Africa's Informal Workers is a vigorous examination of the informalization and casualization of work, which is changing livelihoods in Africa and beyond.
Gathering cases from nine countries and cities across sub-Saharan Africa, and from a range of sectors, this volume goes beyond the usual focus on household 'coping strategies' and individual agency, addressing the growing number of collective organizations through which informal workers make themselves visible and articulate their demands and interests. The emerging picture is that of a highly diverse landscape of organized actors, providing grounds for tension but also opportunities for alliance. The collection examines attempts at organizing across the formal-informal work spheres, and explores the novel trend of transnational organizing by informal workers.
Part of the ground-breaking Africa Now series, Africa's Informal Workers is a timely exploration of deep, ongoing economic, political and social transformations.
The last decade has witnessed the rise of a great number of transnational social movements and activist networks. While many of these movements have been initiated in the North, some are driven by people from the Global South with the aim of addressing various forms of destitution and asserting a variety of basic economic and cultural rights. Such transnational organizing is increasingly evident in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some of these initiatives relate particularly to the growing numbers ofpeople depending on forms of informal work for survival. This edition of Current African Issues looks into the transnationalization of a local association of informal workers as it becomes involved in an international network of grassroots organizations. While this transnational engagement opens up new political possibilities, it also poses new challenges. Participation in international activities is highly unequal and mediated rather than direct, as influential actors engage in practices of gate-keeping that tend to work to the disadvantage of women. Tensions also emerged as a result of the divergent gender ideologies espoused by different participants. The paper draws on various theoretical perspectives on spatial politics in the global age to interrogate the unequal and contested spatialities of this transnational activism. Feminist scholarship sheds further light on the gendering processes at work in the transnationalization of a grassroots association.
South Africa was expecting to benefit by hosting the World Cup 2010. For urban disadvantaged groups, however, the reality proved very different. Street vendors and marketers were among the excluded. Evictions caused many of them to lose their livelihoods, and strict regulations made it difficult for them to derive economic benefit from the mega-event. This Policy Note explores their predicament, as well as the responses of grassroots organizations. Finally, lessons are drawn for cities aspiring to host similar events in the future.