outside the United States. In all, Meta has argued that it cannot be sued in Kenya because it is not registered there.
In February, Nairobi’s labor court ruled that it had authority to hear a case filed by Daniel Motaung, a former Sama employee from South Africa working on Facebook content moderation in Kenya. Motaung alleges that content moderators in Kenya were subjected to undignified working conditions and were not provided with mental health care after being exposed on the job to graphically violent content. He alleges that he was unlawfully dismissed after attempting to unionize for better pay and working conditions.
In an emailed statement, Sama representatives said that “Sama disputes the claims made in this case. Allegations of union busting are not correct. No union was formed,” though it did acknowledge that “a collection of workers came together to threaten to strike.” Sama said it had mandated that content moderators take an hour and a half of wellness and meal breaks per day and provided onsite counseling sessions, available 24/7.
In April, the Kenyan High Court ruled that a $1.6 billion lawsuit can go ahead against Meta by Kenya’s Katiba Institute and two Ethiopian individuals suing the tech giant for failing to adequately moderate online hate speech in Africa. “Content moderation everywhere is a difficult, stressful, and potentially psycho-toxic job,” said Cori Crider, a director at Foxglove, a London-based nonprofit legal firm that is supporting former African moderators with their cases.
Armed conflict across parts of Africa has fueled particularly horrific content, such as during Ethiopia’s two-year civil war. “At that time, for 117 million people in Ethiopia with 87 languages, there were about 25 content moderators speaking three of those languages,” Crider said.
The petitioners allege that Facebook’s algorithm amplified genocidal posts in Ethiopia, which led to the murder of a university professor and half a million other deaths during the Tigray War. One person described watching a video of a person being burned alive in a cage. Former workers allege that they had to watch and evaluate a new video every 55 seconds. Meta has said it does not put a time limit on reviewing content.
Meta’s independent Oversight Board in late 2021 recommended a review of how Facebook and Instagram have been used to spread content that heightens the risk of violence in Ethiopia. Tech giants are accused of not hiring enough workers proficient in African languages and outsourcing work to firms located in countries with lax labor laws.
Moderators hired from across Africa, including Morocco, Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia, and South Africa, say they review the most toxic content and earn as little as $1.50 an hour.
Meta told Foreign Policy that the “companies we work with are also contractually obliged to pay their employees who review content on Facebook and Instagram above the industry standard in the markets they operate. We respect the right of our vendor’s employees to organize and do not oppose or inhibit their right to unionize.”
According to documents leaked by Frances Haugen, a former Facebook staffer, 87 percent of Facebook’s global budget for classifying misinformation goes toward the United States, while 13 percent is set aside for the rest of the world. North American users make up just 10 percent of Facebook’s daily users.
Africa’s ready supply of highly educated but unemployed youths makes it ripe for unfair pay. “You see these promising young kids, graduates … go into this job because its what’s available and emerge with their life totally derailed because they can’t sleep, they struggle to relate to people,” Crider said.
Sama’s Facebook contract has shifted to Majorel, which is headquartered in Luxembourg. Majorel is partly owned by an investment firm founded by Moulay Hafid Elalamy, a former Moroccan minister of industry and trade. Former moderators who worked for Majorel in Morocco reviewing TikTok’s African content said they experienced severe “psychological distress” while being paid $2 an hour.
In response, a spokesperson for TikTok told Foreign Policy: “As we strive to promote a caring work environment for our employees and contractors, we continue to develop ways to help moderators feel supported mentally and emotionally.”
More than 150 workers whose moderation work is vital to the AI systems of Facebook, TikTok, and ChatGPT gathered in Nairobi last month and established what they said to be the first African Content Moderators Union. The union wants tech giants to increase salaries, provide access to psychiatrists, and end exploitative labor practices.
What is significant about the June 2 ruling is that it instructs Kenya’s government agencies to evaluate laws, investigate the conditions in the sector, and suggest reforms to better protect tech workers. If successful, it could reform how tech giants operate across the continent.
Wednesday, June 14, to Friday, June 16: East African finance ministers attend the South Sudan Oil and Power conference, held in Juba.
Thursday, June 15: The African Union’s temporary site for the Great Museum of Africa, intended to preserve the continent’s cultural heritage, launches in Algiers, Algeria.
The U.N. Security Council meets to discuss Sudan and Somalia sanctions.
Friday, June 16: A delegation of African leaders from six nations, led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.
The U.N. Security Council meets to discuss its mission in Mali.
Saturday, June 17: African leaders from six nations meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Sunday, June 18: A constitutional referendum is slated to take place in Mali following coups in 2020 and 2021.
