Habiba al-Shamaa booked an Uber ride in February to drive her the 25-kilometer trip from Fifth Settlement to Heliopolis. The cab and driver arrived, and Shamaa set off to her destination.
During the journey, she launched herself out of the moving vehicle. She was admitted to the International Medical Center hospital, where she died of her injuries three weeks later. She was 24 years old.
Family members and friends tried to piece together what had happened. During the ride, her mother had called, struggling to hear her daughter over the loud sounds in the cab, namely the driver, who sounded as though he was mid-fight on a separate phone call, and the radio speaker blaring. Habiba asked the driver to turn down the volume, which he refused. The call with her mother ended. When friends called Shaama to find out where she was, a stranger answered the phone.
It was a passer-by, someone who had seen Shamaa lying on the roadside, who rushed to help her. Later, the passerby would tell investigating authorities that they heard Shamaa say, “The Uber [driver] wanted to kidnap me.”
The case went viral, and the driver was arrested. Both Shamaa’s sister and the sister of the Uber driver were interviewed on evening talk shows. Midway through the investigation, reports came out about the driver’s history with the ride-hailing application. A legal representative for Uber had submitted documentation to the state prosecutor showing that customers had submitted a string of complaints against the driver in the past. These included accusations of sexual harassment, speeding over the limit, driving under the influence of narcotics, shouting at ride-hailers and insisting he take extra fees for the ride, among other assorted incidents of misconduct. His account was previously suspended due to the incidents, but he was able to open a new one and continue working unchecked.
A wave of outrage rose online in response to Shamaa’s story. Uber had once been the sought-after company of choice for a particular class of ride-hailers, offering a veneer of reliability that set it apart from the lottery of hailing a white cab or the stress and bustle of public transport. How could something like this be allowed to happen?
Uber appeased the public with no more than a statement expressing “deep sadness” at Shamaa’s death and offering condolences to her family and loved ones “during this difficult period.”
Shamaa’s death was a tragedy. And in its shadow, more stories emerged. It seemed everyone had a story about an incident with Uber — bad service, fights with drivers, sexual harassment, ramshackle cars. It became clear that a contradiction — between the company’s good reputation and the risky reality for women using the service — had long been hiding in plain sight. The beginning of Uber in Egypt, starting in 2014, seemed auspicious.
Some of its public-facing material from the time articulates the company’s commitment to “connecting riders to safe and reliable rides on the road” and bringing “accountability and transparency to every ride so you can feel safe taking an Uber.” Back then, this was backed up by practical measures the company took to ensure ride-hailers’ safety. It had strict requirements for its drivers, including criminal record checks and car inspections. There were also mandatory workshops for drivers on how to safely drive vehicles, how to register on the Uber app and what they needed to get their applications approved. Uber also ran onboarding sessions for new drivers at offices at the American University in Cairo’s Greek Campus, among other multinationals and tech companies quartered in the fashionable downtown site.
The emphasis on safety implied an apparent concern for the common occurrence of sexual harassment. “When Uber launched in Egypt, their leadership was interested in gender issues and talked to HarassMap about collaboration to make its rides safe,” says Reem Wael, former executive director of HarassMap, a non-profit initiative that uses community-based online mapping and reporting of sexual harassment to tackle the social norm and provide communal awareness and support to survivors.
The non-profit and the corporate company collaborated on a number of initiatives, former seniors and staff from the NGO with knowledge of the 2015-2016 partnership said. HarassMap conducted training sessions for Uber’s in-house staff and designed training material for the onboarding sessions that Uber was providing to drivers. “We gave Uber definitions of sexual harassment and its types and forms,” says Ahmed Hegab, who was the head of the HarassMap Unit in charge of the partnership with Uber at the time. Hegab says the training material clarified some of the different forms sexual harassment can take, such as inappropriate staring or physical touch.
