Street Traders and the Emerging Spaces for Urban Voice and Citizenship in African Cities

Alison Brown, Michal Lyons and Ibrahima Dankoco
Additional contact information
Alison Brown: School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WA, UK, brownam@cardiff.ac.uk
Michal Lyons: Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences, London South Bank Univesity, Borough Road, London, SE1 0AA, UK, lyonsm@lsbu.ac.uk
Ibrahima Dankoco: Faculté des Sciences, Économiques et de Gestion, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Senegal, idankoco@yahoo.fr

Urban Studies, 2010, vol. 47, issue 3, 666-683

Abstract: As informal commerce has grown to become the lifeblood of African cities, street trade—among the largest sub-groups in the informal economy—has become a visible but contested domain. Yet the increase in street traders has not been accompanied by a corresponding improvement in their status as citizens or in their political influence. The paper first discusses the implications of theoretical debates on ‘citizenship’ and ‘voice’ for street traders and then explores characteristics of traders’ associations and influence in four case study countries: Senegal, Ghana, Tanzania and Lesotho. Drawing together the authors’ findings from research between 2001 and 2008, the paper identifies a fluidity of both formal and informal traders’ organisations which fail to achieve lasting impact. Finally, the paper discusses urban policy implications, arguing for a more flexible definition of urban citizenship based on rights and responsibilities, and an understanding of the complexity of grassroots associations of the marginalised poor.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098009351187 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:47:y:2010:i:3:p:666-683

DOI: 10.1177/0042098009351187

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().