Project lead
Philipa Birago Akuoko
Abstract
There is a growing discourse on the economic importance of cities to overall national development. In many African countries, the informal sector plays a significant role in this national development. The informal economy consists of independent, self-employed small-scale casual workers, producers and distributors of goods and services. In sub-Saharan cities, the informal sector contributes to over 30 percent of countries' GDP and is a metonym of the African economy. Yet, they are often the target of exclusion in the attempt to enhance the infrastructural capacities of these cities for economic development. By implementing planning policies and recommendations from international organisations such as the United Nations and the International Labour Organisation, governments of sub-Saharan African cities aspire to develop their cities to the global city status by calling for infrastructure growth and urban space redevelopment. This infrastructure is implemented through partnerships with multinational corporations and international organisations that target the so-called informal settlement areas and designated open spaces that are occupied and mainly used by casual workers in the informal sector. These casual workers depend on these spaces for their productive, economic and livelihood sustenance activities. In addition to their exclusion in national labour laws and regulations, these casual workers, primarily women, are displaced or forcefully evicted to make way for such infrastructural transformations of the urban cities. Recent work on this phenomenon demonstrates that informal workers affected in these cities find various pathways of engagement to establish their presence in the governance of these cities. By discussing opens spaces or so-called informal settlement areas as forms of common pool resource. The study proposes to explore the governance of the urban space in Ghana in line with the Institutional Political Economy by adapting the Institutional Resource Regime framework. The institutional political economy emphasizes the impact of historical and socio-political factors on the evolution of economic practices in places while the institutional resource regime focuses on the ownership and rights to a resource as well as the policies regulating the use and protection of these resources. The study posits that the exclusion of informal sector workers from the governance of market space as common pool resources does not produce sustainable economic and social development in cities.
The central objective of the study is to analyse the informal economy as a socio-political entity in the governance of global south cities. This goal will be achieved by identifying all actors using market spaces, establish their access rights, the institutions in place to govern the market spaces, and strategies employed by these actors to resolve conflicts in reaction to displacement and evictions in cities. Moreover, through the institutional political economy approach and the adaption of the institutional resource regime framework, the study will assess the institutions produced by the interaction of the various users of the market space resource, the institutions governing their use, the conflicts that arise from these interactions and how these conflicts are resolved to produce sustainable resource and resource uses. The sustainable development goals, targets, and indicators of the SDGs 1 will be adapted as the measures to evaluate the sustainability of the market space as a resource. One overarching question and four sub questions are adapted to achieve the objective of this study as listed below:
Major research question: How can the governance of open market spaces involve the informal economy workers towards sustainable economic and social development of cities?
The minor research questions to guide the study are:
- How and why does the governance of open market spaces affect sustainable development?
- What are some of the social, political, and economic outcomes of governing open market spaces in cities on development?
- What constitutes and informs policy implementation in the governance of open market spaces?
- What does the governance of open market spaces in Africa cities mean for women, work, and wellbeing?
Methodology
The conflicting interactions of the informal economy and urban governance over the right to access and use open market in sub-Saharan cities presents a good case for an academic enquiry into how the goals, targets and indicators of the SDGs can still be attained by Ghana, a member state. The study is based on the redevelopment of two open market space. Agbobloshie’s Onion market and scrapyard in Accra, a major informal site that has been in the informality discourse for over 2 decades but still struggled to be governed efficiently by city officials and the Kejetia/Central market in Kumasi, the largest open market in West Africa that serves as an economic hub to the West African sub region. The study proposes to focus on SDGs 1 and 8; the SDG 1 advocates to “ending poverty in all its forms everywhere”. While the SDG 8 proposes to “promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all”.
Discipline
Geography
Supervision
Prof. Dr. Jean-David Gerber, University Of Bern
