Uber is facing steep challenges overseas, but the ride-sharing company is beginning to win over authorities and commuters in South Africa, where the number of rides since January has spiked to 2million. In France this week, protests against Uber by taxi drivers blocked major transport routes, while Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he was launching legal action against local managers of the US-based ride-sharing service. He denounced the company's attitude as "cynical" and "arrogant".mini_story_image_hleft1A law passed in October 2014 placed a ban on putting clients in touch with unregistered taxi drivers. However, Uber contests the regulation, saying it is unclear and runs counter to the freedom to do business. A constitutional ruling is expected around September.But in South Africa, authorities for the most part seem to support the service and certainly commuters are making extensive use of it.Alon Lits, Uber's general manager for sub-Saharan Africa, said 2million rides had been facilitated in South Africa in the year to date. This was already double the 1-million rides taken last year, which was an increase of 11.5 times from the previous year.Further growth is expected in Cape Town, where Western Cape licensing authorities are expected to consider licence applications from drivers signed up to Uber this week. Lits said: "We are very confident it will unlock a huge number of licences."Uber's growth in South Africa, in terms of the number of rides available, is faster than in London or Paris. The mean waiting time for a ride in Cape Town is now 3.4minutes compared with 5.4minutes in Italy.Al-Ameen Kafaar, a spokesman for the Western Cape department of transport, said: "It is the department's understanding that the City of Cape Town supports these applications."Kafaar said, however, the department was unable to provide details about the number of applications or pre-empt the outcome of the Provincial Regulatory Entity deliberations. The authority had not previously issued licences to Uber drivers.story_article_right1Uber said there had been delays in licensing drivers it has signed up because authorities battled to categorise the service .The company does not offer transport or employ the drivers. Rather, Uber provides software on an app that tracks the location of a commuter and an available driver and connects the two. A device in the vehicle calculates the fare based on the distance travelled. Uber charges the commuter account and pays 80% of the fare to the driver, keeping a 20% commission.The Western Cape's metered taxi industry has opposed the introduction of Uber more strongly than taxi organisations in Durban or Johannesburg.But Lits said incidents of intimidation in Cape Town were "isolated" and "very few" and that the company was engaging with existing metered operators across the cities.Earlier this year, Uber attracted bad press over its surge pricing model, which hikes fares steeply during peak periods.In Durban, the eThekwini Transport Authority's moratorium on licensing new taxis - due to the saturated market - has impeded Uber's growth. But authorities in Johannesburg support the service.full_story_image_hleft2"We are expecting big things for the rest of the year," said Lits. The company globally aims to have more than 1-million women drivers by 2020.About 4% of its network in South Africa are female drivers. It aims to create 15 000 local jobs by 2017 compared with about 2 000 jobs currently.Globally, two years after it began, the service now operates in more than 300 cities but its reputation has been tarnished by accusations that drivers have assaulted passengers.This week the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a non-profit advocacy group in the US, filed a formal complaint about Uber's plans to use the app to access users' locations and send adverts to users' contact lists.But Lits denied this, saying the company did not store aggregated data. - Additional reporting by Reuters..