Microenterprise: Macroeconomic environment: Revisiting Kenya's informal (jua kali) sector against the background of the formal globalising economy

Urban planning and small-scale enterprises in Nairobi, Kenya

“…In Nairobi, the economic hardships have led to high inflation and a wage freeze in the formal sector. This wage freeze has resulted in some people opting to work in the informal sector which is growing rapidly and where some branches offer higher wages than some jobs in the formal sector (King, 1996b;Lugalla, 1997;Daniels, 1999).…”

Recent business transformation in intermediate-sized cities in South Africa

“…Unless the informal market could be broadened through the widening of its range of products and the improvement of its marketing mechanisms, something that is a general limitation of the informal sector in the developing world (Timothy and Wall, 1997;King, 1996), the ability of the informal sector to accommodate much larger numbers of the unemployed in the South Africa could easily be over-estimated. As will be demonstrated later on, both the private sector and local governments will have to look at ways in which the formal and informal sectors could be brought closer to one another for them to stand a realistic chance of accommodating significantly larger proportions of the country"s current urban unemployed.…”

“…On the one hand there is a need for changes in the perceptions amongst certain sections of the formal sector about the composition of the informal sector worldwide, but particularly in parts of Africa. The general view that the informal sector mainly consists of petty traders, street hawkers, and shoeshine boys (Meier, 1989;King, 1996) does not apply to the informal sector as a whole any longer.…”

South Africa in the global context: The view from above and below

“…This is partially true, but it is also an oversimplification because the invasion of formal business areas by informal businesses is not unique to South Africa. Many developing (and some developed) countries are experiencing the same situation (Brown and Connell 1993;King 1996;Sandercock 1998). Perhaps it is largely a feature of postmodern urban development, a phenomenon with possible long-term effects on urban economic sustainability in developed and developing countries that have yet to be determined.…”