In academic as well as policy circles, attitudes toward African informal economies have shifted markedly in the past decade. Once viewed as transitional or even inimical to development, the informal economy is increasingly accorded a dynamic role in Africa’s economic growth and governance processes. The foreword to the 2013 World Development Report (2013:xiii) argues that “some jobs do more for development than others. . . . Critically, these job are not only found in the formal sector; depending on the country context, informal jobs can also be transformational.” The dramatic expansion of the informal economy over the past forty years has certainly played a role in attracting renewed policy attention. Instead of shrinking in the face of liberalization and globalization, informal economic activity has burgeoned across the developing world, particularly in Africa.Footnote 1 According to the ILO (2002), sub-Saharan Africa is the most informalized region in the world, with 73 percent of the nonagricultural labor force working informally, rising to over 90 percent in parts of West Africa. Far from eliminating incentives for informality as predicted by neoliberal policy advisers, decades of market reforms have turned the informal economy into a central feature of popular livelihoods, urban service provision, and associational life (Meagher Reference Meagher2003, Reference Meagher2010; Lindell Reference Lindell2010; Hansen & Vaa Reference Hansen and Vaa2004; Tostensen et al. Reference Tostensen, Tvedten and Vaa2001).
In the past few years, the challenges of the global financial crisis and disillusionment with the maximalist good governance agenda have contributed to a further rethinking of the role of the informal economy in contemporary development processes (CFS 2010; Guha Kasnobis et al. 2006). The combination of informal expansion, weakened state capacity, and declining opportunity in the global economy has given rise to a proliferation of books and articles with titles like Reconsidering Informality (Hansen & Vaa Reference Hansen and Vaa2004), “Rethinking the Informal Economy” (Chen Reference Chen, Guha-Khasanobis, Kanbur and Ostrom2006), and “Informality Revisited” (Maloney Reference Maloney2004). A growing interest in “second best” approaches to governance has spawned a flurry of research on informal institutions, informal systems of service provision, and prospects for taxing the informal economy (CFS 2010; Allen et al. 2006; Joshi & Ayee Reference Joshi, Ayee, Brautigam, Fjeldstad and Moore2008; Wilson et al. Reference Wilson, Velis and Cheeseman2006). In the scramble to participate in the African growth renaissance, corporate investors have also revised their assessments of the informal economy, now seen as part of the solution to market failure rather than part of the problem (UNDP 2008; London & Hart Reference London and Hart2011). Policy thinking has followed suit, moving away from an emphasis on eliminating or absorbing the informal economy toward policy discourses of collaborative interaction, expressed in such terms as “hybrid governance,” “coproduction,” and “formal‒informal linkages” (CFS 2010; Joshi & Moore Reference Joshi and Moore2004; Guha-Khasnobis et al. 2006). Instead of being seen as backward or dysfunctional, informal economic systems are increasingly viewed as “arrangements that work,” and there are growing calls for “working with the grain” of African societies by incorporating informal economic practices (Kelsall Reference Kelsall2008). In the process, standard policy approaches based on formalization of the informal economy seem to be shifting to a new ethos of “normalization,” opening new but largely unexplored possibilities for the social, fiscal, and political integration of Africa’s vast informal economies into the very heart of mainstream development processes (Jutting & de Laiglesia 2009).
At the same time, increasingly organized and confident informal actors have been forging their own channels of inclusion. During the long, hard years of structural adjustment, expanding shares of African populations were left to fend for themselves amid declining public services, diminishing real incomes, and mounting unemployment. Instead of withdrawing into subsistence activities, workers, traders, and small entrepreneurs have been tapping into value chains, insinuating themselves into urban service and housing provision, taking an active role in job creation, and hacking into the global economy through organized trading networks that reach as far as the United States and China (Meagher Reference Meagher2010; Neuwirth Reference Neuwirth2012; Hansen & Vaa 2004; Tostensen et al. Reference Tostensen, Tvedten and Vaa2001). Large numbers of active and increasingly globalized informal trading and occupational associations have fought their way into local and even national policy spaces, resisting agendas that threaten popular livelihoods and demanding a place at the policy table (Lindell Reference Lindell2010a, Reference Lindell2010b; Devenish & Skinner 2009). Does this represent a convergence of inclusive agendas from above and below? Are corporate investors and new models of coproduced service provision pushing for the same kind of inclusion as informal trading networks and enterprise associations? Are states and policymakers finally responding to the needs of Africa’s “real economies” with systems of “real governance” (Olivier de Sardan 2008)?
