Remaking Africa's Informal Economies: Youth, Entrepreneurship and the Promise of Inclusion at the Bottom of the Pyramid

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Main author: Dolan, Catherine
Other authors: Rajak, Dinah
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-19416
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
description In recent years, the quest for ‘inclusive markets’ that incorporate Africa’s youth has become a key focus of national and international development efforts, with so-called bottom of the pyramid (BoP) initiatives increasingly seen as a way to draw the continent’s poor into new networks of global capitalism. SSA has become a fertile frontier for such systems, as capital sets its sights on the continents’ vast ‘under-served’ informal economies, harnessing the entrepreneurial mettle of youth to create new markets for a range of products, from solar lanterns and shampoo to cook stoves and sanitary pads. Drawing on ethnographic research with youth entrepreneurs, we trace the processes of individual and collective ‘transformation’ that the mission of (self-) empowerment through entrepreneurship seeks to bring about. We argue that, while such systems are meant to bring those below the poverty line above it, the ‘line’ is reified and reinforced through a range of discursive and strategic practices that actively construct and embed distinctions between the past and the future, valuable and valueless, and the idle and productive in Africa’s informal economies.
format Journal Article
author Dolan, Catherine
author_facet Dolan, Catherine
Rajak, Dinah
authorStr Dolan, Catherine
author_letter Dolan, Catherine
author2 Rajak, Dinah
author2Str Rajak, Dinah
title Remaking Africa's Informal Economies: Youth, Entrepreneurship and the Promise of Inclusion at the Bottom of the Pyramid
publisher Taylor and Francis
publishDate 2016
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/19416/

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