Growing awareness of the size and organizational potential of informal economies in the era
of globalization has triggered a profusion of research on linkages between the formal and …

James Ferguson examines the rise of social welfare programs in southern Africa in which
states give cash payments to their low income citizens. These programs, Ferguson argues …

Money from Nothing explores the dynamics surrounding South Africa's national project of
financial inclusion—dubbed" banking the unbanked"—which aimed to extend credit to black …

Drive the streets of Nairobi, and you are sure to see many matatus—colorful minibuses that
transport huge numbers of people around the city. Once ramshackle affairs held together …

During the Zimbabwean crisis, millions crossed through the apartheid-era border fence,
searching for ways to make ends meet. Maxim Bolt explores the lives of Zimbabwean …

The article explores the ways in which FinTech is constituted as a platform economy in two
African countries, Kenya and South Africa. Investigating the intersection of FinTech with the …

A wealth of new writing has emerged around the future of labour, focusing on thinking
beyond employment in imagining the futures of 'surplus populations' no longer needed by …

In Street Archives and City Life Emily Callaci maps a new terrain of political and cultural
production in mid-to late twentieth-century Tanzanian urban landscapes. While the …

Informal entrepreneurship is increasingly presented as the solution to youth unemployment
in South Africa. This reflects a new development paradigm that views the informal economy …

Set in one of the world's most unequal and violent places, this ethnographic study reveals
how insurance companies discovered a vast market of predominantly poor African clients …