After administering the training, Uber would put stickers on the drivers’ vehicles which indicated that the driver received sexual harassment training and that the driver “pledges to take positive action against sexual harassment.”
The company’s approach in those early years meant that safety quickly became one of Uber’s unique selling points. With the service already gaining popularity in Egypt as quickly as it did in other countries, its director of business development and advertising told the press that the company’s success story was down to “safety.”
Safety also apparently translated into customers’ experiences with ride-hailing with Uber. A report co-produced by Uber and the International Finance Corporation in 2018 says that women were choosing ride-hailing services in Egypt specifically for the “added security.” Cost transparency is an added draw, said the report, since while Uber’s service was not the most budget-friendly option compared to public transportation, it saved riders the hassle of negotiating fares in metered taxi rides, or dealing with the fact that a taxi driver might not use the meter at all. Fifty-one percent of women surveyed in Egypt strongly identified with Uber as a more secure option, compared to 33 percent of women globally, according to the report. Several ride-hailers tell Mada Masr that Uber became a stable part of their daily routine, with one user stating that she used the service to get to her regular classes when she was at university and, now that she’s working, uses it for her daily commute.
The company’s approach in its post-launch years was part of a clear market calculation, according to Mohamed Mostafa, an accountant who joined Uber as a driver over eight years ago. “The math was simple. Uber knew the Egyptian middle class was becoming less and less satisfied with the taxi services,” he says, adding that the company aimed to fill the gap by providing “an easy and convenient way to book comfortable rides.”
Not only was the sense of security something the company wanted to extend to riders, it also made a similar offer to drivers, Mostafa notes. “Its strategy was to focus on limousine service in Cairo at a time when tourism was not at its best and drivers had a lot of free time while cars were idle,” he says. “Drivers could get extra money. Limousine service companies would get their cars on the road.”
While Uber was partnering with HarassMap to polish its user experience, it was partnering in tandem with financial institutions to offer soft loans to job-seekers who could buy cars and work at Uber full-time, providing the feeling of security to drivers as well. “It was an extremely profitable business. Even if you open the app and get no requests, we would still make guaranteed income,” says Mahmoud Volva, a driver who joined Uber at that time.
According to Uber, it was recruiting over 2,000 drivers per month, and more than 40 percent of those hired were previously unemployed. In less than two years, Uber would be serving tens of thousands of users with over 45,000 cars on the streets.
Then, in 2016, the government in Cairo embarked on a landmark structural adjustment program, implementing a major currency devaluation which hit the public hard. Consequently, drivers were suddenly making less.
“Drivers were making LE5,000 per month in 2016, which was worth roughly US$550 at the time. A year later, drivers would be making LE8,000 per month, but that was worth US$100 less. Inflation was eating up our profits,” Mostafa recalls
Drivers began to hustle harder to make the business worth it. “A car owner used to drive their own car after work to make some additional money, or hire a driver to take some trips when the owner is at work,” Mostafa explains. “As things got worse, the owner would hire two drivers to take shifts on the car. Those who bought cars on loans had to pay more, while their income decreased, so they also hired another person to help.”
Some limousine service companies expanded their fleets thanks to Uber’s bonuses and guaranteed pay, but were now facing mounting debt and had to act quickly and hire new drivers on fixed salaries or profit shares.
Reem Wael notes that the large number of drivers was something that ultimately became part of Uber’s justification to limit the extent to which it was willing to build measures against sexual harassment. She says conflicts then emerged since HarassMap “could not control the behavior of drivers.” HarassMap was keen on training drivers recruited by Uber, Wael explains, but the ride-hailing firm said it was hard because “there were too many.”
