Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how digital mobility through motorcycles delivery of food and parcels enables Fintech economies to proliferate. While it rests and is expanded on legacy banking and legacy retail in South Africa and more specifically Cape Town, new frontiers are sought in this urban economy.

Paper long abstract:

Fintech – a portmanteau word - financial+ technology which involves tech innovations in old financial services of credit and insurance as well as new innovations through mobile money, mobile payments and cryptocurrency.

One of the dominant narratives associated with Fintech innovations is its disruptive effect on old financial architectures that have been historically difficult to penetrate. The proliferation of these innovations is attributed to the large number of ‘unbanked’ people on the African continent leading to a ‘development’ narrative of financial inclusion across income groups. In our research we considered these interfaces of fintech with the informal economy which extends and platforms these informal systems through digital mobility platforms enabled by motorcycles in Nairobi, Kigali and Cape Town.

In this paper I explore these novel extensions in Cape Town - the fintech capital of the continent. Firstly, I discuss the fintech boom through venture capital in Africa and consider its celebration as well as its academic critiques. I then explore fintech in the Cape Town context through a case that counters the dominant narratives of high-risk, high value, speculative returns. I also show how both old banking systems and retail sector align and use motorcycled platformed mobility and its riders - the men who do this kind of labour - to achieve these returns. Lastly, I open the floor to questions of data, risk and inequality for these emergent economies.

Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyze the reasons for the failure of attempts at professionalization by the public authorities, as well as the current process of digitalization of motorcycle taxi transport companies, based on the example of two companies, Gozem and Olé Togo

Paper long abstract:

Urban transport in the city of Lomé in Togo is now largely provided by informal motobike taxi operators. Despite the existence of unions and an interministerial decree regulating them, road insecurity and disorder are frequent in this sector. Their professionalization has recently become a priority for the public authorities, who laid the groundwork for their reorganization in 2014. Thus, the Delegation for the Organization of the Informal Sector (DOSI) undertook a professionalization program that was ultimately unsuccessful. This contribution aims to analyze the reasons for the failure of this professionalization attempt, and to analyze the current process of digitalization of motorcycle cab companies. We will use the case of two companies, "Gozem" and "Olé Togo", which are pioneers in the field of digital platforms that use the internet, smartphones and social networks as interactive communication tools between the driver and the user. How are these companies trying to adapt to the digitalization of passenger transport in order to professionalize their motorcycle cab services? It seems to us that the rise of this type of digital enterprise, which opens up new economic perspectives for informal motorcycle cab services, is part of the emerging forms of urban economy in Africa that deserve the attention of researchers.

Paper short abstract:

The success of Congo's baleinières lies above all in the skillful integration of mechanical, natural and muscular forces that unite in temporary bundles of 'artisanal infrastructure'. These challenge the rural-urban divide from an infrastructural point of view.

Paper long abstract:

Despite an alarming frequency of fatal accidents, wooden baleinières and their Chinese Diesel engines have considerably increased the transportation capacity on the DR Congo’s inland waterways. As grassroots innovations they have become indispensable for the arrival of food crops in Congo's waterborne cities, including prominently the capital Kinshasa.

This paper argues that the unprecedented success of baleinières lies above all in the interaction and skillful integration of mechanical, natural and muscular forces : three ethnographic instances show how the baleinière and its engines, the river and its current, and humans and their body techniques enter into mutual kinetic convergence and become momentary bundles of artisanal infrastructure that render the « hard » transport infrastructure inherited from the (post-)colony inadequate and obsolete.

The paper discusses these ethnographic insights from so-called "rural" Africa in light of recent scholarly work on urban infrastructure. The outcome challenges the rural-urban divide through the conceptual prism of infrastructure.

Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses the materiality of mobile-based extensions services in Da es Salaam, and it estimates the indirect effect of mobile phone on maize yields (as maize is the most popular staple crop in Tanzania).

Paper long abstract:

The agricultural sector accounts for over 30% of Tanzania’s gross domestic product (GDP) and provides employment to nearly 65% of the working force (FAO and ITU, 2022). While the agricultural sector is generally more prominent in rural areas, it has been also growing in the peri-urban areas. Dar-es-Salaam, for example, has an increasingly important urban agricultural sector. However, the country’s agricultural productivity remains generally poor. This is attributable to deficient communication between agricultural extension providers and smallholder farmers, among other factors. Extension here entails the application of new knowledge to farming practices through farmers’ education or sensitization. In Tanzania, agricultural extension services have traditionally been provided by the public sector under the coordination of the Ministry of Agriculture, with minimal involvement of the private sector. However, given the poor quality of infrastructures and the government’s inadequate funds and resources, the public sector has been fiercely criticized for its poor performance in delivering agricultural extension services.

In this context, Information and Communication Technologies ICTs, especially the mobile phones, are increasingly recognized as a potential substitute for improving the coverage of agricultural extension services. The increasing number of mobile phone owners in sub-Saharan Africa, including Tanzania, thus presents an exciting potential in improving smallholder farmers’ access to agricultural extension services. However, this new development also raises a few questions that also need to be addressed, such as how do mobile phones really transform the extension industry and to what extent do they affect farming practices and outcome?

