The World Mind

American University's Undergraduate Foreign Policy Magazine

How African Women Navigate Urban Geographies Through Radical Incrementalism

AfricaCaroline Grossman

According to the World Bank, the urban informal sector anchors economic activities across the African continent, accounting for nearly 80% of jobs for African urban dwellers. These are especially pervasive for youth in cities between the ages of 15 and 24, with over 90% of them being women (Guven & Karlen, 2020). The sector itself is difficult to miss among a conventional African urban geography that embodies modernity and thus, urban dynamism. Street merchants and vendors are crucial to ensure food security across the city; craftsmen, manufacturers, and repairers of goods and services, and those who work in the transportation of goods and services keep the world-class city and the economy rapidly moving, among several other tasks that are integral to maintaining urban landscape. In terms of what specifically is meant by the ‘urban informal sector,’ though difficult to define succinctly by several scholars and economists, statistics clearly suggests that it is defined as merely the residual difference between a nation’s total economic activity and the well-recorded economic activity of the formal sector. The informal sector is neither taxed nor monitored by any form of government and absorbs the city’s unemployed population. Persons employed by the urban informal sector typically work a variety of ad hoc jobs that vary across cities, resulting in low wages and substandard living conditions (Fukuchi, 1998, pp. 225-56). The urban informal sector cannot be considered without women as they heavily contribute to the trading and transportation of food and clothes across the city (Kanyinjui, 2014, pp. 1-3). Low productivity and earnings are fostered by the urban geographies of rapidly urbanizing or world-class cities in Africa, which champion spaces that operate on higher-value markets, such as markets that are worth more to customers than commodity products like technology, information, tourism, analytics etc. In turn, the informal sector is pushed to the periphery of the city and is financially excluded from the market. This results in the physicality of urban informal settlements or “slums.” Slums typically consist of human-constructed, sub-standard settlements that lack access to basic services like water and electricity (Ranganathan, 2019). 

Workers of the urban informal sector build human capital or useful attributes in the informal sector production process. Human capital is present under social protections as informal sector workers can prevent the sale of productive assets in the event of shocks as well as the promotion of savings to build resilience. But not all urban dwellers are granted social protections; informal sector businesses are excluded from the formal sector and hindered from making reliable business transactions, accessing credit for productive investments, and accumulating savings for unanticipated risks. With no social protections and little to no savings, the unadulterated economic downsides emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic have annihilated many of the livelihoods of African workers in the informal sector. Nonetheless, the role of Africa’s informal sector is only estimated to grow at exponential rates as not only Africa’s population itself increases, but as urbanization persists (Guven & Karlen, 2020). Therefore, African cityscapes are likely to thrive, but most of their residents will not. Perhaps the city will boom as private sector actors like urban planners, who have autonomy over governing the city, rely on the informal sector agents or those who work for the informal sector. Yet private sector actors have no interest in investing in social protections of the millions of informal sector agents living in the cities they construct.

According to Mary Njeri Kinyanjui, a key contributor to the political and social dynamics of the informal economy in Africa, notably on the East African coast, are social networks emerging from friendship and kinship. These close social networks are important in reinforcing the strength of their businesses through emotional support, advice, skill-sharing and training, business start-ups, information, social protection, and rotational credit services. Social networks within the informal economic sector have been documented as especially important among poor women. The informal sector is where intersecting networks of trust, kinship, ethnicity, marital status, among several other facets present themselves and promote the development of social networks.

Evolving from social networks are collective organizations, which are an important aspect of the operations of the African informal economy. Kinyanjui emphasizes that they enable the scaling up necessary to promote the potential for political intervention. This modality would be particularly strategic for the informal sector because it differs from less comprehensive approaches to the sector that are primarily focused on structural and welfare-based interventions (Kanyinjui, 2014, pp. 99-101). Despite the stigmatization and subordination of female urban informal workers, they are crucial to the urban economy and the ecology of the city. Thus, to facilitate their integral roles, female informal workers have collectively self-organized in a multitude of ways across African urban landscapes to permeate their Indigenous market work in the city. 

