Hi, movers
The commission cap is the most popular idea in African mobility policy right now.
Everyone wants to protect the driver. Everyone wants to name a percentage. Everyone wants a number they can announce.
That is all fine. But when every regulator reaches for the same lever, the lever stops being policy and becomes a gesture.
Perhaps we have confused the platform's share with the driver's income.
What Actually Happened
Kenya wrote an 18% ceiling on platform commission into Regulation 9.
The High Court has now blocked its enforcement. A win for the platforms and a loss for the drivers who campaigned for it.
Tanzania went further and earlier. LATRA capped commission at 15% in March 2022, then revised it back up to 25% in December 2022.
Uber exited Tanzania on 30 January 2026, after nearly a decade.
It has now left four African markets in under a year.
Two countries. Two caps. One court reversal, one exit. No evidence that any driver earns more.
A Driver's Income Is a Subtraction
Here is the arithmetic nobody legislates.
Fares earned, minus fuel. Minus the vehicle financing instalment. Minus maintenance and tyres. Minus insurance and licensing. Minus the platform's cut.
The commission is the last line on that list, and usually not the largest.
Capping it treats the smallest deduction as though it were the whole problem.
The Mechanism Regulators Keep Missing
The harder you squeeze the take rate, the more the platform manages the fare.
And the fare is the number the driver actually lives on.
Eighteen per cent of a fare that has been quietly reduced is less money than twenty-five per cent of one that has not. The percentage is visible and regulated. The base is invisible and free.
Kenya has noticed. The proposed minimum fare rules attack the base rather than the share. Estimates suggest they could roughly double the cost of a trip.
That is a real policy. It is also why the fight got serious.
Now Look at the Line That Moves Most
Fuel.
For a Nairobi or Dar driver working long shifts, fuel is the largest variable cost in the business and the one that changes weekly.
We reported on 31 August that Nigerian riders are switching to electric because petrol prices did the arithmetic for them. No programme. No cap. No regulation.
A rider who removes most of a fuel bill has given himself a pay rise no commission ceiling can match.
And he keeps it whether the platform charges 18% or 25%.
This is the part CHARGED keeps arriving at from different directions. Driver economics are decided by what the vehicle costs to own and run. Not by how the platform slices the fare.
What I Would Regulate Instead
Three levers, in order of effect.
The energy line. Duty and VAT on electric two- and three-wheelers, and on batteries. This is the fastest, cheapest intervention available to any transport ministry and it does not require a single platform to agree to anything.
The financing line. Most drivers do not own the vehicle. They are repaying it. Disclosure standards on asset-finance terms would do more for take-home pay than a commission ceiling ever will.
Then the share. Cap it if you like. But cap it alongside a fare floor, or the platform moves the money to the line you did not regulate.
Regulate the loaf before arguing about the slice.
The East Africa Line
Tanzania has the sharpest version of this story, and it is not a happy one.
We capped, we revised, and the largest platform left anyway. Drivers did not gain a commission point. They lost a competitor to Bolt.
The next Tanzanian intervention should not be a percentage. It should be the duty schedule on electric three-wheelers.
A bajaji driver's fuel bill is a far bigger number than any commission line. And it is entirely within our own gift.
The CHARGED Read
In summary: a commission cap is not a pay rise.
A commission cap redistributes one line on a shrinking invoice.
Platforms have proved twice in this region what they do next. They litigate it, absorb it, or leave.
If a regulator genuinely wants drivers to earn more, the lever is not the platform's percentage.
It is the price of the energy and the terms of the loan.
Everything else is arguing about the slice while the loaf gets smaller.