It was important that Uber maintain its expansion, and increase the number of drivers, and consequently, riders, to attain and ensure total market dominance. “The competition between Uber and other rivals, like Lyft in the US or Careem in the Middle East, pushed it to spend even more. This was the peak of what we call a burn phase,” says Khaled Ismail, the founder and Chairman of Kiangel, an angel investment fund investing in early-stage startups in Egypt. “In this phase, a company is not looking for profit. It is searching for any means of expansion to convince investors to keep pumping in the money.” Uber, attracting investor attention worldwide, could easily oust local rivals such as Easy Taxi or Ousta. “Smaller companies had only millions of pounds to back them. Uber spent billions of dollars to ensure dominance,” says Ismail.
Uber’s “burn phase” saw it accumulate almost $8 billion in losses from its operations worldwide by 2018. The same investors who had backed Uber’s co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick replaced him with the former CEO of Expedia Group, Dara Khosrowshahi, who was tasked with overhauling the company and pushing it into profitability.
Uber also acquired Careem, its main rival in the region, including the major markets of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. “By that time, Uber had managed to acquire the largest share of the private transportation market in Egypt and had the freedom to do as it wills. There were no longer three dishes at the table, it was only one and a hungry person would eat what is served,” says Ismail.
With Dara Khosrowshahi behind the wheel and dominance established, Uber set course to cut costs, launching the brand strategy named Moving Forward. Uber amended its company structure in Egypt in a way that changed the degree of relationship with drivers, making it explicit that they would be freelance contractors rather than employees of the company. “Around this time in Egypt, Uber lowered discounts for users and bonuses for drivers,” Mostafa says. Health insurance for drivers was stripped back, as was accident insurance, and lots of drivers had their accounts suspended — leading to complaints at the time that the layoffs were intentional. When COVID-19 hit in 2020 and countries worldwide implemented curfews that kept customers indoors, Uber’s main revenue stream was effectively blocked, and it laid off hundreds — almost 40 percent of the staff in Egypt was let go.
With no competition and a high number of drivers, Uber was less inclined to conduct the same level of initial screening as it used to, says Mostafa. And drivers still wanted the option of Uber’s income. “Drivers who were blocked before started returning again with fake IDs and driving licenses. Cars that were below Uber’s standards were snuck into the app. Drug tests were becoming increasingly easy to fabricate,” Mostafa says. Dozens of Facebook pages advertised services to support blocked drivers to open new accounts, get an older model of a car accepted by the app or produce a clean drug test or a white criminal record. If a driver is blocked for any reason, they could get another account for as little as LE 1,000 with no need for additional paperwork.
When the driver Shamaa had hailed went to trial in April, a court sentenced him to 15 years in prison on charges of attempted kidnapping, forging papers to open a new Uber account, substance abuse and driving under the influence.
“Hundreds, if not thousands of drivers flocked to the app,” Akram, an expert driver who also runs a YouTube channel to help his colleagues make the best use of the app, told Mada Masr. “As the economy ailed, many were desperate to find a new source of income. Uber amended its pricing algorithm to ensure that riders depend on it.”
Akram explains that, unlike other ride-hailing companies which set a fixed fee on trips, Uber takes a different route. The company changes its pricing model for both parties periodically, which, according to Akram, is aimed at keeping both drivers and passengers pleased. However, even when Uber cuts its commission below that of its competitors, now at 17.5 percent, the same trips remain more expensive via Uber.
“Uber creates dependency. If you are always using Uber, the app’s algorithm detects that and takes liberty in estimating the trip cost, regardless of the distance or the expected trip time. If you stop using it for a while and return, it would offer you a cheaper ride to ensure you come back to it,” Akram explains.
But for captains, this could be “annoying,” as they would never know what commission Uber is actually getting. “When you get an alert for a trip, you are shown the distance and your own profit from it. But when we complete the trip, sometimes, the app would ask me to collect LE100 on a LE50 trip, meaning that Uber has asked the rider for more money than it should, and [drivers] are only getting a fraction of it,” Akram says.
The “dynamic pricing” model is no secret. However, little is known about how it actually works. Its impact on the satisfaction of drivers has also been in question worldwide.