Chapter 8 of Kinyanjui’s book details the types of social networking among women specific to Nairobi’s informal sector. She indicates that informal workers, namely women, collectively organize themselves in what is referred to as vyama. This is a level of solidarity used for organizing among women in the informal sector. Typically, vyama involves bolstering both economic and social action. Its fundamental principle rests on the notion that urban marketplaces are vicious and patriarchal environments. Thus, social and economic networks and interactions like vyama among women promote their survival in the marketplace (Kanyinjui, 2014, p. 105). In a case study conducted on Taveta Road traders in Nairobi, women are seen joining collective organizations in search of solidarity, to find a sense of identity, and a sense of belonging to a community. The female subjects of the study iterate that the chama, an investment in social capital, is what reinforces their belonging in vyama. The conclusion is that on an individual level without notions of vyama or the chama, there is less incentive for these women to engage in their work in the city due to a lack of economic and social support (Kanyinjui, 2014, p. 102). 

Moreover, the chama cha soko, the street market association, is the first level of social and economic collective organization among female informal sector workers in Nairobi. In essence, it is a bridge between the city council and the informal sector and requires daily contributions from its female members. Contributions include security maintenance, cleanliness of business premises, coordination of trade affairs, dispute resolution, and handling of the opening and closing of business premises. The chama cha soko is reinforced by a tangible constitution in which rules and regulations for traders are enforced. It differs from informal economy associations in Latin America or South Africa, for instance, in that the chama cha soko is less likely to counteract government agendas. 

Rather, the intent of the chama cha soko is to ensure that the interests of informal sector workers are not pushed aside for private sector interests on behalf of actors governing the city. When necessary, the chama cha soko mobilizes its constituents to the means necessary to achieve justice for the informal economy. Further, among its constituents, the chama cha soko promotes a nature of toughness. Those within this level of the collective organization who do not abide by the trading rules are subject to k̃uhandwa, or “being brought to the ground level.” In other words, an individual who breaks or bends trading rules can be subject to expulsion from the market (Kanyinjui, 2014, p. 105). 

In Durban, South Africa, an emerging world-class city known for its influences from colonization and India, navigation of urban informality takes an activism approach. The film, A Place in The City/Trying to Find A Voice, investigates slum residents’ efforts to speak out against agendas that trump private property rights over the livelihoods of urban informal. In recent years, residents of the Foreman Road and Motala Heights slums have been confronted with the war of attrition, which is the prolonging of a war or conflict period in which each actor attempts to defeat the other through small-scale behaviors. City planners have also executed a world-class city in Durban. The implementation of the astronomical Moses Mabhida soccer stadium in 2009 for the 2010 World Cup intended to displace slum dwellers from Foreman Road and Motala Heights. To forward this aim, Durban’s governance agenda has been depriving its periphery and ultimately, slum dwellers, of electricity. Informal settlements also lack other basic sanitation services or accounts in the market despite their presence on state property. According to the film, in Durban, about 40% of working-age adults are unemployed or unaccounted for in the market (Morgan, 2008). 

Amidst this unadulterated inequality, urban informal residents of Foreman Road and Motala Heights have mobilized themselves into an activist group known as the Abahlali, to confront the state’s agenda with hopes for a more just urban informal environment. The residents identify the call-to-action in which they desire from the governance actors of city planning. They identify the following as key needs: housing that actually supports the families in settlements (e.g. houses with more than two bedrooms to accommodate a family) and stagnancy of informal settlements, specifically in Motala Heights, as opposed to relocation to Nazareth. According to female residents, staying in Motala heights would provide them with opportunities to learn trading and entrepreneurship skills necessary for work in the marketplace (Morgan, 2008). 

Abahlali activists are comprised of slum residents in Durban that have evolved from a local development committee. In the film, activists emphasize that though they are fighting for justice and a place in the city, the bedrock of their theory of change is to assert that they are poor. They contend that even when given a house by the government, it should be sold and that they will ultimately return to their shack in the periphery of the city (Morgan, 2008). They do so to push against the stigma of informality, proving that it is not impossible to live in a slum. Within the Abahlali activist group, though including both men and women and spearheaded by a male, S’bu Zikode, women have made courageous strides at exercising the heart of the movement.

Due to their critical role in the informal economy and the interminable burdens they face compared to their male counterparts, they have had to sacrifice things in both physical and economic ways. For instance, Mariet Kikine, an Abahlali activist, describes how despite her nonviolent protesting, she was shot six times by the police (Morgan, 2008). This reveals the intersectionality of police violence against African women in the urban landscape of post-apartheid South Africa. In an interview with several female Abahlali activists in Motala Heights inquiring why they would not prefer to relocate from their current settlements to Nazareth, they explain the opportunities to learn trading and entrepreneurship and the social stability they have in Motala Heights (Morgan, 2008). Several women have raised their children in Motala Heights and thus, have a sense of stability, social networking, and are aware of the procedures of marketplace activities in place.

