A Conversation with a Ride-Hailing Driver: A Chance for Tech Terms on the Road

On a Friday afternoon, I hailed a ride — Uber, Bolt, Little, or Faras — you know, your mobility gig apps.

Intent on a personal touch, I made an effort to grasp the rider’s name. “Hey, Juma!” He responded with a casual “niko poa” before diving into the usual banter: “Si unaweza cancel, twende offline. Hawa watu wanakata pesa mingi, banaa” (can you cancel the ride, and let’s go offline; these guys take too much money, man).

They all anticipate the familiar “My company is footing the bill, and they need receipts,” but such a customary line wasn’t coming from me — I ain’t going to betray my tech bro persona, hahaha.

You aren’t giving that, though, when club-hopping on a Friday night ??, that decision paved the way for an insightful conversation with the driver.

Driver (D): “How much did it show on your end?” Me (M): “It’s 980.” D: “You know, these platforms take a hefty commission. Can we go offline?”

Me (M): “No.” Intrigued, I probed further, “Why do you guys use the seamless services of this platform, then go ahead to ask me to cancel and go offline? They need to get to keep this going, or else tomorrow you will open the app, and it will not be working.”

Driver (D): “Those plug-and-play things they create and leave there for us to use, and they want to take all the commission and earn from it while seated.”

Unpacking the Commission Conundrum

As a techie and founder, who has not separated entities into domain, DTO, and even POJO in a while now, I took a moment to shed light on where the deducted money goes — primarily to developers, operations, etc. (all of which are crucial for a smooth experience for both drivers and users). In this short tech chat, I didn’t forget to drop a few tech terms like hosting services (Azure, AWS, Digital Ocean), mentioned domains, and so on????

Driver (D): “ I was actually thinking the government should create such an app for us to use, and then all these people to be banned. But now I see ‘hata gava hii hawatawezana, kumbe it’s such a lot of work’ (even the government couldn’t run such a system).”

Me (M): “They are doing great with eCitizen.” (in my mind)

To make this short

My ride home ended with a similar conversation with another driver. Both drivers saw the platforms as “plug-and-play” without understanding the flow behind them.

This eye-opening conversation with a ride-hailing driver highlighted the need for education for these guys. While they did all these strikes, no one bothered to break down to them why the % and commissions, maybe it was done, but they need to be made aware more. I felt he knew more…he will be less of the customary line.