Transport benefit uptake: the commute cost crisis by African city in numbers

Lagos employees spend an average of 18% of take-home pay on commuting costs — the highest in the dataset by a significant margin. Nairobi at 14%, Accra at 9%, Johannesburg at 11% (lower partly due to car ownership rates and company car policies in corporate culture), Cairo at 13%. Transport benefits with active uptake cover an average of 40–60% of the commute cost gap for employees who use them. The utilisation rate for transport benefits is 52% across the dataset — lower than health and meal benefits — primarily because many programmes offer commuter train or bus credits that do not match employees' actual commute routes.

The Lagos figure deserves emphasis: 18% of take-home pay on commuting is a structural tax that compounds the impact of below-inflation salary increases. For an employee earning N250,000 per month in Lagos, N45,000 is going on transport before they buy food or pay rent. A transport benefit that covers even N15,000 of that cost is a 6% effective salary increase. The communication framing of transport benefits as salary enhancement rather than a logistics perk dramatically increases uptake in Lagos specifically.

• Frame your transport benefit in naira or shilling terms of monthly commute cost covered, not in abstract percentage terms — employees respond to 'this covers your Monday-to-Friday bus fare' more than 'N15,000 monthly transport credit'
• Audit whether your transport benefit covers the actual commute modes your employees use — a fuel card is useless to an employee who takes danfo or matatu
• In Lagos particularly, consider positioning transport benefit as a core benefit rather than supplemental — the commute cost burden is significant enough that its presence or absence affects offer acceptance decisions