Moreover, radical incrementalism as a theory of change in an urban context is best understood by South African sociologist, Edgar Pieterse, in his book, City Futures: Confronting the Crisis of Urban Development, as the notion that the drive of urbanity is to promulgate radical change amidst all the idealistic aspects of ‘the city.’ Simultaneously, the necessary austerity and burdens of incremental change stand in contempt of radical change. Thus, it is the only way to intervene in a vicious microcosm of hyper-capitalism and modernity (Pieterse, 2013, p. 134). Through both the social networking and collective organizing of women in Nairobi and the mobilization on the ground in Durban, both radical and incremental theories of changes are invoked to promote justice in urban informal settlements. 

The chama cha soko’s communication with the government to promote social protection for the urban informal sector conveys that this group has organized communication with governance actors, especially their private sector counterparts. It conveys adaptability and acceptance of the urban dynamics in place. However, their by-the-means-necessary approach to resistance against the government especially parallels Pieterse’s notion of radical incrementalism. This is because they have not adopted a more violent approach to seeking justice and protection. If they had, they would have deemed contention a larger part of their agenda. 

The Abahlali activists invoke a radical incrementalism theory of change through community mobilization of nonviolent protesting of both women and men. A notable example of demonstrations by the Abahlali activists, especially the women from Motala Heights, is their rejection of displacement or even a home. In part, they claim that this is from the lasting social networks and familial roots they have established there. Considering their rejection of displacement or houses from the government, they embrace the structure of informal settlements, ultimately pushing back on perceptions that slums are insurmountable. In doing so, they have accepted the capitalist system in place that enables urban informality. Female Abahlali activists also exemplify resilience in their nonviolent activism yet are still targeted by hyper-capitalist forces like the police system. For example, Mariet Kikine, who was shot six times by an officer at a demonstration that became violent due to police action, was overpowered by a capitalist entity at that moment. 

Though calling-to-action different ways to bring about justice in the urban informal sector, women from both the Abahlali and the chama cha soko exhibit a level of solidarity with one another to promulgate their agendas. Both agendas emphasize the importance of social protection over their environments in different ways yet work within a broader system to foster small change. They also push back on conventional perceptions and rhetoric regarding slum resistance as neither of the women in these groups exercised violence on their capitalist counterparts unless it was declared necessary to do so. Unsurprisingly, this is when a capitalist force has intervened in a group’s organizing or demonstration.

Fundamentally, through examining the chama cha soko of Nairobi and the Abahlali activists of Durban, the female urban informal sector workers adopt a radical incrementalist theory of change. The chama cha soko exercises collective organizing to ultimately show hybridized reforms between capitalist entities and the informal economic sector. Moreover, the Abahlali activists in Durban foster community mobilization to form demonstrations in order to communicate with governance actors and capitalist entities, with female activists exhibiting particular resilience against such overpowering actors and entities. 

A conclusion that can be deduced from these radical incrementalism theories of change is the notion that urban informality is not a product of inherent disorder. Instead, it is a product of governance actors’ and capitalist entities’ inability to construct models to fit the schema of disorder. In turn, women subordinated and marginalized by these urban outcomes on the African continent have been challenged with the interminable impacts of informality. Instead of overt radical resistance, they are working within a system that has consistently worked against their favor. Avenues for further research may extrapolate beyond these two cases of the Abahlali activists and the chama cha soko to discover a greater understanding of radical incrementalism among women in the informal sector. Perhaps another theory of change may be invoked when analyzing additional approaches from African women in their promulgation of social protections over their urban informal environments.

References

Fukuchi, T. (1998, September). A Simulation Analysis of the Urban Informal Sector: 

Introduction. In The Developing Economies. (pp. 225-256)

Guven, M., & Karlen, R. (2020, December 3). Supporting Africa's Urban Informal sector: 

Coordinated policies with social protection at the core. Retrieved from 

https://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/supporting-africas-urban-informal-sector-coordinat

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Kinyanjui, M. N. (2014). Women’s collective organizations and economic informality. In Women 

and the informal economy in urban Africa: From the margins to the centre (pp. 99-117). 

London, UK: Zed Books. 

Morgan, J. (Director & Producer), & Grey Street Films. (2008). A Place in The City/Trying To 

Find A Voice [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NG2v9On4h4

Pieterse, E. A. (2013). City futures: Confronting the crisis of urban development. London, UK: 

Zed Books.

Ranganathan, M. (2019, March). "Liberal" Urban Planning. Lecture presented at Guest Lecture 

in World Politics Course in American University School of International Service, 

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