While the formal and informal realms have always been linked in various ways, rapid informalization, contracting states, globalization, and the global financial crisis have importantly altered the nature of that relationship. The new strategies emerging among governments, development agencies, and global business to tap the energies of the informal economy through collaboration with informal networks and organizations are giving rise to new approaches to governance and economic development. These include novel business models based on creating a “fortune at the bottom of the pyramid,” innovative strategies of extending social policy and urban service provision to informal actors and slum dwellers, and initiatives to draw the informal economy into the tax net with a view to rebuilding the social contract that was demolished under structural adjustment. Does this flurry of policy measures signal the reversal of decades of social and institutional exclusion for the African poor, or does it represent new attempts to harness the strengths of the informal economy in the interest of more powerful actors? Does incorporating the informal economy into global business models and participatory systems of service provision empower Africa’s informal entrepreneurs and workers, or does it capture their energies to cut costs and increase profits for others? How does seeking to normalize rather than formalize the informal economy affect citizenship rights and public accountability? This ASR Forum explores current trends in the deepening incorporation of the informal economy into mainstream economic development and governance processes, and considers what these new models of informal economic inclusion really offer to Africa’s informal workers.
Changing Perspectives on African Informal Economies
The articles in this ASR Forum are the product of a workshop titled “Re-integrating African Informal Economies: Social Inclusion or Bargain Basement Citizenship?” held at the Department of International Development, London School of Economics, on December 12‒13, 2011, with supportive funding from the Nordic Africa Institute’s Poverty, Inequality and Social Exclusion program (sponsored by the Swedish International Development Cooperation) and the London School of Economics Seed Fund. The workshop brought together committed scholars of African informal economies from Europe and Africa to reflect on the new discourses and underlying processes of informal economic inclusion. A key objective of the workshop was to explore these processes in a variety of domains (service provision, markets, taxation, and political organization) from above and from below, and from African as well as Western perspectives. These issues span a range of disciplinary domains, thematic areas, and ideological perspectives that rarely come together. Research on inclusive markets has been the purview of business and management schools; the coproduction of urban services and the politics of the informal economy tend to remain within the realm of geography and urban studies; while issues of taxation, security, and hybrid governance are more strongly associated with development studies, politics, international relations, and peace and security programs. More recently, anthropologists, connoisseurs of indirect rule, and originators of the conceptual tools for analyzing institutional hybridity and “bricolage” have begun weighing in on issues of inclusive markets and hybrid governance. Bringing this range of perspectives on inclusive approaches to the informal economy together under one roof unleashed a serendipity of interdisciplinary synergies and insights. While a number of excellent papers were committed elsewhere, or fell victim to multiple academic commitments, this ASR Forum showcases the incisive analysis and wide-ranging debates that emerged from the workshop.
Based on original fieldwork, this collection of articles focuses on informal economic inclusion in a range of African countries and economic domains. They examine how the incorporation of informal economies is reshaping markets, restructuring economic opportunity, and transforming governance and political voice among entrepreneurs, traders, and workers marginalized by the formal economy. The first two articles, by Michal Lyons, Alison Brown, and Zhigang Li (77‒100), and by Ebbe Prag (101‒21), explore how global trading networks between Africa and China are transforming economic opportunity among African informal traders. Lyons et al. use a global value-chain perspective to examine the space for advancement and accumulation among African traders operating in Guangzhou. Focusing on the impact of these networks in Benin, Prag considers how textile smuggling from China has generated struggles between competing women’s trading networks within the country, revealing that global inclusion creates winners and losers within the informal economy. Shifting the focus from global players to “micro-entrepreneurs,” Catherine Dolan and Kate Roll (121‒46), and Mary Kinyanjui (147‒64) consider how processes of informal economic inclusion affect poor African women. Dolan and Roll focus on processes of informal economic inclusion initiated from above by analyzing the “techniques of governance” used by global corporations to engage the entrepreneurial energies of poor women at the bottom of the pyramid in a number of African countries. By contrast, Mary Kinyanjui’s article argues that informal economic inclusion is a result of popular agency rather than corporate initiatives, demonstrating how marginalized Kenyan women have drawn on indigenous business practices to gain access to male, formal sector spaces in the central business district of Nairobi.
The contribution by Frances Cleaver, Tom Franks, Faustin Maganga, and Kurt Hall (165‒89) questions perceptions of subaltern agency by exploring the role of power in structuring processes of informal inclusion. They draw on fieldwork in rural Tanzania to trace how power and authority shape the selective incorporation of informal security and resource governance institutions into formal systems of service provision and natural resource management. This sets the scene for a focus on the politics of informal economic inclusion in the final two contributions. Gunilla Andrae and Bjorn Beckman (191‒208) explore the role of informal enterprise associations and labor unions in empowering Nigerian tailors to claim their economic and citizenship rights. Kate Meagher (209‒34) examines how informal enterprise associations and ethnic business systems influence social and economic integration in the context of severe religious conflict in northern Nigeria. Across a variety of disciplinary perspectives and empirical contexts, the articles in this ASR Forum explore how strategies of informal inclusion from above and from below are transforming economic participation and political accountability, and whose interests they serve.