Nigeria’s Tinubu suspends Emefiele. On Friday, new Nigerian President Bola Tinubu suspended central bank Gov. Godwin Emefiele with immediate effect as part of what Nigerian officials said was a planned reform to the financial sector and an investigation into the governor’s office. A day after, state police announced Emefiele had been arrested pending the investigation. Nigerians widely expected the arrest.
Emefiele had defied a court order in March to release and continue the use of old currency notes following a botched naira redesign policy that resulted in severe cash shortages, impacting households and businesses. The country’s electoral body had blocked Emefiele from running for president as a sitting bank governor. He was required to resign from office at least a month before party primaries, which he refused to do. Months later, he was accused of attempting to derail the ruling All Progressives Congress’s election campaign by causing the cash shortage, which triggered chaos and protests weeks before the general election.
Guinea-Bissau elections. The country’s opposition won a majority of seats in legislative elections that took place on June 4. Since taking office in January 2020, President Umaro Sissoco Embalo has weakened the power of government institutions, dissolved parliament for more than a year, and postponed parliamentary elections that had originally been scheduled for December 2022. The PAI-Terra Ranka coalition of opposition groups, led by the former ruling PAIGC party, won 54 of 102 seats. Madem G15, Embalo’s party, won 29 seats. The results mean that Embalo will find it difficult to push through reforms to change the country’s semi-presidential system and make the head of state also the head of government.
EU’s $1 billion migration offer. Tunisia could be loaned more than 1 billion euros (about $1.07 billion) to help its beleaguered economy, the European Union announced on Sunday. But the package would rely on Tunisia helping to mitigate irregular migration to Europe. The loan offer was announced by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during a visit to Tunisia along with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has adopted a hard-line approach to migration.
As part of the deal, the EU would provide Tunisia with 100 million euros for border management, search and rescue, anti-smuggling operations, and returns “rooted in the respect of human rights,” according to a statement released by the EU. The body would also help Tunisia with up to 900 million euros in macro-financing if it accepted a stalled rescue package from the International Monetary Fund, earlier rejected by President Kais Saied. A day before the visit, Saied had warned that his country would not be Europe’s border guard.
Egypt expels Dutch museum. Egyptian authorities have expelled a team of Dutch archeologists for promoting an “Afrocentrist” history of Egypt. The Dutch National Museum of Antiquities said it had received an email from the head of foreign missions of the Egyptian antiquities service stating that the museum’s “Kemet: Egypt in Hip-Hop, Jazz, Soul & Funk” exhibition in Leiden is “falsifying history.” The museum said it was accused of cooperating in the appropriation of Egyptian culture by Black artists from the United States.
Egypt terminated its access to the Saqqara burial site, home to Egypt’s oldest pyramid, Djoser, where the museum has been working since 1975. The museum’s website states that the exhibition analyzes “the influence of ancient Egypt and Nubia … in the works of a multitude of musicians of African descent.” Earlier this year, a group of Egyptian jurists and archaeologists demanded a $2 billion compensation from Netflix after its series Queen Cleopatra featured a mixed-race actress. They objected to Cleopatra being depicted as “dark-skinned.”
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Israel Is Officially Annexing the West Bank by Michael Sfard
Africa, Latin America, and Asia are the regions most affected by food inflation, according to the latest data update by the World Bank. Egypt’s annual inflation rose to 40.3 percent in May from 38.6 percent in April, according to data released by the country’s central bank on Sunday. The World Bank also warns that northern Nigeria, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, and Mali are in danger of acute food insecurity due to a combination of conflict and climate change stresses.
South Africa’s lost $10 million. In amaBhungane, Njabulo Ngidi reports that the South African Football Association (SAFA) is not among the list of victims to be compensated in the FIFA corruption scandal. Last year, the U.S. Justice Department awarded $201 million to be paid to victims of FIFA’s corruption scandal. FIFA cited a $10 million payment by SAFA to Jack Warner, then vice president of FIFA and president of the Confederation of North, Central America, and Caribbean Association Football. However, in plans to recover the money, the South African government allegedly tried to propose a deal in which it would not admit liability.
Nigeria’s image crisis. In the Republic, Dare Leke Idowu argues that the corruption allegations surrounding Nigeria’s new president and vice president, Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima, demean the country’s reputation globally and among the regional bloc ECOWAS. Tinubu is plagued by drug trafficking allegations in the United States and Shettima by allegations of sponsoring terrorism in northern Nigeria. Accusations of vote buying also impede their credibility in office.
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