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Women and the Informal Economy in Urban Africa
In this highly original work, Mary Njeri Kinyanjui explores the trajectory of women's movement from the margins of urbanization into the centres of business activities in Nairobi and its accompanying implications for urban planning. While women in much of Africa have struggled to gain urban citizenship and continue to be weighed down by poor education, low income and confinement to domestic responsibilities due to patriarchic norms, a new form of urban dynamism - partly informed by the informal economy - is now enabling them to manage poverty, create jobs and link to the circuits of capital and labour. Relying on social ties, reciprocity, sharing and collaboration, women's informal 'solidarity entrepreneurialism' is taking them away from the margins of business activity and catapulting them into the centre. Bringing together key issues of gender, economic informality and urban planning in Africa, Kinyanjui demonstrates that women have become a critical factor in the making of a postcolonial city.
African Markets and the Utu-Ubuntu Business Model
The persistence of indigenous African markets in the context of a hostile or neglectful business and policy environment makes them worthy of analysis. An investigation of Afrocentric business ethics is long overdue. Attempting to understand the actions and efforts of informal traders and artisans from their own points of view, and analysing how they organise and get by, allows for viable approaches to be identified to integrate them into global urban models and cultures. Using the utu-ubuntu model to understand the activities of traders and artisans in Nairobi’s markets, this book explores how, despite being consistently excluded and disadvantaged, they shape urban spaces in and around the...
The Sweet Sobs of Women in Response to Anthropain
Anthropain is pain inflicted by human beings on other human beings. Women experience anthropain in the negotiation of their everyday lives. This book tells the stories of eight women and their reactions to anthropain encountered as they engage in their respective socio-economic and political struggles. The eight women are drawn from a village in Africa. They express their feminine utu (humanness) through what is termed here “sweet sobs.” They weep in pain, but turn their tears into creative energy that generates resilience, hope, productivity, inspiration, positive change, and sustainable development. This book is about shunning the ostrich mentality, avoiding living in denial, turning l...
Coffee Time
In Coffee Time, Mary Njeri Kinyanjui uses her childhood experiences in a rural coffee farm to show the struggles that farmers go through to earn a living. They linger in poverty as intermediaries along the coffee value chain rake huge profits. It is a story of trade injustice in an asymmetrical world.
Covid Stories from East Africa and Beyond
The coronavirus has rattled humanity, tested resolve and determination, and redefined normalcy. This compelling collection of 29 short stories and essays brings together the lived experiences of covid19 through a diversity of voices from across the African continent. The stories highlight challenges, new opportunities, and ultimately the deep resilience of Africans and their communities. Bringing into conversation the perspectives of laypeople, academics, professionals, domestic workers, youth, and children, the volume is a window into the myriad ways in which people have confronted, adapted to, and sought to tackle the coronavirus and its trail of problems. The experiences of the most vulnerable are specifically explored, and systemic changes and preliminary shifts towards a new global order are addressed. Laughter as a coping mechanism is a thread throughout.
Improvised Lives
The poor and working people in cities of the South find themselves in urban spaces that are conventionally construed as places to reside or inhabit. But what if we thought of popular districts in more expansive ways that capture what really goes on within them? In such cities, popular districts are the settings of more uncertain operations that take place under the cover of darkness, generating uncanny alliances among disparate bodies, materials and things and expanding the urban sensorium and its capacities for liveliness. In this important new book AbdouMaliq Simone explores the nature of these alliances, portraying urban districts as sites of enduring transformations through rhythms that mediate between the needs of residents not to draw too much attention to themselves and their aspirations to become a small niche of exception. Here we discover an urban South that exists as dense rhythms of endurance that turn out to be vital for survival, connectivity, and becoming.
Wanjiku in Global Development
The book captures the unwritten code that governs the conduct of women in the market place resulting in a win-win for players - Ubuntu. It offers lessons and an alternative to the cutthroat capitalistic competition in the marketplace.
Power and Informality in Urban Africa
Urban Africa is undergoing a transformation unlike anywhere else in the world, as unprecedented numbers of people migrate to rapidly expanding cities. But despite the growing body of work on urban Africa, the lives of these new city dwellers have received relatively little attention, particularly when it comes to crucial issues of power and inequality. This interdisciplinary collection brings together contributions from urban studies, geography, and anthropology to provide new insights into the social and political dynamics of African cities, as well as uncovering the causes and consequences of urban inequality. Featuring rich new ethnographic research data and case studies drawn from across the continent, the collection shows that Africa's new urbanites have adapted to their environs in ways which often defy the assumptions of urban planners. By examining the experiences of these urban residents in confronting issues of power and agency, the contributors consider how such insights can inform more effective approaches to research, city planning and development both in Africa and beyond.
Social Capital, Micro and Small Enterprises and Poverty-alleviation in East Africa
This book, based on an extensive review of literature and fieldwork, contributes to the growing discourse on social capital by examining its use as a strategy for an entry and stay in trade, manufacturing, transport and micro and small enterprises in East Africa. A social capital model in formulated and tested. The book shows how social capital has been articulated and utilized through networks, relationships, norms, values and actions to facilitate entry and stay in these enterprises. The book provides details on how entrepreneurs constantly construct their social capital and evolve business logic and practice that is used in business transactions. The book does not only focus on theory and empirical findings but also derives lessons for poverty-alleviation strategies. It reveals that there are limitations to the application of social capital when it comes to interaction and conflict between different stakeholders in transport enterprises. The political economy model was found to be appropriate in such a case, indicating that the social capital model can be used in combination with other theoretical frameworks.