At the center of all of these articles are two questions: (1) How do we understand the informal economy in contexts of inclusive relations with the formal economy? and (2) Do linkages across the formal‒informal divide create genuine processes of inclusion, or more exploitative processes of “adverse incorporation”? With regard to the first question, this opens a new dimension in ongoing debates about the analytical value of the informal economy which have plagued the concept since it was coined by Keith Hart (Reference Hart1973) in the early 1970s. While definitional concerns dominated the debate in the 1970s and 1980s, these were largely resolved by the end of the 1980s (De Soto 1989; Castells & Portes Reference Castells, Portes, Portes, Castells and Benton1989; Tokman Reference Tokman1992; Feige Reference Feige1990). Informal economy scholars across disciplinary and ideological divides have reached a consensus, represented by Castells and Portes’s (1989:12) widely cited definition: the informal economy refers to “income generating activities outside the regulatory framework of the state.” During the following decade, debates turned to the question of whether liberalization, economic crisis, and weak states have made the informal economy concept obsolete (Hart Reference Hart, Ellis and Faure1995, Reference Hart, Guha-Khasanobis, Kanbur and Ostrom2006; Portes Reference Portes, Smelser and Swedberg1994; Klein 2002). In the past few years, the conceptual terrain is being transformed by a new shift from a dualist to a more institutional understanding of informal economies (Meagher Reference Meagher2010, Reference Meagher2008; Guha-Khasnobis et al. 2006). The focus is now on the distinctive regulatory capacities operating within informal economic networks, associations, and communities, and how they can be activated for more inclusive forms of governance and economic development.
Far from ending conceptual debates about the informal economy, the shift to institutional perspectives and inclusive arrangements has opened up a range of new considerations, as the articles in this ASR Forum demonstrate. Some of the authors represent informality as involving the exclusion of small entrepreneurs from global markets or formal institutions of labor protection, and focus attention on the mechanisms and terms of inclusion (Dolan and Roll, Andrae and Beckman). Others represent the informal economy as a distinctive sphere of indigenous business institutions and strategies operating outside the legal regulatory framework through which marginalized actors attempt to renegotiate their relationship with the state and the global market economy (Kinyanjui, Lyons et al., Meagher). From this perspective, informal economies are not defined by exclusion from formal institutions, but represent alternative organizational systems of “legitimized regulation” (Cleaver et al.), referred to as “networks” (Meagher Reference Meagher2005, Reference Meagher2010), “informal institutions” (Helmke & Levitsky Reference Helmke and Levitsky2004; Meagher Reference Meagher2008), or “twilight institutions” (Lund Reference Lund2007) that offer new possibilities for filling gaps in social or economic provision in weak or downsizing states. Still others approach informality as a continuum rather than a dichotomy between alternative institutional systems, arguing that informal institutions do not represent alternative forms of organizing economic life, but have historically been intertwined in African economic and political organization (Cleaver et al., Prag). Prag harkens back to Janet Roitman’s (1990:685) observation that “the extent to which [formal and informal] relationships form a system rather than a set of alternatives from which one chooses, is often overlooked.” This moves beyond conventional notions of linkages based on “straddling” between the formal and informal economies to a consideration of how the two economic systems constitute interdependent forms of economic organization. Across these various perspectives—whether inclusion takes the form of increased recognition by formal institutions, an institutional “patch” on faltering formal economies, or a historical process of “bricolage” between formal and informal ways of doing things—the distinction between the formal and informal economic organization remains salient, even in the context of inclusive economies.
Amid new perspectives on informal economies, debates are no longer preoccupied with whether the concept of an “informal economy” can survive liberalization, downsizing states, and inclusion into mainstream development processes, but on what terms it will do so. Understanding this issue calls for closer attention to the historical logic of formal‒informal linkages in specific contexts, as well as their contemporary capacity to foster agency or capture among informal actors. Equally important are questions about the kinds of incorporation particular categories of informal actors seek, be it the simple freedom to operate, greater access to public services and social protection, integration into global markets, or meaningful political voice. To what extent do these correspond to the inclusive relations sought by formal actors, who speak more of tapping the potential of the informal economy through taxation, market penetration, and labor mobilization (see Meagher 2013)?
The concept of “adverse incorporation” has gained currency in efforts to analyze processes of social and economic inclusion of marginalized groups (Hickey & du Toit 2007). As du Toit and Neves (2007:31) explain, “We may do well to replace the narratives of mere ‘exclusion’ with the notion that poverty persists also because of the disadvantageous ways in which people are incorporated into economic and social life. . . .” Attention is focused on the terms rather than the fact of inclusion. How do the specific networks through which formal‒informal linkages take place—including ties of gender, ethnicity, religion, occupation, or political affiliation—affect the extent and benefits of inclusion? Do the nature and interests of formal sector partners—ranging from global corporations to NGOs, local government officials and labor unions—influence the prospects for empowering linkages? With a view to building theory rather than leaning on it, these complex and often liminal processes are explored in this ASR Forum through original empirical research on informal economic inclusion across a variety of sectors, social groups, and national settings. In the rest of this introduction, key issues raised by these articles will be discussed according to four broad themes: (1) new channels of inclusion; (2) inclusive economic restructuring; (3) inclusive economies and governance transformations, and (4) the politics of informal economic inclusion.
