Uber came to Africa to disrupt transport. Then Africa changed Uber.

In January 2016, Uber ran what the ride-hailing company called a cash experiment in Lagos where riders could pay drivers in naira notes. Lagos was the third African city to try it, after Nairobi and Cairo, and Nairobi had been only the second city anywhere in the world to test cash on the platform. Uber’s then Sub-Saharan Africa general manager, Alon Lits, told Quartz at the time that Nairobi’s business tripled during the pilot and that African innovations had shaped the company’s global operati