Selling to eat: petty trading and traders in peri-urban areas of sub-saharan Africa

Conclusions:

• The proliferation of petty traders in most peri-urban areas can be interpreted as an unhealthy symptom of economic underdevelopment. Employment problems and low incomes, as well as an increase in the number of migrants and refugees are reasons for the growth in the petty trade sector in the two study areas, as well as throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. With access to farmland and lucrative wage employment highly problematic, recent migrants enter the street trade in order to survive. While petty trading allows this group of traders to survive (at very low levels of welfare), it represents a large underclass of unemployed and underemployed
• Trading can be a quick strategy for earning money compared to other economic activities and trading demands much less capital investment than farming or other business ventures
• Difficult access to agricultural land in the peri-urban areas is also an important reason why poorer households often are "pushed" into the less remunerative forms of petty trade
• Restricted access to agricultural land has contributed to the rapid proliferation of trading activities. Even households with agricultural land must earn incomes from 'trading to eat'. Very few traders have access to farms near the city where land is scarce and prices are high. While upper income traders can accumulate significant levels of capital from peri-urban commerce, among poorer traders restricted access to either land or lucrative waged employment compels them to engage in petty trade
• From the vantage point of the peri-urban trader, the effects of economic restructuring are revealed in locations--peri-urban areas--of heightened commercial activity and competition that are generally different from other regions of a country. These areas usually have better access to markets and infrastructure than elsewhere, but also attract poor migrants and the unemployed
• In short, differentiation rather than homogeneity is the norm, and as has been the case for economies throughout the continent, the economic 'winners' have tended to be males