FRIEDRICH-EBERT-STIFTUNG – A majority working in the shadows 7 IS THE INFORMAL ECONOMY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA ORGANIZED? AND IF SO, HOW? Jürgen Schwettmann and Rudolf Traub-Merz 7.1 INTRODUCTION – HISTORICAL BACKGROUND This report explores, on the basis of a survey covering 8,300 households in six sub-Saharan African countries, whether, how and why people employed in the region’s informal economies are organized. This is an aspect that has long been neglected by governments, researchers and develop­ment partners. After the wave of independence movements in Africa in the 1960s, many African leaders invested con­siderable efforts and resources in the promotion of coopera­tives, as a means of achieving their vision of African socialism as a home-grown»third way« between capitalism and communism. Targeting mainly rural areas, these»coopera­tives« were provided with marketing and supply monopolies and de facto compulsory membership, and placed under stringent government control. All these experiments failed, however, as did the socialist cooperative model promoted in the 1970s and the 1980s in Ethiopia and the former Por­tuguese colonies in Africa. Government control over, and support for, cooperatives diminished substantially during Africa’s structural adjustment era, which lasted from 1980 to 1999 and affected almost all African countries. Structural adjustment programmes entailed the systematic withdrawal of monopolies, privileges and subsidies hitherto granted to cooperatives. At the same time, frustrated by the failure of state-sponsored cooperative organizations, international donors withdrew much of their support for cooperative de­velopment in Africa. All this led to the rapid collapse of most state-sponsored cooperative movements in Africa. The disappearance of the state-controlled cooperative model, however, went hand in hand with the re-emergence of myriad»non-traditional« types of self-help initiatives ac­tive in areas such as housing, energy, handicrafts, finance, culture, recycling, transport, marketing, mining and social services, including informal sector associations and other forms of member-based organizations. The latter, largely ignored until the end of the last century, have been moving, during the past twenty years, into the centre of interest of researchers and development practitioners(including the ILO), not least because structural adjustment has acceler­ated the informalization of African economies, while at the same time curtailing social services and weakening public services. Informal economy actors, overlooked by the state, trade unions and the professional associations of the formal economy have no alternative but to organize themselves in order to obtain a minimum of protection and representation. Until recently, research into the organizational aspects of the informal economy 1 has focused mainly on the role of trade unions in organizing the informal economy, or has analysed specific types of organizations, such as cooperatives, mutual benefit groups and and rotating savings and credit associa­tions(ROSCAs). A comprehensive overview of the organiza­tional strength and diversity of Africa’s informal economy is still missing; the present survey helps to close this gap. 7.2 INFORMAL ECONOMY ORGANIZATIONS: AN OVERVIEW Informal economy actors(independent entrepreneurs, small­holder farmers, the self-employed and informally employed workers) are excluded from much of the security and protec­tion that the state extends to the formal economy; they are not covered by labour law and social protection schemes; they lack recognition, appreciation and representation; and they hardly take part in political and administrative decision-mak­ing. Forming associations, cooperatives and self-help groups may be the most promising way in which informal economy actors can obtain economic opportunities, social security, political weight and a shared identity. But do they actually come together to form such organizations? What types of organization do they prefer? And what motivates individuals to become members of a group? We address these issues, and a few others, in what follows. 7.2.1 Organizational density and types of groups The proportion of informal economy actors who are mem­bers of a group of any type is shown in Figure 7.1. In the six surveyed countries, about half(51.8 per cent) of all informally employed people are organized in a group. The degree of organization varies significantly between the six countries. Benin has an organizational density of 36.1 per cent compared with 70.5 per cent in Senegal. 1 See, for example: Lindell(2010), Bonner and Spooner(2011), Schwet­tmann(2018) or the numerous working papers published by WIEGO (Women in the informal economy – globalizing and organizing). 58