16 votes

How Big Tech hides its outsourced African workforce

Posted by brews_hairy_cats
Tags: africa, big tech, work, employees, artificial intelligence, business, data.training, outsourcing, author.stephanie wangari, author.gayathri vaidyanathan, source.restofworld
https://restofworld.org/2025/big-tech-ai-labor-supply-chain-african-workers/

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Authors
Stephanie Wangari, Gayathri Vaidyanathan, Linda Yulisman, Juliana Bedoya, Reem Abd ulhamid
Published
Apr 21 2025
Word count
615 words

4 comments

  1. brews_hairy_cats
    Link

    A new dataset, visualized as maps, reveals the extent to which African workers are indirectly employed in the tech sector, doing content moderation, customer service, and data annotation for AI models, among other jobs.

    One of the maps shows the flow of data and knowledge out of 39 African nations to subcontractors, mostly located in the United Arab Emirates, North America, and Europe, with four outsourcing firms in Africa. From there, it goes on to clients such as Meta, OpenAI, and Samsung.

    San Francisco-based Sama and its client Meta are facing a class action lawsuit in Kenya for exploitation of content moderators. Meta has previously said it requires its partners to provide “industry-leading conditions.”

    5 votes
  3. [2]
    creesch
    Link
    It's an older article but the guardian wrote about how cheap African labor is shaping AI English. I do think that it doesn't have to be a problem that cheaper African labor is employed. However,...

    It's an older article but the guardian wrote about how cheap African labor is shaping AI English.

    I do think that it doesn't have to be a problem that cheaper African labor is employed. However, that depends on a variety of conditions to make it actual employment and not exploitation. An obvious one would be pay overall. Where at the very least I feel like it must be a good living wage for the local conditions. But that is also easily met, the bigger issue is that it shouldn't come with all sorts of downsides people will put up with because the pay is good. Like unrealistic working hours, mental health issues related to content moderation, etc, etc.

    Unfortunately, because cost is the driving factor here, these conditions are often not met as all these companies are involved in a race to the bottom of the barrel. To be frank, this being US companies also doesn't help in my mind. Given the working conditions I keep hearing about from US folks. I feel like it is easier for these companies to find certain working conditions with the outsourcing partners in Africa acceptable as it isn't that far removed from how they view their own workforce.

    4 votes
    1. patience_limited
      Link Parent
      Not firing union organizers and actually abiding by host nation labor, data privacy, and other laws would be a good start. Not attempting to sway local legislatures (whether through bribery or...

      Not firing union organizers and actually abiding by host nation labor, data privacy, and other laws would be a good start. Not attempting to sway local legislatures (whether through bribery or other means) might be a nice gesture. But these companies can barely be bothered in countries where law enforcement and anti-corruption measures have some teeth. It's not encouraging that the fines Meta, Google, et al. have sustained, even in the EU, are rounding errors in their bottom lines.

      I don't think it's going to be possible (under current conditions of nationalism, information control, corruption, etc.) to coordinate the global, uniform, and sustained legislative response necessary to bring this kind of footloose outsourcing under control. Worldwide consumer boycott, maybe?

      5 votes