New Channels of Inclusion
The articles in this ASR Forum reflect on the implications of new mechanisms of informal economic inclusion, including “Bottom of the Pyramid” (BoP) initiatives, incorporation of informal actors in national labor union structures, informal engagement in the global economy, and incorporation into formal tax nets and central business districts. A central concern revolves around whether new modes of incorporation come from above or from below, and the implications this may have for the empowerment of informal actors. Are inclusive arrangements designed from above as empowering as those won from below? Do popular incursions into urban centers or global economic spaces represent the gains of popular struggles, or are the poor simply being left to fill gaps from which states and formal business have withdrawn? The articles by Dolan and Roll, and Andrae and Beckman, examine the empowering potential of top-down forms of inclusion. Dolan and Roll highlight the philanthropic ethos of BoP models, which claim to offer a radical reorientation of business in the twenty-first century, inaugurating a new era of humane capitalism. Yet they join other anthropologists in showing that these top-down initiatives often blur the line between making business work for the poor and making the poor work for business (Cross & Street Reference Cross and Street2009; Dolan et al. Reference Dolan, Johnstone-Louis and Scott2012). Andrae and Beckman suggest that top-down initiatives of labor unions to incorporate informal workers into national workers’ struggles may produce more benevolent outcomes. However, their account reveals that the potential empowerment offered by incorporation into national struggles for workers’ rights and social protection must be weighed against the risks that informal entrepreneurs’ distinct political priorities will be marginalized in favor of the political agenda of formal workers and labor union politics.
Other contributors consider whether bottom-up struggles for inclusion offer better prospects for genuine empowerment. The articles by Kinyanjui and Lyons et al. represent inclusion as a product of popular agency, through which traders excluded from the formal economy conquer new urban spaces or engage in a process of “globalization from below” (Lyons et al., 96). Kinyanjui argues that the penetration of informal women traders into the male, formal sector spaces of Nairobi’s central business district is an insurgent act of class struggle, based on militancy and protest rather than benevolent capitalism. Informal insurgency is seen as the true source of an “alternative capitalism” in which economic advancement is based on social capital rather than corporate capital. Similarly, Lyons et al. highlight the complex networks and strategies of African traders in Guangzhou in their efforts to “make it” in the global economy. Inclusion is not handed down to them from above, but won through creative business tactics and painful struggles with the strict regulatory regime of the Chinese state. While these China‒Africa networks are represented as the product of creative individual agency, Meagher and Prag draw attention to the role of informal business institutions that structure successful engagement with national and global economies, particularly in West Africa. Collective arrangements from below, such as enterprise associations, credit systems, and supply and distribution networks play a critical role in facilitating economic success, social inclusion, and engagement with the state. Indeed, the more complex institutional structure of many West African informal economic systems seems to dovetail with the greater success of West Africans in the China‒Africa trade.
Yet these contributions also show that while popular initiatives from below may facilitate livelihoods and even accumulation, they do not always ensure economic inclusion. Kinyanjui notes that while women traders cross spatial border from peripheral informal markets into the formal central business district, they are also crossing economic borders in the opposite direction. Nearly one-quarter of the women were entering microtrading from the formal sector, and more than one-third have postsecondary education, suggesting that as women cross borders into formal sector spaces, some are also moving from formal into informal livelihoods. Similarly, contributions by Meagher and Prag show that amid highly coordinated efforts by informal actors to forge formal‒informal linkages from below, corporations and state officials retain the prerogative to engage with them only selectively, or to ignore them altogether.
Taking a wider historical perspective, Prag and Cleaver et al. argue that inclusive initiatives, whether coming from above or from below, are nothing new. Prag demonstrates that in Benin, as in many parts of West Africa, linkages between formal European trading houses and informal traders have existed at least since the nineteenth century, and in many cases even predate colonialism (see also Baier Reference Baier1980; Bauer 1954; Hopkins Reference Hopkins1973). He and others show that integration of informal traders into formal taxation systems and into the distribution and market intelligence networks of foreign corporations such as CFAO and the United Africa Company has been common practice in Benin, Nigeria, and a number of other West African countries since colonial times (see also Meagher Reference Meagher1991, Reference Meagher2010). Cleaver et al. indicate that similar processes of intertwining between formal and informal regulatory and legal systems also has a long history in East Africa. They argue that the incorporation of Sungusungu vigilante systems into the recognized security apparatus of rural Tanzania is part of wider processes of “institutional bricolage” that have been standard practice in African state-building, extending back to the incorporation of customary and sometimes Islamic law into the legal systems of modern African nation-states. Engagement between formal regulatory systems and the rich array of informal organization emanating from African societies is not just a twenty-first century phenomenon, but a reprise of older strategies associated with concession economies, indirect rule, and earlier phases of African state-building in which top-down regulatory agendas met the rich repertoire of bottom-up institutional arrangements as well as grassroots strategies of institutional adaptation and resistance (see Reno Reference Reno2004; Cleaver 2001).
