Governments in Africa are licensing major global ride-hailing firms to launch operations in the continent. This is often presented as a refreshing development for the continent to leverage technology to address its twin problems of inefficient urban transport and rising youth unemployment. Interviews with ride-hailing adopters (drivers, riders, and car owners) and researchers in Ghana suggest, however, that whereas the technology is driving up the standards of road transport experience, the benefits are accessible to a select few (largely, the younger, highly educated and relatively high income-earning class). The lopsided power relations underlying the ride-hailing industry have also meant that the economic opportunities it avails disproportionately benefit a few powerful players (e.g. ride-hailing firms and car owners) while stimulating ‘turf wars’ among online and traditional taxi drivers; deepening existing gender inequalities in access to income-earning opportunities in the commercial passenger transport sector; encouraging unhealthy driving practices, shifts from shared public transport, and inundation of the roads with more private cars. While it will be imprecise to say that the private gains of ride-hailing outstrip the public costs and, therefore, the technology is detrimental to Ghana’s development, the considered evidence raises the need for sustained scrutiny of the hailing of technological interventions as though they are the magic bullets for socio-economic transformation in Africa. Overall, the paper argues that dismantling the power structures underlying Africa’s urban challenges will require more than splashing ‘smart’ apps and other tech wizardries around. Indeed, the lessons from Ghana’s ride-hailing industry suggest that such exclusively technical solutions could easily take root and pattern after existing strictures of unjust power structures in ways that could exacerbate the social and environmental problems they are supposed to address.

非洲各国政府正在向主要的全球叫车公司发放在非洲大陆开展业务的许可。这通常被视为非洲大陆利用技术解决城市交通效率低下和青年失业率上升的双重问题的令人耳目一新的发展。然而，对加纳网约车采用者（司机、乘客和车主）和研究人员的采访表明，虽然这项技术正在提高公路运输体验的标准，但少数人（主要是年轻人，受过高等教育和相对较高的收入阶层）。网约车行业背后不平衡的权力关系也意味着它所利用的经济机会不成比例地使少数强大的参与者（例如网约车公司和车主）受益，同时刺激在线和传统出租车司机之间的“地盘大战” ；在获得商业客运部门的创收机会方面加深现有的性别不平等；鼓励不健康的驾驶习惯、共享公共交通的转变以及更多私家车淹没道路。虽然说叫车服务的私人收益超过了公共成本是不准确的，因此该技术不利于加纳的发展，但考虑到的证据提出了对技术干预措施进行持续审查的必要性，就好像它们是非洲社会经济转型的灵丹妙药。总体而言，该论文认为，拆除非洲城市挑战背后的权力结构需要的不仅仅是“聪明”应用程序和其他技术魔法。事实上，加纳网约车行业的经验表明，这种专门的技术解决方案很容易在现有的不公正权力结构的限制下扎根并形成模式，从而加剧他们本应解决的社会和环境问题。