When Daniel Motaung sued Meta and its outsourcing contractor Sama in May 2022, he was fighting for something basic: accountability for companies that profit from workers' labor. The former Facebook content moderator alleged that the work—reviewing disturbing material for hours—had caused him psychological harm. He wasn't alone. Another 43 moderators brought a case in March 2023 with the same complaint: Meta benefited from and controlled their work, yet claimed it bore no responsibility.
On September 20, 2024, Kenya's Court of Appeal rejected Meta's argument that Kenyan courts lacked jurisdiction over the foreign corporation. The court had sided with the workers. But what happened next reveals how quickly corporate interests can reshape the law itself.
Less than two months later, on November 11, 2024, the Business Laws (Amendment) Bill appeared. It proposed new rules for Kenya's outsourcing industry—specifically, who should be held responsible when workers are harmed. The timing wasn't coincidental. On December 9, President William Ruto publicly announced that Sama had approached him about its legal troubles. "Now I can report to you that we have changed the law," Ruto said, adding that "nobody will take you to court again on any matter."
The workers tried to stop the bill in court. 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's assessment was blunt: "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."
A Pattern of Hidden Influence
The Sama case isn't an isolated incident. 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. What's striking isn't just the number of deals—it's how little the public knows about them.
Microsoft's footprint in Kenya's agriculture sector illustrates the pattern. In 2020, the ministry of agriculture signed an agreement with Microsoft to use cloud technology for digital farming tools. The partnership expanded in 2022 when AGRA joined Microsoft on a digital agriculture programme featuring Kuzabot, a service that sends farmers advice via SMS and WhatsApp. According to the Community Alliance for Global Justice's 2023 report, Kuzabot could send product recommendations and allow agricultural advisers linked to seed, fertilizer and pesticide companies to advertise through bulk messages.
Kenya now plans to consolidate its fragmented farming data onto one national platform. But the full terms of the technology partnerships remain largely hidden from public view. Neither Microsoft nor the ministry provided the complete agreement after requests. This matters because, as digital rights lawyer Ibrahim Oduor explained, Kenya's Data Protection Act should govern how these agreements operate. Yet cloud-first strategies complicate oversight—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 Heinrich Böll Foundation has warned 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, which has helped shape agricultural policy across the continent, receives major funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. The Gates Foundation also held Microsoft shares until early 2026—a financial entanglement that raises questions about whose interests these platforms truly serve.
The Transparency Crisis
When the government authority running Konza Technopolis signed a memorandum of understanding with Amazon Web Services in August 2026, the company said the agreement covers cloud skills and adoption initiatives but "does not cover the Kenyan government's use of any AWS cloud services and carries no financial commitment." Yet the public has no way to verify these claims. The full agreement remains inaccessible.
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. The technology companies contacted did not respond to questions.
Digital rights lawyer Victor Kiamba noted that Kenya's constitution already requires public procurement to be "fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective." When agreements aren't available for scrutiny, it becomes impossible to establish whether those requirements have been met. Digital rights expert Irene Makau went further, arguing that individual technology deals can't be viewed in isolation. "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 also raised a structural concern: Kenya's growing reliance on a handful of global technology companies 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 asked. "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."
Why This Matters:
What's unfolding in Kenya represents a troubling erosion of democratic accountability and worker protections. When a government changes labor laws immediately after a court rules against a corporation, and then keeps the terms of its technology partnerships secret, it signals that corporate interests now shape policy more than public deliberation does. The workers who sued Meta and Sama aren't asking for charity—they're asking for basic legal protection. Instead, they're watching the government rewrite the rules in their employers' favor. Meanwhile, Kenya's farmers, whose livelihoods depend on agricultural data and services, have no visibility into the agreements that will determine how their information is used or who profits from it. The absence of transparency in these tech partnerships isn't a minor administrative oversight. It's a structural problem that prevents citizens, lawmakers and courts from determining whether public resources are being used fairly, whether workers are being protected, and whether Kenya's digital future will be controlled by Kenyan institutions or by foreign corporations operating in the shadows.