Introduction: special issue on 'informal institutions and development in Africa'
Year: 2007
Type: editorial
Abstract: developmental potential of informal institutions has long been a subject of intense interest in Africa. Indeed, Africa has been the crucible of many of the concepts used to explore informal development processes. It was in West Africa that notions of the embedded development of market institutions emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, in the work of Curtin (1975), Meillassoux (1971) and Cohen (1969) on the efficiency of ethnic and religious trading systems. During the same period, the concept of social networks was forged in southern and central Africa to explore the role of informal ties of kinship, friendship and community in processes of urbanization and class formation (Mayer 1961; Mitchell 1969; Peace 1979). Perhaps most famously, Africa was also the cradle of the informal sector concept in Keith Hart's (1973) celebrated article on income generation among the urban poor in Accra. All of these concepts embeddedness, social networks and the informal sector have become central to illuminating the role of informal institutions in contemporary economic and political change in every region of the world. Yet in Africa, perspectives on informal organization have become shrouded in shadows. Despite growing interest in the role of African informal institutions, current research is often clouded by essentialist leanings and an apparent forgetfulness of earlier theoretical advances. Indeed, a survey of the literature on indigenous political and economic organization in contemporary Africa gives the impression that we actually know less about African informal institutions today than we did three decades ago, despite the dramatic expansion of informality and the flourishing of concepts to study it. Part of the problem lies in the particularly rapid expansion of informal economic and political institutions in contemporary Africa as a result of economic liberalization and state failure. Just after the turn of the millennium, the ILO (2002: 16) noted that 'in sub-Saharan Africa, the informal sector accounts for three-quarters of non-agricultural employment, having increased dramatically over the last decade from about two-thirds'. In the past two decades, African informal institutions have blurred formerly recognized conceptual boundaries between the formal and informal by expanding beyond peripheral sectors and cultural institutions to penetrate into the heart of modern economic and political organization. According to the ILO (2002), the informal economy accounts for 60% of Africa's urban labour force, and
Author: Kate Meagher
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2509364146