IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/palcom/v9y2022i1d10.1057_s41599-022-01258-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The rise of ‘smart’ solutions in Africa: a review of the socio-environmental cost of the transportation and employment benefits of ride-hailing technology in Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Festival Godwin Boateng

    (Columbia University)

  • Samuelson Appau

    (Melbourne Business School)

  • Kingsley Tetteh Baako

    (RMIT University)

Abstract

Governments in Africa are licensing major global ride-hailing firms to launch operations in the continent. This is often presented as a refreshing development for the continent to leverage technology to address its twin problems of inefficient urban transport and rising youth unemployment. Interviews with ride-hailing adopters (drivers, riders, and car owners) and researchers in Ghana suggest, however, that whereas the technology is driving up the standards of road transport experience, the benefits are accessible to a select few (largely, the younger, highly educated and relatively high income-earning class). The lopsided power relations underlying the ride-hailing industry have also meant that the economic opportunities it avails disproportionately benefit a few powerful players (e.g. ride-hailing firms and car owners) while stimulating ‘turf wars’ among online and traditional taxi drivers; deepening existing gender inequalities in access to income-earning opportunities in the commercial passenger transport sector; encouraging unhealthy driving practices, shifts from shared public transport, and inundation of the roads with more private cars. While it will be imprecise to say that the private gains of ride-hailing outstrip the public costs and, therefore, the technology is detrimental to Ghana’s development, the considered evidence raises the need for sustained scrutiny of the hailing of technological interventions as though they are the magic bullets for socio-economic transformation in Africa. Overall, the paper argues that dismantling the power structures underlying Africa’s urban challenges will require more than splashing ‘smart’ apps and other tech wizardries around. Indeed, the lessons from Ghana’s ride-hailing industry suggest that such exclusively technical solutions could easily take root and pattern after existing strictures of unjust power structures in ways that could exacerbate the social and environmental problems they are supposed to address.

