Harriet KamashanyuEvery year, thousands of Ugandans leave home in search of better opportunities abroad. They dream of stable incomes, improved livelihoods, and brighter futures for their families. Between 2016 and 2025, an estimated 339,159 Ugandan workers migrated for overseas employment, according to figures from Uganda’s Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development cited by the International Labour Organization. Yet for some, that journey becomes a pathway to exploitation rather than opportunity. Hidden behind promises of well-paying jobs can be deceptive recruitment practices, excessive fees, forced labour, passport confiscation, and human trafficking.
Today, these risks are no longer confined to physical recruitment agencies or informal labour brokers. They have increasingly moved online.
Social media platforms, messaging applications, digital job portals, and recruitment websites have transformed how labour migration operates. While these technologies make overseas employment opportunities more accessible, they have also created new avenues for traffickers and fraudulent recruiters to reach job seekers. A misleading online advertisement, an unofficial recruiter, or a false promise shared through a messaging platform can have consequences that extend far beyond the screen.
However, technology is not only part of the problem. It can also be part of the solution.
Digital governance refers to the use of technology, digital systems, and accountable institutions to improve how governments and organisations manage public services. Within labour migration, digital governance has the potential to strengthen transparency, accountability, and protection for migrant workers before, during, and after migration.
Uganda is not starting from zero. The Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development already operates the External Employment Management Information System, known as EEMIS. Through the platform, prospective migrant workers can browse overseas jobs and check recruitment companies that have been vetted and approved by the Ministry.
This is an important development. But the existence of a digital platform does not automatically guarantee protection.
The more difficult questions are whether prospective migrants know that these services exist, whether they can access and understand them, whether they can distinguish official information from fraudulent material circulating online, and what happens when exploitation occurs after a worker has already left Uganda.
These questions become even more important when we consider women migrant workers, particularly those entering domestic and care work. Uganda’s EEMIS currently lists overseas domestic-work opportunities, including housemaid positions in Saudi Arabia and other destinations.
For a woman working inside a private household, however, access to a digital protection system may depend on much more than simply owning a phone. Can she access that phone freely? Can she make a complaint without being observed? Does she understand the reporting system and the language in which it operates? What happens if an employer or recruiter controls her communication or documents?
Digital access cannot be separated from gender, class, literacy, working conditions, and unequal relationships of power.
One experience that continues to stay with me is that of Stella*, a Ugandan single mother who travelled to Saudi Arabia for work after leaving her three children at home. What followed was devastating: she was sexually assaulted, seriously abused and nearly killed, while her passport was withheld, making it extremely difficult for her to leave or return home. She was eventually assisted by an organisation that intervened and helped secure her return to Uganda and reunification with her children. Stella’s experience illustrates why migrant-worker protection cannot end when a worker crosses the border; accessible reporting mechanisms, effective consular and institutional support, and systems that can respond quickly when workers are trapped or abused are essential
Digital systems can nevertheless create important possibilities. Employment contracts can be recorded and verified. Recruitment companies can be made more visible to prospective workers. Complaints can be documented and followed up. Digital records may also support cooperation between government agencies, labour attachés, civil society organisations, and authorities in destination countries.
Uganda has made progress in developing its legal framework and digital systems for labour migration. Yet a 2026 International Labour Organization assessment also identified continuing gaps in inspection capacity, informal recruitment, pre-departure preparation, overseas protection, complaints handling, and coordination between institutions.
This distinction matters. A country can develop sophisticated digital systems while migrant workers continue to encounter exploitation beyond their reach.
Technology alone cannot eliminate exploitation.
Poorly governed digital systems can also create new forms of exclusion and vulnerability. Migrants with limited digital literacy, inadequate internet access, or limited knowledge of official procedures may struggle to use online services. Sensitive personal information may be collected without sufficient understanding of how it will be stored or used. Systems developed in the name of protection may also become mechanisms of surveillance and migration control.
The challenge, therefore, is not simply whether governments should embrace digital technologies. It is how those technologies are governed, who can access them, and whose interests they ultimately serve.
A system may appear transparent on a government website while remaining inaccessible to the worker who most needs protection. Digital governance should therefore be judged not only by the technologies governments create, but also by what happens when a migrant worker actually asks for help.
Digital governance must be grounded in transparency, accountability, privacy, accessibility, and labour rights.
Technology should empower migrants, not monitor them.
It should strengthen access to justice rather than create additional barriers. Most importantly, digital innovation must place the experiences and rights of migrant workers at its centre.
As African countries continue investing in digital transformation, there is an opportunity to rethink labour migration governance. Better regulation of online recruitment, accessible complaint mechanisms, stronger monitoring of recruitment agencies, secure handling of workers’ data, and cooperation between countries of origin and destination can all form part of a more protective migration system.
But protection cannot begin and end with an app, website, biometric record, or database.
For Uganda and other labour-sending countries, protecting migrant workers requires institutions that respond when a worker reports abuse. It requires effective regulation of recruiters, accessible information before departure, protection in destination countries, and meaningful partnerships between governments, civil society, migrant communities, labour organisations, and technology providers.
It also requires listening to migrant workers themselves.
Their experiences can tell us whether a digital system that appears effective from the perspective of an institution actually works from the perspective of the person it is supposed to protect.
Migration should remain a pathway to opportunity, not exploitation.
Responsible digital governance can contribute to making migration safer, but technology should never be mistaken for protection itself. Its value lies in whether it strengthens migrant workers’ ability to make informed choices, seek help, challenge exploitation, and exercise their rights.
When digital innovation is combined with accountable institutions and a commitment to human dignity, technology can become more than a tool of administration. It can become part of a wider system of protection in which migrant workers are not simply registered, monitored, or counted, but heard.
