In developing countries, there has been a rapid increase in the gig economy and in the presence of digital labour platforms: defined as “a set of digital resources – including services and content – that enable value-creating interactions between consumers and individual service-providing workers”[1].
But how many workers actually work for such platforms?
I am not going to provide a reliable answer to that question but I will give some kind of ballpark figure.
We start by dividing out two types of platform work: digital gig work that involves digitisable tasks like data entry, writing copy, web design, accounting, etc; and physical gig work that involves a physical task like taxi driving, food delivery, domestic work, etc. A previous estimate[2], updated to account for growth, would be that there were something like 10 million active digital gig workers in the global South at the start of 2019 (and around ten times that number registered on digital labour platforms but with 90% of them inactive).
So how many physical gig workers are there? I’m going to break this down by continent since the extent of physical gig work seems to vary significantly between the three main continents of the global South.
Africa
Calculations here are based on extrapolations from just two economies, and seek to take account of wealth and population[3]. Current research for the Fairwork project estimates around 30,000 physical gig workers in South Africa; about half in taxi-driving and the rest mainly in delivery and domestic work. Estimates for Nigeria[4] plus re-use of some of the same ratios found in South Africa, suggest 20,000 such workers. Accounting for GDP per capita and population suggests around 60 workers per US$1,000 GDP/capita and per 1 million population; i.e. per US$1bn GDP. Multiplying up to the overall GDP of Africa produces an estimate of c.130,000 physical gig workers in Africa. However, given there are at least 100,000 in Egypt alone, we can at least double that to 250,000.
Asia
Similar calculations can be undertaken in Asia, based on numbers associated with platforms in India and Indonesia. Extrapolating from estimates for taxi-driving and food delivery platforms in India[5], I estimate around 2 million physical gig workers in India. For Indonesia[6], the figure is closer to 1 million. Accounting for GDP suggests around 800 workers per US$1bn of GDP. Multiplying up to the overall GDP of Asia (excluding Japan) produces an estimate of roughly 18 million physical gig workers in developing Asia.
However, there is an alternative approach, which is to exclude China in this calculation, which produces a figure of 9 million, and then take at face value claims that Didi Chuxing employs 21 million physical gig workers in China[7]. This would lead to an estimate of 30 million physical gig workers in developing Asia.
Latin America
Here, I’ve taken a simpler approach based on some national and continent-wide estimates of taxi driving[8] and then re-using ratios from the South Africa work. This produces an estimate of something like 2 million physical gig workers in Latin America.
Summary
The basis for these estimates is flimsy, and the extrapolations are worse, so please attach a strong health warning to this material. Better still, come up with some improved statistics. But my ballpark figure is that there are at least 30 million platform-based gig workers in the global South; 10 million digital and just over 20 million physical. And that the figure could be more than 40 million, which would be around 1.5% of the global South workforce.
A proportion of these workers are not relying on this as their primary source of income. For digital gig workers, this number is anything from two-thirds to a half[9]. It may be somewhat less for the physical gig economy, so another ballpark would be that around 15-20 million workers in developing countries are relying on digital platforms for their primary source of income.
(Annual turnover is an issue for another day but, globally and summing figures for the digital gig economy[10] and main physical gig platforms Uber[11] and Didi Chuxing[12], it must be at least US$50bn.)
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[1] Adapted from Constantinides, P., Henfridsson, O., & Parker, G. G. (2018). Introduction—Platforms and Infrastructures in the Digital Age, Information Systems Research, 29(2), 381-400
[2] Heeks, R. (2017) Decent Work and the Digital Gig Economy, GDI Development Informatics Working Paper no.71, University of Manchester, UK
[3] An alternative approach would seek to extrapolate in terms of numbers of Internet users but that is correlated with GDP, and the figures still point to a strong under-representation of Africa in platform labour and strong over-representation of China. Put another way, factors other than wealth and Internet access are needed to explain national differences in the proportions working in the platform economy.
[4] E.g. https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/08/uber-monthly-passenger-base-in-nigeria-hits-267000/ and https://technext.ng/2018/08/17/max-ng-3-5-things-should-know-about-ride-hailing-platform/
[5] E.g. https://qz.com/india/1385653/uber-ola-drivers-pay-the-price-for-indias-fuel-price-rise/ and https://www.livemint.com/Companies/cYbdfsYk93HFhMuC0XgaNN/Swiggy-Zomato-hike-delivery-boy-salaries-as-competition-gro.html and https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/zomato-swiggy-and-ubereats-paying-higher-cash-on-delivery/articleshow/65142563.cms
[6] e.g. http://buscompress.com/uploads/3/4/9/8/34980536/riber_7-s1_sp_h17-051_59-67.pdf and https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2018/11/21/the-gig-economy-and-skills-traps-in-indonesia.html
[7] E.g. https://technode.com/2018/03/19/didi-1-5-billion-abs/ and https://www.sustainabletransport.org/archives/6317
[8] E.g. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-brazil/uber-rival-apps-join-forces-in-brazil-to-stem-tide-of-regulation-idUSKBN1D71KE and https://www.ft.com/content/7bf04e08-1d63-11e8-aaca-4574d7dabfb6 and https://www.globalfleet.com/en/smart-mobility/latin-america/news/chile-imposes-regulations-ride-hailing-companies and https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanmoed/2018/12/20/is-uber-operating-illegally-in-its-fastest-growing-region/#74c69e161925
[9] Heeks, R. (2017) Decent Work and the Digital Gig Economy, GDI Development Informatics Working Paper no.71, University of Manchester, UK
[10] Heeks, R. (2017) Decent Work and the Digital Gig Economy, GDI Development Informatics Working Paper no.71, University of Manchester, UK
[11] E.g. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/15/uber-q2-2018-revenue-bookings-slow-slightly.html
[12] E.g. https://kr-asia.com/losing-300m-in-2017-didi-chuxing-wants-to-turn-a-profit-in-2018-amid-fierce-competition
ICTs for Development 
There are estimates (https://www.gigeconomydata.org/basics/how-many-gig-workers-are-there) that roughly 1% of the workforce in global North economies are earning from physical gig platforms. Taking labour force estimates e.g. https://data.oecd.org/emp/labour-force.htm, that makes c.6m physical gig workers in the global North. Based on the rough 80:20 ratio for digital gig workers between global South and North (https://www.nber.org/papers/w19525) we would then estimate around 2.5m digital gig workers in the global North. Given estimated growth since some of those figures, that would give a rough ballpark of 10m gig workers in the global North. Adding the upper estimate from the global South (which allows for growth since the blogpost was written), that would suggest 50m gig workers worldwide as a very rough ballpark figure in 2020.