Inclusive Economic Restructuring
A second underlying theme in this ASR Forum relates to the ways in which informal economic inclusion restructures both the formal and the informal economies. This calls for a clearer focus on how informal economic networks and formal economic institutions are reorganized through new linkages between the formal and informal economies. From this perspective, inclusive initiatives involve processes of connecting, and also of disconnecting, as informal economic linkages are spliced into state and corporate arrangements. Such inclusive restructuring serves to fill institutional gaps in the formal economy but also bypasses certain segments of formal as well as informal economic organization, such as informal middlemen in local value chains or formal trade regulations in African countries (Dolan and Roll, Lyons et al., Prag). Recognizing the effect of inclusive initiatives on economies as a whole, rather than just on specific groups, invites a consideration of the wider structural outcomes of inclusive markets, highlighting their impact on structures of economic opportunity in the formal as well as the informal economies.
The articles in this ASR Forum are full of examples of new kinds of market connections through which poor and marginalized groups gain access to formal economic arenas in the national and global economy. Kinyanjui highlights how Kenyan microtraders connect with national as well as global supply and consumer markets in Nairobi’s central business district. Similarly, accounts of BoP initiatives and China‒Africa trading networks highlight the increased access of excluded actors to global markets, opening up new opportunities for livelihoods, accumulation, and improved access to consumer goods (Lyons et al., Dolan and Roll, Prag).
Yet the emphasis on the inclusive role of formal‒informal connections has tended to distract attention from the potentially negative aspects of direct connections between weak and powerful economic actors, as well as glossing over the realities of accompanying disconnections. BoP models disregard concerns that linkages with multinational corporations, and with markets more generally, have historically been as much a cause of as a solution to the exploitation and impoverishment of African societies. As Dolan and Roll point out, celebrating the miracle of global connections ignores the potential downsides of the direct exposure of the very poor to the market power of global firms (see also Elyachar Reference Elyachar2012; Hickey & du Toit 2007). Moreover, BoP narratives make it clear that connecting the poor involves bypassing exploitative middlemen within the informal economy (UNDP 2008; London & Hart Reference London and Hart2011). However, in this issue we see a different face of informal middlemen and middlewomen in the accounts of successful women textile traders in Benin (Prag) and Africans involved in the China‒Africa trade (Prag, Brown et al.). We encounter them as grassroots intermediaries between local and global markets who have moved up from survivalist to more lucrative dimensions of the informal economy with some potential for accumulation. Lyons et al. emphasize the important role of these intermediaries in accessing spaces of accumulation in global networks and reveal how pressures to bypass them in the China‒Africa trade represent a constant threat to the livelihoods of traders struggling to rise above the subsistence level. It is not clear that BoP models of cutting out the middlemen offer any comparable paths of accumulation for microtraders at the bottom of the pyramid.
The recognition of disconnections as well as connections in the creation of inclusive markets draws attention to the fact that these formal‒informal arrangements are not all “win-win,” as BoP models tend to claim. As Prag points out, new local and global connections produce winners and losers within the informal economy. Among the losers are Africa’s celebrated “Mama Benz,” once seen as icons of African women’s agency and business success (see also Sylvanus Reference Sylvanus2013). Lyons et al. also note that informal women traders are more disadvantaged in the new China‒Africa trade networks owing to the costs and constraints of long-distance travel, and along with other weaker traders they risk being squeezed out by rising costs, more rigorous Chinese immigration regulations, and competition by better resourced civil servants and large-scale business operators. The articles by Cleaver et al. and Meagher also suggest that migrants and marginalized social groups within African societies tend to be losers in new inclusive economies owing to their limited ability to form effective linkages with the state, even when they form highly organized associations and community defense groups. In other work, Lindell and Ihalainen (forthcoming) draw attention to other losers at the bottom of the pyramid, the poorest street vendors who are disadvantaged by efforts of urban authorities to incorporate them into stable markets in the city center because they are unable to pay rents or taxes, or to buy branded consumer goods, even in small packages.
Consideration of connections and disconnections, winners and losers, invites analyses that look beyond immediate individual opportunities to the wider structural outcomes of inclusive arrangements. References to the garment sector that run through a number of the contributions cast some light on these wider structural implications. Lyons et al. point out the importance of the China‒Africa textile trade as an easy-entry option for informal traders trying to get a foothold in the global economy, while also noting its negative impact on African textile industries. Similarly, Prag shows that older women’s textile trading networks were compatible with local textile production, while new women’s textile networks engaging in trade to China are creating pressures for a more liberalized trade regime and contributing to the demise of national textile industries. These and other contributions detail massive job losses and factory closures in local African textile industries which are driving more and more African workers into the informal economy (Andrae and Beckman). Indeed, despite their view of China‒Africa trading networks as a source of opportunity for the economically excluded, Lyons et al. are forced to conclude that this form of inclusion in the global economy is not a path to poverty reduction. They note that “the trade as a whole undermines manufacturing and this is clearly counterdevelopmental. . . . Labor-intensive manufacturing for local consumption and export would clearly create more—and more stable—jobs” (97). Conversely, new opportunities created through inclusive markets, whether in global trading networks or among poor women at the bottom of the pyramid, seem to be dominated by insecure informal work (Kinyanjui, Dolan and Roll, Lyons et al., Prag).
