On September 2, 2026, Uber switched off its apps in Nigeria and Uganda with immediate effect, ending a 12-year run in Africa's most populous country and a decade in Uganda. The same day, the company announced a 10% global workforce reduction and reaffirmed a strategic pivot toward autonomous vehicle partnerships backed by more than $10 billion in investments. Two months earlier it had exited Tanzania; a year before that, Côte d'Ivoire. Uber now operates in just four African countries: Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa.
The withdrawals follow a familiar multinational pattern. GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, Diageo, and Johnson & Johnson have all scaled back or left Nigeria since 2023, citing naira devaluation, foreign-exchange scarcity, and dollar-denominated costs rising against local-currency revenue. For Uber, the macro backdrop turned toxic after Nigeria removed fuel subsidies in 2023, sending pump prices and imported spare-parts costs soaring. Drivers staged a three-day strike in Lagos and Ogun in March 2026 over unsustainable fares.
Yet the decisive factor was structural, not merely macroeconomic. Third-party trip data from Obi, a California-based ride-hailing aggregator, analyzed 20,298 trips across 308 Nigerian drivers between January and July 2026. On journeys under roughly 20 kilometres, Uber paid drivers more than it collected from riders — by 23% on 5–9 km trips and 19% on 9–13 km trips. Only beyond 20 km did fares exceed driver pay. The company was subsidizing short trips to keep drivers accepting them.