The Digital Continent deals with work and workers in the digital gig economy through an examination of the economic geographies of digital work, value creation and capture. Its central message for African countries is that ‘digital capitalism’ brings new opportunities for workers in spaces connected to the global information economy but presents its own risks and challenges. The rapidly digitalising economy has created uneven geographies of digital work; the demand is concentrated in the hands of a few high-income economies, such as the United States, with supply originating from India and Philippines. Several African countries, such as South Africa, Egypt and Kenya, have also emerged as important suppliers of remote labour.

If we go by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates, the African continent is grappling with a 7.1% unemployment rate and a significant youth bulge. At such a time, an examination of digital jobs, as offered by the book, holds important potential for economic inclusion on the continent. Digital jobs can act as catalysts for inclusion of women, young and migrant workers in the new labour markets. Anwar and Graham go beyond traditional development indicators of employment and wages to explore new opportunities in terms of labour agency and associational power of workers in the digital spaces. Their analysis reveals that in the remote gig economy, workers are using alternative digital spaces, such as social media networks and Facebook groups, to seek support, express their voice and power and to informally organise. An examination of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector and the remote gig economy further demonstrates the rise of regional players and regional value chains on the continent, which can foster upgrading towards higher value-added activities, such as data management and legal process outsourcing. The subsequent rise in South–South trade can bring benefits of higher value capture for African firms.

The hopes for economic inclusion need to be grounded in the reality of the uneven distribution of digital work in the global information economy. Anwar and Graham illustrate important challenges associated with the digital nature of work; first, remote work could lead to a geographical expansion of informality due to the relative ease which it can be relocated and the difficulties in regulating. Second, digital jobs are enabling a form of ‘Digital Taylorism’, with increased managerial control of work and workplaces. Digital tasks in the gig economy can be broken down into simpler tasks, on which performance of workers can be quantified, and wages are linked. This has enabled a ‘commodification of digital labour’, correctly giving rise to concerns on employment relations and working conditions of digital jobs. Third, the rise in artificial intelligence, digital ratings and feedback, predominant in call and contact centres, has increased the control of employers on the labour processes, autonomy and bargaining power of workers in digital spaces. Lack of well-paid work and tight control by employers, compounded with the lack of state welfare, has ultimately reduced the agency of remote workers in Africa.

The authors do a great job of spelling out the uneven development consequences of digital work. The lack of detailed quantitative data on digital labour in the African continent is addressed using innovative data collection tools in the book, including a clicks-based approach on sites such as similarweb.com and web scraping from platforms like Upwork, coupled with over 200 in-depth interviews. A gap in the book is the lack of concrete policy actions and recommendations to make digital work fairer for labour. The authors acknowledge that ‘national legal frameworks are rarely up to date with new digital economy activities, which means firms and employers exploit loopholes to their advantage and avoid regulation and responsibilities towards worker welfare’ (pp. 182). How technology can be managed in conjunction with structural constraints on the African continent – for instance, high labour market rigidities – remains underexplored but critical for realising large-scale employment gains from digital.