Inclusion and Governance Transformations
In addition to restructuring economies, inclusive approaches to informality are also seen as a vehicle for transforming governance. Not long ago the incursion of informal arrangements into formal governance processes in African countries was seen as a recipe for disorder and “the criminalization of the state” (Bayart et al. Reference Bayart, Ellis and Hibou1999). In recent years it has been widely claimed that greater incorporation of informal networks and institutions can actually help to rebuild the legitimacy and accountability of the state (Joshi & Ayee Reference Joshi, Ayee, Brautigam, Fjeldstad and Moore2008; CFS 2010). The articles in this ASR Forum explore the various ways in which integration of informal economies reshapes governance in a variety of contexts. Does the incorporation of vigilante groups into crumbling rural security provision in Tanzania pose a threat to state sovereignty, or help to rebuild the legitimacy of the state? Does taxing informal traders strengthen public accountability, or just create new avenues of predation? Moving beyond rationalist notions of institutional design, these articles examine the real implications of integrating formal and informal regulatory systems, which may involve very different norms and practices, as well as widely varying relations of power.
The contribution by Cleaver et al. questions the conventional views of informal institutional inclusion as a practical process of harnessing “arrangements that work.” Drawing on the concept of “bricolage,” the authors call for greater sensitivity to how this hybridization process is shaped by relations of power. In the context of weak states, they note, Africa’s complex informal networks and associations constitute an increasingly valuable regulatory “resource.” The question is, a resource for whom? Noting that some “bricoleurs” are more powerful than others, they highlight the need to consider “whose norms [and interests] become prominent in the piecing together of institutional arrangements—which bricoleurs command . . . the most authoritative resources . . .” (181). Along with other contributions, they point to the way in which power is demonstrated by the selective character of institutional inclusion: microtraders, but not larger intermediaries, are targeted for incorporation into BoP arrangements (Dolan and Roll); migrants, rather than indigenes, are subjected to aggressive incorporation into the tax net in northern Nigeria (Meagher). As Dolan and Roll point out, this selectivity goes along with an increasing interest in making the informal economy more “legible” (128) to corporate actors and policymakers. They speak of a growing focus by corporate actors and international donors on “mapping” and “tapping” the informal economy with a view to identifying useful informal institutions and practices to be harnessed for corporate profit or political capital (see also Meagher 2013). In the African context, identifying an important resource is no guarantee that it will be mined in the interest of local development.
Conversely, contributions by Prag and Lyons et al. highlight processes of selective incorporation from below. Prag demonstrates considerable straddling between formal and informal fields among Benin’s women textile traders, who selectively engage with the state to influence formal regulations and mold market advantage. Both Prag and Lyons et al. draw attention to the straddling activities of China‒Africa traders, many of whom use civil service jobs to access information and leverage connections to maximize their advantage in informal trading activities. This ability to keep one foot strategically planted in both sectors is unevenly distributed, biasing opportunities for reshaping formal regulatory systems from below toward certain groups. Situated analyses of the who, the where, and the when of formal‒informal engagement are central to understanding the selective character of incorporation and the interests served.
A further dimension of governance transformations often overlooked in analyses of informal inclusion relates to the penetration of formal governance processes into informal networks and practices. While notions of inclusion tend to emphasize the penetration of informal practices into the sphere of formal economic organization, Cleaver et al. and Dolan and Roll highlight the ways in which inclusion allows formal governance agendas and priorities to penetrate into the informal economy. This occurs not only through selectivity, but also through powerful actors extending their reach into newly incorporated informal networks and institutions. Cleaver et al. look at how state officials reshaped Sungusungu vigilante arrangements to suit the needs of rural security and resource management, while Dolan and Roll focus attention on more Foucauldian processes through which corporations and NGOs “repurpose the legions of informal and nonstandard workers” through a range of disciplinary techniques including “market technologies, practices, and discourses” designed to “harness African informal actors to the needs of corporate capitalism” (125). Similarly, as Lyons et al. and Prag reveal, accounts of China‒Africa trade indicate that the immigration regimes of the Chinese state are serving to harness African traders to the needs of Chinese export growth. However, a more two-way process also exists, as demonstrated by Prag, Meagher, and Andrae and Beckman, in which wealthy textile traders in Benin, or medium as well as poor informal operators in Nigeria, do not simply succumb to the machinations of corporations and states, but develop their own leverage in the form of enterprise associations, ethnoreligious networks, political connections, and even alliances with labor unions to push their own agenda, with varied implications for governance outcomes.
