Johannesburg, South Africa – South Africa’s unemployment crisis is one of the most stubborn in the world. The official rate hovers above 30 percent — and by some measures, closer to 40 percent when accounting for discouraged job seekers.
Against that backdrop, a new report from ride-hailing platform Bolt and research firm Ipsos offers a striking snapshot: a growing number of South Africans are filling the gap not with formal employment, but with a smartphone and a set of wheels.
The report surveyed drivers across the country and found that 70 percent of gig workers on the platform use ride-hailing as a secondary income source, while 30 percent depend on it as their primary livelihood.
A Side Hustle With Real Stakes
The numbers reframe what “gig work” actually means in a country like South Africa. In wealthier economies, side hustles are often optional income boosters for people who already have stable jobs. Here, they can be the difference between keeping the lights on and not.
Drivers in the survey cited ride-hailing earnings as covering essentials: food, rent, transport, and school fees.
“What we are seeing is the rise of everyday entrepreneurship, where individuals are creating flexible, self-directed livelihoods on their own terms,” said Simo Kalajdzic, Senior Operations Manager at Bolt South Africa.
Critics of the gig economy globally have long argued that platforms offer flexibility at the cost of worker protections: no benefits, no guaranteed income, no recourse when the algorithm turns against you.
The Bolt report doesn’t address those tensions directly, but the data it presents is hard to dismiss.
Why Financial Independence Matters Here
The most cited benefit among survey respondents wasn’t income itself — it was autonomy. Some 32 percent of participants said that self-earned income and financial independence were the most important outcomes of their gig work.
In a country where formal employment opportunities remain concentrated in urban centers and often gated by credentials or connections, that kind of agency carries real weight.
Soyinka Witness, Strategy Director at Ipsos, noted that the findings point to “the critical role that platform-based work is playing in supporting income resilience, entrepreneurship, and broader economic participation.”
The Gauteng Department of Economic Development, which partnered with Bolt on the report, echoed that framing. “Our partnership with Bolt reflects a shared commitment to enabling inclusive growth, supporting micro-entrepreneurship, and ensuring that more South Africans can participate meaningfully in the economy,” said department spokesperson Bongani Nkosi.
Government endorsement of a private platform’s gig economy report is worth noting. It signals that South African policymakers — at least at the provincial level — are increasingly looking to tech-enabled informal work as part of their economic inclusion toolkit, even as the country’s labor legislation and social protections struggle to keep pace with that shift.
The Limits of the Data
What the report doesn’t fully reckon with is the structural gap between what gig work delivers and what formal employment provides.
Workers who rely on ride-hailing as a primary income source have no paid leave, no unemployment insurance tied to their gig earnings, and no guaranteed minimum wage in the traditional sense.
Fuel costs, vehicle maintenance, and platform commission fees — Bolt typically takes a cut of each ride — eat into gross earnings in ways the report doesn’t itemize.
There’s also the question of scale. South Africa has tens of millions of unemployed and underemployed people. Ride-hailing platforms, even growing ones, can only absorb so many drivers before the market becomes oversaturated and per-driver earnings decline.
Still, for the hundreds of thousands of South Africans currently on the platform, the report’s core finding holds: this is working for them, right now, in ways the formal economy hasn’t.
What Comes Next
The release of this report lands at a moment when the future of gig work in South Africa is actively being debated. Proposed amendments to the country’s labor laws could eventually extend some protections to platform workers, a move that would bring South Africa in line with evolving regulations in the EU and parts of Latin America.
How that plays out — and whether platforms like Bolt would absorb the compliance costs or pass them on to drivers and riders — remains to be seen.
