Mary Njeri Kinyanjui

Women and the Informal Economy in Urban Africa (eBook, ePUB)

From the Margins to the Centre

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

In this highly original work, Mary Njeri Kinyanjui explores the trajectory of women's movement from the margins of urbanization into the centres of business activities in Nairobi and its accompanying implications for urban planning.

While women in much of Africa have struggled to gain urban citizenship and continue to be weighed down by poor education, low income and confinement to domestic responsibilities due to patriarchic norms, a new form of urban dynamism - partly informed by the informal economy - is now enabling them to manage poverty, create jobs and link to the circuits of capital and labour. Relying on social ties, reciprocity, sharing and collaboration, women's informal 'solidarity entrepreneurialism' is taking them away from the margins of business activity and catapulting them into the centre.

Bringing together key issues of gender, economic informality and urban planning in Africa, Kinyanjui demonstrates that women have become a critical factor in the making of a postcolonial city.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 152
• Erscheinungstermin: 12. Juni 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781780326337
• Artikelnr.: 41076565

Autorenporträt

Mary Njeri Kinyanjui is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi. She holds a PhD in geography from the University of Cambridge. She researches on economic justice, small businesses, economic informality, social institutions and issues of international development. She has published articles in the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Hemispheres, African Studies Review, African Geographical Review and Journal of East African Research and Development. She has been a visiting scholar at the International Development Centre (IDC) at the Open University in the UK and at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development in Geneva. Some of her publications include 'Women informal garment traders in Taveta Road, Nairobi: from the margins to the center', African Studies Review 56(3): 147-64 (2013) and Institutions of Hope: Ordinary people's market coordination and society organisation alternatives, Nsemia Publishers (2012).