The Politics of Informal Inclusion
A focus on the politics of informal inclusion draws attention to the kinds of mobilization, resistance, divisions, and alliances that arise from an inclusive approach to informal economies in the context of African societies. The notion of “inclusive” economies gives the impression of a process that is consensual and uncontroversial, obscuring the role of struggles for or against inclusion, and divisions or alliances unleashed by it. Do efforts to incorporate informal economies create divisions among informal actors? How do winners and losers shape political responses to economic inclusion? To what extent do inclusive initiatives consolidate or fragment informal associations and other forms of political organization? Taken together, the articles in this ASR Forum indicate a diverse range of political modalities at work. These include practices of encroachment (Kinyanjui), political networking (Prag), associational representation (Meagher), and organized protest (Andrae and Beckman), as well as the practices of invisibility exemplified by African traders in Guangzhou (Lyons et al.) (see also Lindell Reference Lindell2010a, Reference Lindell2010b). This diversity suggests the need for caution in ascribing a particular or distinct type of political agency to informal actors, as Roy (2011) alerts us in her critique of ontological readings of subaltern subjects.
In contrast to the depoliticized character of BoP perspectives (Dolan and Roll), informal agents actively pursue or resist specific forms of incorporation. The articles show that relations with powerful actors such as states or corporations are highly varied, ranging from mutual distrust and antagonism to tolerance and collaboration. Mistrust is evident in relations between African traders and the rigorous Chinese state (Lyons et al.), as well as in the interaction of some groups of informal operators (such as poor Muslim youth and Christian minorities) with the negligent and religiously polarized state in northern Nigeria (Andrae and Beckman, Meagher). Deep-seated grievances have occasionally provided the grounds for large-scale mobilization of informal operators into organized protest against the state, as in the 2012 uprising documented by Andrae and Beckman. Such antagonisms stand in contrast to the more collaborative relations discussed by Prag that are nurtured by influential women traders with state and international corporate actors in Benin. Frequently, elements of both antagonism and collaboration are present, as in the relations between politically vulnerable women microtraders in Kenya or pastoralists in Tanzania, who mix resistance with cooperation in an effort to gain a more secure economic footing (Kinyanjui, Cleaver et al.). The political subjectivities of informal actors are more complex than is often acknowledged.
Just as the politics of inclusion can create new tensions between formal and informal actors, it can also generate new divisions within the informal economy. Informal economies across Africa are highly differentiated along lines of gender, age, ethnic and religious belonging, class, or political affiliation. While informed by local histories, these divisions are reshaped by the global and local processes unleashed by inclusive markets. The link between economic inclusion and subaltern solidarity among the women microtraders of central Nairobi (Kinyanjui) contrasts with the divisive effects of greater global inclusion on women textile traders in Benin, who split into two rival networks struggling for access to the state and economic supremacy (Prag). Similarly, efforts of northern Nigerian state governments to tax the informal economy have contributed to divisive processes of religious polarization (Meagher). These case studies highlight the fact that the state is far from a neutral actor. In both Benin and Nigeria, inclusive initiatives are shaped by ethnic, religious, and political biases within the state, as well as international pressures by foreign governments and corporate actors.
Inclusive initiatives between informal actors and formal labor unions have also generated divisive pressures between migrants and indigenes in the Nigerian informal economy. The articles by Meagher and by Andrae and Beckman document the tendency of migrants to gravitate toward the discourse of rights in the national textile labor union, while indigenes in both Lagos and Kaduna State have tended to opt for the state branch of the federated tailors union (National Union of Tailors), which adopts a discourse of indigeneity to build political channels of access to resources, state contracts, and other forms of economic advantage. The result has been the generating of new organizational divisions among tailors, although the effect on their capacity for collective political voice is still unclear.
As evidenced by these countervailing tendencies of resistance and collaboration, internal solidarity and division, the politics of informal inclusion is far from smooth. The identification of diverse political tendencies calls once again for a consideration of the organizational outcomes within the informal economy. Are informal organizations becoming more or less fragmented? Under what conditions do struggles to improve the terms of inclusion lead to the upscaling of informal organization through interorganizational alliances or federations of associations? The articles by Meagher and by Andrae and Beckman highlight processes of organizational cooperation and even federation in Nigerian urban informal economies despite high levels of occupational specialization and ethnoreligious diversity. Meagher highlights integrative processes from below, including collaborative relations between informal enterprise associations across religious lines, and national federations of some local occupational associations, despite an environment of intense market competition and ethnoreligious tension. She suggests that these integrative tendencies within the informal economy are weakened by inequitable state efforts at inclusion, which undermine integrative tendencies emanating from within the informal economy.
