Is gig work a curse or a blessing for emerging economies? On the one hand, gig economy platforms offer the promise of employment opportunities both at local and global level for workers in emerging markets. On the other, the way that gig work is organized potentially raises a host of employment, competition and consumer law challenges if left unregulated. In this webinar, Vellah Kigwiru (Technical University Munich), sheds light on the benefits and drawbacks of gig economy platforms for emerging economies based on her experience in the African context. She will also delve into the legal and policy approaches adopted by emerging economies to address the challenges presented by the gig economy. Additionally, she will present an open course made for policy makers, civil society leaders, trade union representatives, academics and business professionals on Shaping the Gig Economy developed together with the the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), which gives hands-on practical knowledge and tools to better understand the potential and perils of regulating the gig economy.
The event will take place online, please join us via Zoom
Speaker bio:
Vellah Kedogo Kigwiru, an advocate of the High Court of Kenya, is currently a Doctoral Research Fellow at the Technical University of Munich’s (TUM) School of Social Sciences and Technology, Guest Researcher, at Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich Germany, a Marie Jahoda Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge, UK and an Associate Research Fellow at the Digital Futures at Work Research Centre, University of Sussex, UK. She is also a contributing editor at AfronomicsLaw, and a researcher at the UNCTAD Research Partnership Platform on competition policy. Currently, she works as competition law consultant for GIZ on a project focusing on the potential and limits of competition law in protecting gig worker’s working conditions. Previously she worked at the Competition Authority of Kenya, and taught a course on ‘Competition Law and Policy in Emerging Markets’ at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. Kigwiru’s research interests focus on competition law and policy: consumer protection; labour law; technology and innovation; international economic law; trade law; regional integration; human rights; and legal research methods in a comparative perspective. She has recently published in the Oxford Journal of Antitrust Enforcement, Manchester Journal of International Economic Law, African Journal of International Economic Law and the Cambridge University Press.