Introduction 1 INTRODUCTION Manfred Öhm, Julia Leininger and Henrik Maihack Informal labour plays a vital role in African economies and societies. In most African countries, between 80 and 95 per cent of the working population make a living working in the informal economy. But informality goes beyond the world of work and permeates other areas of people’s lives. Informality thus shapes how people live and how they interact with the state. Typically, people working and living in informality have less access to public services than people earning their income in the formal economy. They seldom benefit from social protection and are often not protected by labour and social legislation. Furthermore, the Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the conditions of many Africans living in infor­mality. Despite its vital role for African economies and societies, key aspects of the informal economy remain very much a black box. While statistics exist on the number of workers, who they are and where they work in more than 140 countries (ILO 2018), for several African countries little is known about informal workers’ expectations concerning state policies and how they organize to pursue their interests. The lack of empirical knowledge on the informal economy also blurs our view of public good provision, state–society relations in general and social protection in particular, as well as its relevance for people working in the informal economy. Although many African states’ capacities to provide public goods such as social protection are low when compared to other world regions(Clement 2020), governments still offer selective social measures to a minority of the population (Bhorat et al. 2019). Furthermore, for those who can afford it, private social protection schemes are an option. Numerous databases provide data on investment in social protection policies, but we know very little about the distribution or ad­equacy of these resources, not to mention the expectations, conditions and needs of people working in the informal economy in sub-Saharan Africa. The current unequal access to social protection is a question of distributional justice and has implications for social cohesion, that is, trustful and co­operative relations between citizens and between the state and society. While it is likely that the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic may erode social cohesion and increase the need for more reliable social protection schemes, we have very limited knowledge about the de facto needs and opinions of individuals – both in exceptional situations like a global pandemic and in day-to-day life. 1.1 RATIONALE FOR THE PROJECT The collaborative research project 1 »Informal Employment, Social Security and Political Trust in sub-Saharan Africa« attempts to open this black box by providing novel and substantial empirical insights into informality in African societies. It was initiated in 2018, before the outbreak of Covid-19 and offered an opportunity – from March 2019 onward – to include aspects of social protection during a pandemic in surveys. Overall, our surveys sheds new light on the broader political and societal context of informal labour, as well as specific questions related to the accessibility and existing social security programmes in the informal econ­omy in sub-Saharan Africa. It offers previously unavailable comparative and detailed data on people’s expectations of and trust in states’ ability to provide public goods, as well as on how people organize to pursue common goals. In so doing, the project focuses on health care and social security, as well as the organizational and governance context of the informal economy in six East, West and Southern African countries between 2018 and 2021. The surveys cover Benin, Ethiopia, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Senegal and Zambia. These six countries hosted 21 per cent of the African population in 2019(WB 2021) and 26 per cent of informal employment in sub-Saharan Africa(ILO 2022). The research project is motivated by the strong relevance of informal employment and its broader political and societal implications in Africa. The surveys were conducted against a background of social and economic transformation of Af­rican societies, which points to the increased importance of social protection. Rapid population growth and urbanization, combined with a lack of industrialization result in a lack of sufficient well-paid employment. The lack of access to public services underlines the urgency of improving social protec­tion and extending coverage to the informally employed. 1 Three collaborating partners – IDOS- the German Institute of Devel­opment and Sustainability(»German Development Institute[DIE]« before renaming in June 2022), the International Labour Organization and the ­Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation – have brought together their ex­pertise and interest in the topic. The Institute of Development Studies, the University of Nairobi, and Innovative Research in Economics and Governance(IREG), Cotonou, conducted the surveys in the respective countries. The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, as the main sponsor of the project, has received funding within the SEWOH – Special Initiative (»A World without hunger«) of the German Federal Ministry of Eco­nomic Cooperation and Development. 3