Changing the Rules: : The Politics of Liberalization and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania

Citation

Harris, G. (1999), "Changing the Rules: : The Politics of Liberalization and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 581-583. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijse.1999.26.4.581.5

The central question which this impressive book tries to answer is how low income residents in Dar es Salaam coped with declining real wages, which fell by 83 per cent between 1974 and 1988. The short answer is that large numbers voluntarily left wage earning and there was a massive increase in involvement in informal sector activities, typically operated by women, children and the elderly, which came to provide 90 per cent or more of household income.

Some figures will indicate how wide‐ranging these responses were. In 1978, 50 per cent of the urban working population were employed (66 per cent of men and 22 per cent of women). In 1990/1991, the proportion had fallen to 36 per cent. Tripp found that 26 per cent of her informants had left wage jobs, in which they had previously been employed for an average of nine years during the 1970s and 1980s. Almost half cited low pay as the prime reason. Of those who left for reasons other than retirement, 87 per cent went into self‐employment. Forty per cent began farming land on the outskirts of the city. Middle and upper income earners tended to remain employed, but received ten times their wage earnings from their kiosk, piggery or chicken farm. Lower income informal sector workers concentrated in areas such as food vending, tailoring, carpentry, laundering and kiosks. They earned from these, on average, one tenth of the informal sector earnings of middle and upper income earners.

With this backdrop, Tripp is interested in the relations between informal sector participants and the state. In short, she found that policy formation by political leaders followed action by the people. There is a rich story, or myriads of stories, of nonviolent non‐compliance (“everyday forms of resistance”) with laws and regulations which finally led to their withdrawal. Examples include the definition of productive work (so that repression of many informal activities gave way to tolerance), licensing of small businesses (abolished or simplified) and the legality of public servants earning second incomes (made allowable). This sounds like democracy at work and will be of interest to students of social movements. Trade unions, it should be noted, were under the control of the ruling party. Another major theme, which I will not dwell on here, is the government‐IMF inspired policy stance, with particular emphasis to the ways it affected people’s ability to earn a livelihood.

The strengthening of the informal sector which Tripp documents was more than disengagement from the state. It involved the explicit production of new products and services in the face of declining state services. For example, local defence teams were established to provide security and hometown development associations were formed to build schools and clinics and fund conservation projects in their rural areas of origin. Rural‐urban ties, it should be noted, strengthened during the 1980s at the same time as there was little inward migration to Dar es Salaam.

One of the strengths of this book is the breadth of its fieldwork, principally carried out in 1987‐88 with shorter visits in 1990 and 1994, which is carefully documented. Initially, two groups of around 300 informants ‐ participants in the informal sector and local representatives of the ruling party and government ‐ were interviewed. Building on this, a questionnaire seeking quantitative and qualitative information was constructed and administered to low wage workers, informal sector workers and middle income Civil Servants. I was reminded here of the “economic anthropologist” methodology used by Polly Hill in preparing her Rural Capitalism in West Africa in the 1970s and feel a high degree of confidence in the data which Tripp uses.

I will finish this review with three thoughts. First, it is ironic that the resurgence of agriculture and village life as the place to have a good life has occurred after the effective demise of Tanzania’s experiment with African socialism. Second, Tripp’s findings may make us more optimistic about people’s livelihoods in a time of fierce globalisation and absolute falls in the numbers in waged employment in many countries. Third, we have in this experience one answer to a major question: how can those most likely to suffer from Structural Adjustment Programs survive during the 15 years, at least, which the IMF now admits it will take to deliver the goods? The answer is with great resourcefulness and flexibility. I would, however, not like this to be taken as any excuse for not bringing IMF and World Bank officials to book in 15 years’ time, when it is clear that the manic application of free market ideology has failed in the long term as much as it has in the short term. Strangely, or perhaps naturally, it will be very difficult to find anyone who actually remembers supporting such policies.

Overall, this is an insightful, hopeful and well researched book. I will certainly recommend it to any postgraduate economics student involved in fieldwork and my undergraduates will find it valuable in thinking about how the poor cope.