Conversely, Andrae and Beckman see informal enterprise associations as a fragmenting force that limits political horizons to narrow occupational interests and disrupts meaningful political voice. They emphasize the importance of integration into national labor unions and nationally federated associations that combine members with diverse ethnic and religious identities. This scaling up of organizations, and cooperation between national labor unions and tailors associations, has facilitated engagement with the state at the national level to lobby for social protection and other labor rights for workers in the informal economy. The resulting engagement of informal sector workers in a nationwide protest in 2012, alongside formal labor unions and other civil organizations, was hailed as a landmark of political as well as economic integration of informal actors, enhancing their political voice and enlarging tailors’ horizons of action beyond narrow occupational issues.
Taking a longer-term perspective, Prag’s analysis of the Mama Benz in Benin details the decline of an earlier federation of women traders associations, UNACOBE, under the pressures of Asian import competition and the politicizing effects of democratization. Instead of orchestrating a collective response to the economic pressures on the textile trade, the association fragmented into rival economic and personal patronage networks competing for the attention of the state to defend their own private business advantage. Possibilities for broader collaboration between these different networks and associations currently appears remote, even if some straddling between networks is occurring.
This suggests that organizations and alliances to facilitate equitable forms of inclusion are not without challenges. Linkages between informal enterprise associations and the state can disrupt rather than foster internal cohesion and political leverage. Yet as Andrae and Beckman suggest, the many constraints to organizing and upscaling in the informal economy indicate the need for strong allies in the struggle for inclusion on better terms (see also Bonner & Spooner Reference Bonner and Spooner2011). Recent research has focused on organizational linkages beyond the state, with formal civil society organization at the national or transnational level, though it is recognized that these, too, may be permeated by asymmetries, conditionalities, and practices of mediation and gate-keeping (Lindell 20101, 2011b; Mitullah 2010; Scheld Reference Scheld and Lindell2010). The articles by Dolan and Roll and by Andrae and Beckman examine the extent to which corporations or labor unions offer effective alternative allies in the struggles for more equitable modes of informal economic incorporation. Dolan and Roll suggest that BoP models of informal‒corporate alliances are unlikely to reverse tendencies toward adverse incorporation, qualifying the enthusiasm for transnational alliances. Andrae and Beckman are more sanguine about the prospects of linkages with labor unions and international NGOs for the facilitation of more equitable political as well as economic inclusion, notwithstanding the possible pitfalls of such arrangements. While in many cases the actors involved find pragmatic ways of working together, sustainable alliances with expanded benefits for both formal and informal constituencies require a consideration of divergences in interests and identity, as well as unequal power relations between the organizations (see Lindell Reference Lindell2011a).
Conclusion
Amid the trumpeting of new, more inclusive approaches to African informal economies, it behooves us to reflect critically on the novelty of what is taking place and to consider whether, in the past or in the present, inclusive initiatives are fostering equitable or adverse forms of incorporation. In a continent marked by a history of concession economies, indirect rule, postcolonial engagements in state-building, and intense experiences of neocolonialism, processes of bricolage and hybridity between formal and informal institutions have always been a part of development. The question is whose interests are driving these processes and what kinds of economic and political leverage are available to disadvantaged groups to help them garner decent terms of inclusion. This ASR Forum highlights the need to look beyond the celebratory rhetoric of inclusive economies to consider the diverse processes of economic restructuring, governance transformation, and informal political reorganization that are under way in various national and subnational contexts. It calls for a clearer focus on disconnections as well as connections between formal and informal economies, losers as well as winners within the informal economy, and the nature of power relations expressed through tactics of selectivity, discipline, and capture in the means by which informal institutions are insinuated into wider governance structures. The impact of these various processes on the terms of inclusion continues to be shaped by processes of political collaboration and contestation, both between formal and informal actors and organizations, and within the informal economy itself. These contributions explore the various ways in which inclusive economic initiatives from above as well as from below empower or disempower, divide or unite, and rebuild or fragment informal political agency.
The evidence presented here demonstrates that there is no single trajectory of economic and governance transformations arising from more inclusive approaches to African informal economies. However, even diverse trajectories produce structural outcomes that reshape the terms on which Africa’s informal workers are incorporated into national as well as global economies. The challenge is to trace these new processes of economic and governance restructuring operating across the formal and informal spheres, and to examine whose interests are served in the process. As Cleaver et al. point out, “If both designing new institutions and working with the grain of socially embedded institutions serves to reproduce inequalities of power, then what are the possibilities of fashioning more socially just and effective . . . [forms of] governance . . .” (184)? Mere inclusion is meaningless without a deep understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of informal economic institutions, combined with policy approaches that strengthen mutually beneficial collaboration and improve the political leverage of marginalized actors in determining the terms of their economic incorporation. This ASR Forum invites critical reflection on whether current efforts at informal economic inclusion are advancing African societies toward this goal.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank numerous reviewers for their insights and comments, and Ella Kusnetz for her editorial wizardry and tireless coordination during the process of bringing this all together. During the preparation of this ASR Forum, we were saddened by the passing of one of our contributors, Michal Lyons. She was a prolific scholar who contributed much to the field of informality in urban Africa, as well as a generous and supportive colleague and friend. She will be warmly remembered.
