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Economic Empowerment and Livelihood

Book Review: Women and the Informal Economy in Urban Africa: From the Margins to the Centre

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The strength of this book lies in how the author brings to the surface the invisible dynamics of African women in economic informality, namely their mobilization, collective and individual entrepreneurship, pooling of resources (start-up capital) trust and codes among themselves, self-empowerment, and the continuous quest for justice. “Participation in economic informality is not only about survival, bread and power; it is about knowledge, autonomy and power relationships in the house-power and in the city. When these issues are dealt with at the household level, they translate spatially to the ward level and eventually to the city” (p, 86). What is so remarkable is that given their unprivileged backgrounds, one would expect that they would have been broken by the challenges of the underbelly of urban life. In Taveta Road, women came from myriad backgrounds in which they “were victims of patriarchy,” or confined by “the masculine-oriented tenor of city planning ideologies. Some had been hawkers, some were housewives, while others had worked in office or had already been workers in the informal economy.” (p, 92). Kinyanjui informs us that the “space for women’s business activities in the centre of town was not handed over to the women on a silver platter.” (p, 90).

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Publication Information
: .,
Number of Pages
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ISBN
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Language
English
ISSN
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Subject(s)
Kenya
Solidarity
Informal Economy
Urban Africa
Deprived African women
urban Nairobi environment
African indigenous concepts
Mobility
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Type
Article
Part Of Series
Journal of International Women’s Studies;Vol. 19, No. 2
DOI Identifier
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