Crossing conceptual boundaries: re-envisioning coordination and collaboration among women for sustainable livelihoods in Ghana

Abstract

This paper explores the complexities, degree of organisation and embedded potentials in selected informal worlds of work involving women in Agbogbloshie, a site that has achieved both national and international notoriety for its ostensible environmental and social unrest challenges. The analysis provides empirical evidence to show how informality remains a persistent, substantial and the defining feature of Ghana’s economy in terms of its fostering growth and creating jobs, although its overall role in the national development discourse is largely ignored or seldom considered. Drawing on participant observation and qualitative field-based survey data, the paper presents the multi-dimensional ways migrant women from northern Ghana adopt to innovate, network and “graduate” from e-waste-related activities to engage in long-distance trade, which, in turn, serves as a catalyst for spin-off activities that manifest differently between the south and the north of the country. It also sheds light on how these women, with little prospect of formal employment, negotiate contemporary economic shifts and create an occupational continuum that defies strict compartmentalisation. The paper adds to the expanding corpus of writings on informalisation as a growing, noteworthy and integral feature of Sub-Saharan Africa’s economy.