Reimagining informal economies and practices across Africa

Call for abstracts 

Deadline January 9, 2026

WORKSHOP

Reimagining informal economies and practices across Africa.

How “informality” works, and what it teaches us about African societies and beyond.

Casablanca, Morocco, 14-15 April 2026

This workshop is possible thanks to EU funding from PRESILIENT (GA no. 101073394)

Workshop’s rationale

Rooted in African empirical contexts, the concept of informality first emerged, most famously, through Keith Hart’s work in Accra during the seventies (Hart 1973), and has since evolved into a global analytical and policy framework. Yet, as Alena Ledeneva argues, informality has “more of a history than a definition” (Ledeneva 2018). It is not a stable or universal category, but rather a moving target: relational, contextual, and shaped by the very efforts to define, regulate, or formalise it. This insight is critical in the African continent, where so-called informal economies and practices are not marginal exceptions but core infrastructures of everyday life.

Across the continent, scholarship in anthropology, sociology, heterodox economics, political science, urban studies, and development studies has shown that informality does not stand in opposition to a coherent “formal” sphere (Meagher & Lindell 2013). Rather, formal and informal economies and practices are deeply entangled and mutually constitutive (Roitman 2004). Informality reveals how rules actually operate in practice: through negotiation, improvisation, personal networks, social obligations, and hybrid governance arrangements (Simone 2018). African contexts particularly demonstrate that what is labelled “informal” often embodies alternative rationalities, moralities, and modes of coordination that are poorly captured by dominant policy vocabularies (Tranberg-Hansen & Vaa 2001; Lindell 2019).

Meanwhile, recent studies highlight the bureaucratisation of informality. States, municipalities, NGOs, and international organisations increasingly seek to register, license, tax, enumerate, map, or “upgrade” informal actors and spaces (Ajong 2011; Agbiboa 2020). Yet, such initiatives do not necessarily bring the protections associated with full formalisation (Ellis et al. 2009; Meagher 2020). Instead, they create new layers of administrative visibility and control, often reinforcing inequalities between different categories of informal actors. Informality thus becomes an object of statecraft - not a domain outside the state, but one increasingly governed through hybrid, negotiated, and sometimes contradictory bureaucratic processes.

This workshop aims to move beyond dichotomies of formal/informal, legal/illegal, and modern/traditional. We invite young researchers working in African contexts to explore how informalities work, what they reveal about economic, social, and political orders, and what conceptual tools might better capture their complexity. Inspired by African epistemologies, critical studies, and relational approaches to governance, our goal is to create an interactive

space for thinking with - and not merely about - informality. By doing so, we hope to contribute to new analytical vocabularies and more grounded understandings of African economic, social, and political lives.

The workshop’s approach: This workshop will be an interactive space, not a traditional conference. Participants will work in thematic groups guided by a key discussant who will help shape collective reflection and facilitate discussion. When submitting an abstract, please indicate the stream you wish to join. Streams will be finalised once proposals are selected.

Theme 1: Deconstructing binaries, embracing complexity

• If the formal/informal and legal/illegal divides are misleading analytical tools, what new concepts or metaphors can better capture the hybrid, fluid, and entangled realities of African economies and governance?

• Beyond these dichotomies, what other categories historically used to study informality in Africa have obscured or illuminated its complexity?

• How have historical and contemporary narratives of “development” shaped dominant assumptions about informality across African countries and among different actors?

Theme 2: Wealth, power, and inequality within informality

• How do class, gender, age, and ethnicity shape relations within informal economies?

• Who are the “wealthy informal actors,” and through what mechanisms do they accumulate, consolidate, and reproduce wealth and power?

• To what extent can resistance to formalisation be understood as a strategy for protecting specific interests or preserving autonomy?

• How are broader global trends reshaping wealth and power dynamics within the informal economy?

Theme 3: The social and political life of informality

• How do structural constraints and state regulation shape everyday informal practices and social interactions?

• How do practices of social (re)production unfold within African informal economies and spaces, and how might their study challenge dominant narratives?

• To what extent can informal practices be understood as forms of political expression - or as ways of “claiming the city” and asserting citizenship - especially for marginalized groups?

Theme 4: Methodological challenges and fieldwork experiences

• Given that informality is often blurred, tacit, or unrecorded, what methodological strategies are most effective for studying it?

• How might African contexts and epistemologies guide methodological approaches that move beyond Western paradigms and open decolonial possibilities for knowledge production?

• How can researchers navigate the practical, ethical, and political complexities of fieldwork around informality?

• How can comparative research be undertaken without treating “Africa as one thing”? What are the most productive bases for comparison that still respect national and local specificities? 

Fees and expenses

The workshop will be free of charge, but participants will be responsible for their own accommodation, travel, and visa expenses. Meals will be provided free of charge to all speakers. Travel bursaries may be available for a limited number of participants in the form of travel reimbursement of up to 250 euros or accommodation for 2–3 nights in shared double rooms (same-gender rooming guaranteed). If you would like to request either, please indicate this in your abstract. If you have access to institutional funding, please use it, as this will allow us to prioritise scholars without such support. 

Submission

Submissions should include a 300-400-word abstract and a short (2-3 sentences) biographical statement in a single Word file. We accept applications in English and French, and are keen to encourage applications from French, Portuguese, and Arabic-speaking regions of Africa. Presentations and discussions will be mostly in English, but we will do our best to provide informal, non-professional translation to support participation.

Application

Send a single Word / PDF file to marta.massera@ird.fr, and put abel.polese@dcu.ie in CC. Abstract should be sent by January 9, 2026. We expect to send acceptance notices by January 19. We will try to complete the selection process as promptly as possible to allow participants sufficient time to arrange their travel.

Publication plans

Depending on the quality and focus of the papers, we plan to launch a call for a special issue of a journal or a Scopus-indexed edited book. Publication plans will be discussed at the wrap- up session in Casablanca.

References:

Agbiboa, D-E. 2020. How Informal Transport Systems Drive African Cities. Current History

119 (817): 175–181. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2020.119.817.175

Ajong,N. 2011. ‘Livelihood Strategies in African Cities: The Case of Residents in Bamenda, Cameroon’. African Review of Economics and Finance, 3 (1) 8-33.

Hart, K. 1973. ‘Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana’. Journal of Modern African Studies 11 (1): 61-89.

Ledeneva, A., Bailey, A., Barron, S., Curro, C., & Teague, E. (Eds.). 2018. Introduction: the informal view of the world – key challenges and main findings of the Global Informality Project. In The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 1: Towards Understanding of Social and Cultural Complexity (pp. 1–28). UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20krxh9.8

Lindell, I. 2019. “Introduction: re-spatialising urban informality: reconsidering the spatial politics of street work in the global South” International Development Planning Review, 41: 3-21

Meagher, K., & Lindell, I. (2013). ASR Forum: Engaging with African Informal Economies : Social Inclusion or Adverse Incorporation? African Studies Review, 56(3), 57–76. https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2013.79

Roitman, J. 2008. Fiscal Disobedience: An Anthropology of Economic Regulation in Central Africa. Princeton University Press.

Simone, A. 2018. Improvised Lives: Rhythms of Endurance in an Urban South. London: Wiley

Tranberg-Hansen, K. & Vaa, M. 2004. Reconsidering Informality: Perspectives from Urban Africa. The Nordic African Institute