Uber came to Africa with a new model. Africa rewrote it.

In January 2016, Uber ran what the ride-hailing company called a cash experiment in Lagos where riders could pay drivers in naira notes. Lagos was the third African city to try it, after Nairobi and Cairo, and Nairobi had been only the second city anywhere in the world to test cash on the platform. 

Uber’s then Sub-Saharan Africa general manager, Alon Lits, told Quartz at the time that Nairobi’s business tripled during the pilot and that African innovations had shaped the company’s global operations. Cash payments eventually became standard across Uber’s markets globally.

A decade later, on Wednesday, September 2, Uber shut down operations in Nigeria and Uganda without notice, following its exits from Côte d’Ivoire in September 2025 and Tanzania in February 2026. Uber now operates ride-hailing in just four African markets: Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa.

Africa spent a decade teaching Uber how on-demand mobility works in a cash economy on unmapped roads. Now, drivers who built a livelihood on the platform and riders who relied on it as a safer option have been cut off overnight.

Does ride-hailing match African pockets?

When Uber launched in Nigeria, the promise was to formalise transport, and the economic reality of the time suggested a large market. Twelve years on, ride-hailing has settled into a premium service for the small group of commuters who can afford it, while the buses, minibuses, and tricycles that already existed still carry almost everyone else.

Uber’s design assumed that the fare would cover the driver’s costs and still leave a commission of around 25%. Rising inflation, Nigeria’s fuel subsidy removal, and the naira’s devaluation broke that assumption.

“If you look closely at the unit economics of ride-hailing and the realities of operating in these…