Suggested Citation

  • Festival Godwin Boateng & Samuelson Appau & Kingsley Tetteh Baako, 2022. "The rise of ‘smart’ solutions in Africa: a review of the socio-environmental cost of the transportation and employment benefits of ride-hailing technology in Ghana," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-11, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:9:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-022-01258-6
    DOI: 10.1057/s41599-022-01258-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-022-01258-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41599-022-01258-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mi Diao & Hui Kong & Jinhua Zhao, 2021. "Impacts of transportation network companies on urban mobility," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 4(6), pages 494-500, June.
    2. M. M. Vazifeh & P. Santi & G. Resta & S. H. Strogatz & C. Ratti, 2018. "Addressing the minimum fleet problem in on-demand urban mobility," Nature, Nature, vol. 557(7706), pages 534-538, May.
    3. Jonathan V. Hall & Alan B. Krueger, 2015. "An Analysis of the Labor Market for Uber's Driver-Partners in the United States," Working Papers 587, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    4. Rizzo, Matteo, 2017. "Taken For A Ride: Grounding Neoliberalism, Precarious Labour, and Public Transport in an African Metropolis," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198794240.
    5. Nana O Bonsu & Francis Pope & Martin Oteng Ababio & Emmanuel Appoh & Mary E Ashinyo & Stephen N Essuman & Louise CS Donkor & Ian Thomson, 2020. "How Coronavirus (COVID-19) has made the Invisible Silent Killer of Air Pollution Visible- Lessons for Building Resilient Communities," Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research, Biomedical Research Network+, LLC, vol. 28(1), pages 21219-21220, June.
    6. Mintah, Kwabena & Boateng, Festival Godwin & Baako, Kingsley Tetteh & Gaisie, Eric & Otchere, Gideon Kwame, 2021. "Blockchain on stool land acquisition: Lessons from Ghana for strengthening land tenure security other than titling," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    7. Festival Godwin Boateng, 2020. "“Indiscipline” in context: a political-economic grounding for dangerous driving behaviors among Tro-Tro drivers in Ghana," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-5, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aguiar, Raphael & Keil, Roger & Wiktorowicz, Mary, 2024. "The urban political ecology of antimicrobial resistance: A critical lens on integrative governance," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 348(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sen Li & Kameshwar Poolla & Pravin Varaiya, 2020. "Impact of Congestion Charge and Minimum Wage on TNCs: A Case Study for San Francisco," Papers 2003.02550, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2021.
    2. Fielbaum, Andrés & Tirachini, Alejandro & Alonso-Mora, Javier, 2023. "Economies and diseconomies of scale in on-demand ridepooling systems," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 34(C).
    3. Andres Fielbaum & Alejandro Tirachini & Javier Alonso-Mora, 2021. "New sources of economies and diseconomies of scale in on-demand ridepooling systems and comparison with public transport," Papers 2106.15270, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2021.
    4. Li, Sen & Poolla, Kameshwar & Varaiya, Pravin, 2021. "Impact of congestion charge and minimum wage on TNCs: A case study for San Francisco," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 237-261.
    5. Emmanuelle Reuter, 2022. "Hybrid business models in the sharing economy: The role of business model design for managing the environmental paradox," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 603-618, February.
    6. Berger, Thor & Chen, Chinchih & Frey, Carl Benedikt, 2018. "Drivers of disruption? Estimating the Uber effect," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 197-210.
    7. Hughes, Ryan & MacKenzie, Don, 2016. "Transportation network company wait times in Greater Seattle, and relationship to socioeconomic indicators," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 36-44.
    8. Sutirtha Bagchi, 2018. "A Tale of Two Cities: An Examination of Medallion Prices in New York and Chicago," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 53(2), pages 295-319, September.
    9. Zhu, Zheng & Xu, Ailing & He, Qiao-Chu & Yang, Hai, 2021. "Competition between the transportation network company and the government with subsidies to public transit riders," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    10. Wang, Senlei & Correia, Gonçalo Homem de Almeida & Lin, Hai Xiang, 2022. "Modeling the competition between multiple Automated Mobility on-Demand operators: An agent-based approach," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 605(C).
    11. Bao, Yue & Zang, Guangzhi & Yang, Hai & Gao, Ziyou & Long, Jiancheng, 2023. "Mathematical modeling of the platform assignment problem in a ride-sourcing market with a third-party integrator," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    12. Xue Han & Peixin Zhao & Qingchun Meng & Shengnan Yin & Di Wan, 2020. "Optimal scheduling of airport ferry vehicles based on capacity network," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 295(1), pages 163-182, December.
    13. André de Palma & Lucas Javaudin & Patrick Stokkink & Léandre Tarpin-Pitre, 2021. "Modelling Ridesharing in a Large Network with Dynamic Congestion," THEMA Working Papers 2021-16, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    14. Liu, Zhiyong & Li, Ruimin & Dai, Jingchen, 2022. "Effects and feasibility of shared mobility with shared autonomous vehicles: An investigation based on data-driven modeling approach," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 206-226.
    15. Arto O Salonen & Noora Haavisto, 2019. "Towards Autonomous Transportation. Passengers’ Experiences, Perceptions and Feelings in a Driverless Shuttle Bus in Finland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-19, January.
    16. Festival Godwin Boateng, 2021. "Why Africa cannot prosecute (or even educate) its way out of road accidents: insights from Ghana," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-11, December.
    17. Yang, Zhuo & Franz, Mark L. & Zhu, Shanjiang & Mahmoudi, Jina & Nasri, Arefeh & Zhang, Lei, 2018. "Analysis of Washington, DC taxi demand using GPS and land-use data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 35-44.
    18. Fábio Duarte & Ricardo Álvarez, 2019. "The data politics of the urban age," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-7, December.
    19. Adermon, Adrian & Hensvik, Lena, 2022. "Gig-jobs: Stepping stones or dead ends?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    20. Xiaoxia Dong & Erick Guerra & Ricardo A. Daziano, 2022. "Impact of TNC on travel behavior and mode choice: a comparative analysis of Boston and Philadelphia," Transportation, Springer, vol. 49(6), pages 1577-1597, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:9:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-022-01258-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.nature.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.