Paper short abstract:

The paper presents a case of female market traders in the Bamenda grasslands region in Cameroon, who are professionally engaged in the "buyam-sellam" market trade. The paper discusses ways in which female traders generate capital to their micro businesses through informal, rotating credit groups.

Paper long abstract:

Informal trade is crucially important in Cameroon, where 90% of jobs are found in the informal sector. Informal economy in Cameroon is growing and for many, informal trade is the only option for survival. In Cameroon, women's contribution to household incomes is significant. This paper presents a case of female market traders in the Bamenda grasslands in the Anglophone region of Cameroon, who are professionally engaged in the "buyam-sellam" market trade. The paper focuses on how market traders create capital for their micro businesses through informal njangi gatherings or meetings (rotating credit circles). The weekly or monthly meetings provide an important insight into market trade and its connectedness to money and networks (social and business) and the way in which they are intermingled: the meetings have an economic as well as social aspect. The meetings serve as important means to obtain much needed business capital or micro loans for business. Money is central to the livelihoods of people, money symbolically equals to life. In njangis, when people have their turn to receive the money pot, it is called to chop moni (to eat money). The importance of money in the markets is highlighted in the way which people talk or avoid the topic of money, and how suspicions will raise of owning much money, or jealousy of somebody's business generating more money than others. The paper will discuss the market trade in relation to money circulation, rotating credit circles and money flows between big town markets and village markets.