Labour markets in Sub-Saharan Africa are characterised by a gendered division into formal and informal segments. The article argues that this originates from a rationality introduced by racist and gendered colonial legal segmentation produced by a variety of legal regimes in and beyond employment law. Labour market segmentation in postcolonial settings can hardly be understood nor overcome without analysis of the specific colonial institutional origins of commodification of labour. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the “colonial exploitative legal employment standard” commodifying labour meant focusing on black African male employees for European employers, excluding or marginalising women and domestic labour relations.