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Paper short abstract:

Shared taxis are one of the informal urban transportation infrastructure in Bobo-Dioulasso. Faced with precarity, taxi drivers have transformed their car to run on gas. Despite being forbidden by the State, this practice is a manifestation of a 'revenge of context' to combat mobility injustice.

Paper long abstract:

Urban public transport in the global South, and particularly in Africa, is dominated by informal transport. While its presence is partly related to the temporal instability of public enterprises, informal transport, like shared taxis, is the most adapted to the socio-economic realities of cities like Bobo-Dioulasso. This city and its residents undergo precarity due to the consequences of an economic crisis because of certain State policies and the increase in fuel prices. Instead of creating mobility injustice, this precarity has created possibilities from below that shape today's urban transport sector in Bobo-Dioulasso.

In this city, many taxi drivers, with the collaboration of local car mechanics and thanks to expertise from neighbouring countries like Ghana, have transformed their cars to run on subsidized gas instead of expensive fuel. In doing so, mobility remains cheap and allows city dwellers and taxis drivers facing precarity to move around the city and continue to be the breadwinners for their families. This paper, therefore, highlights how city dwellers (drivers and passengers), in the face of precarity, find their own way, shaping their right to move beyond the framework designed by the state. Indeed, while running cars locally transformed to run on gas is seen as dangerous and forbidden by the state, which has set subsidies for ecological purposes, city dwellers see this practice as a manifestation of a “revenge of context” (De Sardan, 2021). For once, they are taking advantage of the state to fight against mobility injustice.

Key words: Bobo-Dioulasso-Gas Taxi-Mobility Injustice