Paper short abstract:

This paper considers how digital inclusion affects informal livelihoods in contemporary Africa. Focusing on the cases of mobile money and impact outsourcing, it explores how ICTs reshape economic opportunity in ways that intensify as well alleviate powerlessness and vulnerability.

Paper long abstract:

Until recently, information and communications technologies (ICTs) and African informal economies lay at opposite ends of the development spectrum. Since the turn of the millennium, however, rapid technical and infrastructural change have brought ICTs within reach of workers and consumers at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP). Commentators on the implications of ICTs for informal economic inclusion, especially in Africa, are most struck by their remarkable potential for inclusion in markets, services and jobs. ICTs create greater visibility, political recognition and self-organization of informal activities, promoting more inclusive planning and policy making.

Yet assessing the benefits of ICTs for the informal economy requires that we look beyond the hype to consider unintended side effects that may weaken the sustainability of informal livelihoods. Where terms of digital inclusion fail to recognize livelihood needs, organizational systems, economic aspirations, and social or economic constraints, ICTs may intensify rather than reduce the economic vulnerability of informal actors. Digital connections do not only disrupt formal economies, but can also cross-cut pre-existing structures and routines in the informal economy, bypassing and disadvantaging some precarious workers even as they include others.

Focusing on the cases of mobile money and impact outsourcing, this paper considers how ICTs reshape informal livelihoods, creating disconnections as well as connections, and intensifying as well alleviating powerlessness. Through a clearer assessment of the tensions between informal economic needs and digital solutions, this paper examines the key factors necessary for ICTs to support the creation of sustainable livelihoods for workers in the informal economy.