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.
Originally published by TechCabal.