Two stories from Nigeria, one with spurious charges, the other with some significant thought.
1. The government of Edo state will prosecute street vendors because they are "miscreants who want to deface the city," The Vanguard newspaper reports. This is just more of the usual crazy talk. Street traders are too busy doing business to be defacing the city. They are the good guys.
2. The Daily Trust newspaper reports on the yam cartel in Jalingo, a small city in the Northeast of the country. The cartel apparently exploits women hawkers, giving them just 100 or 150 Naira per day to sell the tubers on the streets of the city. Hassana Audu, one the yam sellers, told the paper, "Everyday, I leave home as early as 7am to hawk yam tubers on the streets of Jalingo. Sometimes I make sales of between N5,000.00 to N7,000.00 per day. But by the end of the day I go home with only N150.00 as my commission." That's an income of little more than $1 a day.
2 comments:
hey robert. I just got passed onto your blog(s) by a reader. It's great. I am running a series about the informal job sector in Liberia, a country with a reported 85% unemployment rate, so thought you might be interested.
I couldn't find an email for you, so sorry for leaving this as a comment.
the series gettin by - http://esteyonage.blogspot.com/search?q=gettin%27+by
peaces
thanks, E. Great blog.
One question: what do Liberians call the 'informal economy?'
One thought: sometimes these activities are more than 'getting by.' Many informal traders are doing really well with their businesses....and are far beyond poverty.
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