17/06/2026
During Meta's withdrawal from Kenya, WageIndicator and the Data Labelers Association conducted a survey examining the working conditions and pay of Kenyan workers in the global AI supply chain. More than 1,000 Kenyan workers were suddenly made redundant after Meta terminated its contract with a Nairobi-based company.
The preliminary results of the survey are stark. None of the women surveyed earned above the Living Tariff. A Living Tariff includes not only the daily living expenses, but also the cost of resources required for work, such as work equipment costs, overhead costs, taxes, social security, and savings in case of illness and retirement. Nine out of ten respondents said they were concerned about their future. Some workers reported working 229 hours in a month, and on average women did 20 hours of unpaid work in a month.
As Edwin, one of the workers we spoke to, puts it: 'These tech companies are providing us with work. They need to find out exactly what the working conditions and pay are.' Edwin and thousands of other data workers like him in Kenya have invested years of their lives in this indispensable yet overlooked work. Companies and users often forget that without them, the AI tools we use every day won't function.
Read the full article at https://wageindicator.org/what-we-do/news-stories/meta-data-workers-kenya-survey/?utm_campaign=GIG-26&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=insights-carousel-caption