Former Facebook content moderator Daniel Motaung sued Sama and Meta in May 2022 over working conditions that forced workers to repeatedly view disturbing material, and the fight has since exposed how Kenya’s courts, parliament and presidency keep bending around corporate power. Another 43 moderators joined the case in March 2023, saying Meta ultimately benefited from and controlled aspects of their work and should be held responsible too.
Who Pays for the Platform
The workers were employed by Sama to moderate Facebook content. They said the job came with a brutal human cost. Meta fought to remove itself from the litigation, arguing, among other things, that Kenyan courts did not have jurisdiction over the foreign company. On September 20 2024, the Court of Appeal rejected that argument. The company’s attempt to dodge responsibility didn’t end there. On November 11 2024, less than two months later, the Business Laws (Amendment) Bill was published, proposing new rules for Kenya’s outsourcing industry, including provisions dealing with who should carry responsibility for workers employed by outsourcing companies.
On December 9, President William Ruto publicly said Sama had approached him about its legal troubles. "Now I can report to you that we have changed the law," he said, adding that "nobody will take you to court again on any matter". That line landed like a warning, not a promise. The bill was still before parliament, where business groups including KEPSA and the Kenya Association of Manufacturers argued that responsibility should largely remain with the outsourcing company. Tech workers argued that companies that control or benefit from their work should also be held responsible.
The workers also went to court to try to stop the bill. In June 2026, the high court declined to intervene. On August 19 2026, the National Assembly passed the amendments. It now awaits presidential assent. Former content moderator James Oyange said Ruto’s statement sent a clear message about whose side the government was on. "We are on our own. It is the responsibility of the government to protect us, but they are taking Big Tech’s side. It means the companies can do what they want," he said.
The Deals Nobody Gets to See
The Sama case sits inside a much wider relationship between Kenya’s government and global technology companies. An investigation found at least 12 publicly documented meetings, agreements, regulatory engagements and partnerships between the Kenyan government and Microsoft, Google, Amazon, TikTok and Starlink since 2023. The pattern is plain enough: major technology companies are being brought into public services, infrastructure and policymaking, often through agreements the public cannot see.
Agriculture shows how deep the arrangement runs. In 2020, the ministry of agriculture signed an agreement with Microsoft to use technology to improve farming and food security. Microsoft would provide cloud technology for digital tools using information about weather, pests, farming inputs and production. The partnership expanded in 2022, when AGRA joined Microsoft on a digital agriculture programme that included Agribot known as Kuzabot, a service that sends farmers advice by SMS and WhatsApp.
According to the Community Alliance for Global Justice’s 2023 report on Microsoft and AGRA’s digital farming projects, Kuzabot could send product recommendations and allow agricultural advisers linked to seed, fertilizer and pesticide companies to advertise through bulk messages. The same research described Microsoft’s agricultural cloud infrastructure as an "all-in-one platform" designed to bring agricultural services and data together. Kenya now plans to bring its fragmented farming data and digital services onto one national platform after years of private technology partnerships whose full terms remain largely out of public view. Neither Microsoft nor the ministry provided the full agreement after requests.
The concern goes beyond Microsoft. Research published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation warns that digital farming platforms can draw farmers into systems shaped by technology companies, agribusinesses and philanthropic organizations, creating new markets for seeds, pesticides, insurance and credit built around information farmers provide about themselves and their farms. AGRA has helped shape agricultural policy across the continent, and its major funders include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. The Gates Foundation also held Microsoft shares until early 2026.
Who Controls the Infrastructure
By 2026, Kenya’s ministry of agriculture drafted the Kenya Agricultural Data, Information and Digital Policy, meant to create one national platform for agricultural information and data. Human rights lawyer and digital rights expert Ibrahim Oduor said Kenya’s Data Protection Act should govern how these MoUs operate. He said cloud-first strategies complicate this because Microsoft Azure depends on global or regional data centres that may not be located in Kenya. Oduor said a data protection impact assessment should be carried out before such agreements are signed.
The same pattern can be seen at Konza Technopolis, Kenya’s flagship smart city south of Nairobi. In August 2026, the government authority running Konza signed an MoU with Amazon Web Services to expand the use of cloud technology in public institutions and provide training in data, artificial intelligence and machine learning. AWS said it was proud to support Kenya’s cloud adoption journey and that the MoU covers cloud skills and adoption initiatives. "It does not cover the Kenyan government’s use of any AWS cloud services and carries no financial commitment," the company said.
Business Day tried to establish who was checking these relationships. More than a dozen opposition representatives were approached, including members of parliamentary committees responsible for agriculture, ICT and labour. Despite repeated requests, none agreed to explain what oversight parliament had exercised over these agreements. Government departments and agencies did not provide the agreements requested or explain how technology partners had been selected, while the technology companies contacted did not respond to questions by the time of publication.
Digital rights lawyer Victor Kiamba said Kenya’s constitution already requires public procurement to be "fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective". When agreements are not available for scrutiny, he said, it becomes difficult to establish whether those requirements have been met. Digital rights expert Irene Makau said the agreements cannot be viewed separately from the laws and policies developing around them. She said changes may appear unrelated to individual technology deals, but together can make it easier for companies to operate. "You find legislation being pushed here that doesn’t necessarily seem to have any correlation to another," she said, "and yet, they are meant to facilitate ease of operation."
Makau said Kenya’s growing reliance on a handful of global technology companies also raises questions about who controls the country’s digital infrastructure and whether local companies can compete. "Why are these Big Tech companies being glorified as though we have options?" she said. "Why can’t the same be done here? Here, where [Kenya] is apparently the home of innovation, yet we are being trained only to work for and with monopolies."