The booming sound of a honking omnibus and a young man yelling out for commuters at 3 am shakes Marilyn out of her sleepy stupor. She yawns and stretches herself out of bed as she immediately begins preparing to go to the fruit and vegetable market, commonly known as Mbare musika, in Harare. To make ends meet and feed her three children, Marilyn must be at the market to meet with farmers by 5a.m, when the first traces of morning sunlight begin shimmering. After hoarding big bundles of fresh vegetables, she must repack them into smaller bundles in order to realise a profit. As she straps her last born son onto her back, she hopes that the municipal police will not raid the streets today, in busy areas of the city where she sells her commodities. Her friend Susan was unlucky yesterday after she was arrested by overzealous police and thrown into the back of a truck, together with her baby. Perhaps today will be better.
Marilyn’s story is a small glimpse into the everyday struggles of sub-Saharan African women making a living in the informal sector. African women have for long been entrapped in economic situations borne out of structural post-colonial inequalities. The creation of the informal sector was the result of the dual and enclave nature of most African economies inherited at independence. The male-dominated formal sector was secured by state policies and it co-existed with a women-dominated informal economy. The formal economy had and continues to have beneficial linkages to the global economy while the burgeoning informal sector remains consigned to the periphery of development discourse.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) defines the informal economy as "all economic activities by workers or economic units that are, in law or practice, not sufficiently covered by formal arrangements." This encompasses a wide range of jobs and economic activities with no work-based social protection, from street vending, home-based work, waste picking, domestic work to short-term contract work.