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the economic factors of the rapid rural-urban transformation in the city of Manono, since the discovery of the largest lithium reserve. It aims at contextualizing and determining the conditions for the emergence of new economic and political-social phenomena with this advent.

Paper long abstract:

This article discusses the economic factors of rapid rural-urban transformation in the city of Manono, in the Province of Tanganyika, in the DRC. Drawing on political and socioeconomic analysis, the paper proposes an in-depth study of the case of Manono, since the discovery of the largest lithium reserve in the DRC. The article thus aims to better understand, contextualize, and determine the conditions for the emergence of new economic and socio-political phenomena in the region with the advent of the Lithium. A particular attention is given to the emerging influences from the central government and international investors on the local population in a context of booming development and urbanization.

On the one hand, there is the proactive role played by the central government for the benefit of relations with international investors. On the other hand, the ignorance of the simultaneous processes of decentralization creates a new arena for provincial governance, and involves all levels of government in the development of urban policies. As a result, there is a negative influence of the central power in a province of mineral abundance and a poor population.

Our reflection will therefore revolve around the following central question: how to explain the great poverty of the local population in a context of the mining boom (lithium) and rural-urban development?

At the outset, we will argue from the articulation of social relationships observed through the experience of the inhabitants of Manono. Next, we will follow the dynamics of urban growth influenced by the discovery of lithium.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will analyse the social mobility trajectories of construction workers in Douala. The aim is to offer a more detail picture of the dynamics and complexity of African urban economies, as well as the structure of the labour market, beyond the formal and informal divide.

Paper long abstract:

Based on a qualitative survey conducted between 2019 and 2022 in Douala, this paper aims to consider the complexity of the social mobility trajectories of Cameroonian construction workers. By focusing on sectoral logics, it will highlight the specific factors that determine these trajectories together with the actors’ social positions in the social space of the construction sector. This will allow us to better understand how different active figures are led to 'make a career' in this specific sector, by creating and mobilising different forms of resources to seize the opportunities available in the sector. In particular, we will examine the hierarchical structure of the sector, the various forms of social trajectories and the factors that affect them, as well as the dynamics of professional experiences. The later will provide an interesting avenue to question the actors’ social aspirations based on their own discourses. As we will show, these aspirations go beyond the ideal of the 'proper job' and the 'modern wage-earning citizenship', which constitute the hallmarks of the long history of development in Africa. From a theoretical point of view, this reflection offers a more detailed analysis of the dynamics and complexity of African urban economies, as well as the structure of the labour market, beyond the binary oppositions between formal and informal, standard and non-standard.

Paper short abstract:

Despite the arrival of major foreign companies in Dakar, urban dwellers largely get by through informal, hustling and brokering activities. However, in their struggles for livelihood, the formal and the informal, local and global, rural and urban, legal and illegal, are all entangled.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last decade, the Senegalese economy has become increasingly opened to investors. New resources have also been identified in the country’s soil. In this context, foreign companies and multinationals have flocked to Senegal for business. The arrival and bustling activity of these actors have raised much hope among urban dwellers that waged and informal employment would be available and thus that making a living would become easier.

Drawing on a detailed ethnography, this paper focuses on livelihood-making in Dakar and its relations with the increased presence of multinationals. Livelihoods in town nowadays are usually made through a daily frenzy. The struggle to get by contrasts starkly with the activities of these companies and the formal and well-paid jobs usually associated with them, and largely takes place at the margins of these firms. Making ends meet involves, for instance, a generalisation of so-called informal, hustling and brokering activities. Still, in this context, the formal and the informal, the local and the global, the rural and the urban, the legal and the illegal, are all entangled. This paper will address the connections emerging today between these categories.

Paper short abstract:

This paper follows the trajectories of three groups of “youth” actively involved in the economy of the central market in Kinshasa. The research explores how these trajectories reflect both a high degree of social improvisation and social disparities at the intersection of class and generation.

Paper long abstract:

In recent decades, youth as a research subject has attracted increasing interest in African anthropology (Thieme 2021; Cole & Durham 2009; Durham 2000; O'Brien 1996). While it is increasingly recognised that youth should not be conceived as a fixed age cohort (Trapido 2021; Watts 2018), it nevertheless remains a polarising research subject in many other respects. In studying youth participation in African urban economies, for instance, the risk is often to consider them either as liberal autonomous agents or as “overdetermined victims” (Durham 2000: 113; see also Thieme 2021). Expanding on Durham’s idea of the “social shifter”, we suggest that one way to overcome such dichotomy is to examine both individual youth trajectories as well as the history and processes of the social categorisation of youth. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted on Kinshasa’s informal economy between 2021 and 2023, this article shows the extent to which the participation of youth in the informal economy in Kinshasa reflects a high degree of social improvisation in the urban economy and highlights the creation of certain subjectivities. Moreover, the analysis also reveals that such categorisation results from and creates social disparities that are accentuated at the intersection of class and generation.