“When Uber created this dependency for riders but leaves drivers dissatisfied, it is effectively creating problems between the two. And when more and more drivers are accepted with forged documents, you have no way of ensuring the safety of the passengers,” Akram says.
Riders began to find the safety and reliability they’d come to associate with Uber in decline, finding themselves exposed to incidents where they didn’t feel safe ride-hailing.
When Laila was 17 years old, she took a very short ride to the pharmacy one evening. She describes what she saw as she approached the vehicle. “ I saw the driver very sweaty, and taking fast breaths and found out his hands were not on the driver’s wheel, and it turns out he was masturbating.” She hid in the store, canceled the ride and wrote a complaint to Uber on the app to detail the incident. She got a response from a call center agent in a Gulf country who, after expressing sympathy, asked her to file a complaint against the driver at the police station. Shortly after, she received a message on the app in which Uber apologized for the quality of the ride and assured her it would contact the driver.
Laila did not file a complaint at the police station, she was also never updated on the state of her complaint with Uber.
“In other cases, when I submit complaints on a ride, they reply with ‘sorry for the inconvenience and we will make sure the right steps are taken’ and then reimburse me with LE50 for instance. One time I asked about the steps for processing a complaint and they responded that these are internal procedures that cannot be shared,” said Farida on her frustration with the company’s complaint system.
Ali received a similar response when he forgot his backpack in an Uber ride two years ago. “A week later, I got an answer through the application that they tried to contact the driver and that he had denied it, and they said they could not give me his contact information. When I objected, they told me to file a report against him at the police station if I am not satisfied.”
When asked why they didn’t seek out alternatives, ride-hailers describe a sense of familiarity and convenience meaning that many continue to use the service despite experiencing dissatisfaction and even danger in Uber cabs.
“Obviously I want to change the service, but it just feels weird after eight years, all my credit cards are on Uber,” says Malak, a 26-year-old who has been with Uber for many years, adding that it is worth questioning why she is still using the ride-hailing service despite the alternatives.
“I did not know about alternatives,” says Laila, explaining why she doesn’t use any of the newer rival apps such as InDrive or Didi. “I felt like Uber is more convenient.”
Mada Masr has reached out to Uber several times to ask whether its cost-cutting had contributed to a decline in the level of safety for its customers and whether it accepted any responsibility for the death of Habiba al-Shamaa, but has received no response. However, it has since offered customers an in-ride voice-recording feature, previously available only in Alexandria, as a “safety” measure.
Mada Masr also asked Uber if it would take steps to ensure similar incidents would not happen again, and likewise received no response.
Meanwhile calls to hold the ride-hailing application accountable have begun to take shape; with lawyer Amr Abdel Salam filing a lawsuit to revoke Uber and Careem licenses to operate in Egypt, and MPs calling for Uber’s operations to be halted in Egypt, and if not, for authorities to obligate the company to open administrative headquarters in country. Representatives from the company appeared before the House’s Telecommunications Committee on Monday, along with officials from the transport and telecommunications ministries, which are responsible for licensing ride-hailing services, to discuss potential mechanisms to make these companies safer, including drug-testing and the addition of SOS buttons.
Calls to boycott the service have spread on social media platforms, with individuals pointing to the repeated cases of assault against women, the superficial quality of Uber’s safety features, and the absence of a mechanism to hold the company accountable.
In the meantime, another woman subjected to assault on an Uber ride has made the headlines. According to the testimony published on social media by Sally Awad, the woman’s sister, the Uber driver who was supposed to drive her from Fifth Settlement to Sheikh Zayed on May 11 first asked her to cancel the ride and to pay him directly in cash, then took her off route to a remote place where he attempted to sexually assault her while holding a knife. The driver was arrested and is under investigation.
Once again, Uber expressed “deep sadness,” and said it had suspended the driver’s account and had reached out to a member of the survivor’s family as soon as they were notified to offer their support.
Photo: Mada Masr
