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The Status Quo and Radical Ideas
What so many of us discuss about Africa is the desire to see things change. We apply the lenses that color our lives to the problem and come up with solutions that fit our world view. Challenges to that world view are hard for us to deal with, because it likely means a paradigm shift is needed in our own lives.

Other informal sector in Africa Related Articles

Ending poverty means abandoning charity and accepting reality
Benin Mwangi, who blogs about doing business in Africa, asked me recently: "should the discussion be about how to get the informal sector to become part of the formal sector or should it be how to cater to the informal sector?" This in an excursion into the morass of African poverty and development. The short answer is: neither; ending poverty has nothing to do with the informal sector.

12.0 The Entrepreneurial Firm Corporate Governance: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa
Very few studies of entrepreneurship concern themselves with corporate governance. This is particularly true in Africa where by far the majority of entrepreneurial firms are very small and operate in the informal sector.
4.0 The state of women’s enterprises in Tanzania: Support for Growth-oriented Women Entrepreneurs in Tanzania, 2005
Currently, there is no comprehensive data on the number of women in the MSME sector, the size of their enterprises, or their distribution by sector. Only proxies are available. In NISS (1991) women accounted for about 35 per cent of informal enterprises. By 1995, it was estimated that the proportion of women in the sector could have risen to 70 per cent of the informal sector labour force. In a 2000 Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF) study, 55 per cent of the enterprises in the sample were owned by women (as reported in Mlingi, 2000, p. 89). Swisscontact (2003) estimated that women owned 43 per cent of MSEs.
10.2 Pre-start-up training: Support for Growth-oriented Women Entrepreneurs in Tanzania, 2005
Data from a 1997-98 training needs assessment of informal sector operators found that over 75 per cent of informal sector operators had primary education, while only seven per cent had attended vocational training courses. Most had acquired their skills in a variety of trades through apprenticeships or directly from their peers, but were unaware of the theoretical aspects (reported in Mlingi, 2000, p. 81). Only 5.3 per cent of the MSEs in the Swisscontact (2003) study had received any entrepreneurship training, and even fewer in new product technologies or costing and pricing. This suggests that most MSEs are “learning through trial and error” or from the practical know-how of other operators.
1.0 Introduction: Microfinance in Africa - Experience and Lessons from Selected African Countries
Small enterprises and most of the poor population in sub-Saharan Africa have very limited access to deposit and credit facilities and other financial services provided by formal financial institutions. For example, in Ghana and Tanzania, only about 5–6 percent of the population has access to the banking sector. This lack of access to financial services from the formal financial system is quite striking, when one considers that in many African countries the poor represent the largest share of the population and that the informal sector is an important part of the economy.
2.3 Looking for Financial Sustainability: Microfinance in Africa - Experience and Lessons from Selected African Countries
The technologies described above, based on the formalization of informal techniques and on group-based instruments, have been used to promote financial sustainability of MFIs. They have the advantage of addressing a number of problems faced by financial institutions when operating with the poor or with the informal sector, for example, asymmetry of information, lack of collateral, and difficult enforcement of legal rights.
5.0 Conclusions: Microfinance in Africa - Experience and Lessons from Selected African Countries
In sub-Saharan Africa, there is ample evidence that the poor, particularly those in the rural sector, value both deposit and credit facilities. The existence and growth of cooperative banking and combined savings and credit institutions in the microfinance sector in sub- Saharan Africa reflects the growing demand for both savings and credit facilities.
Micro-enterprise and the 'mobile divide'
New benefits and old inequalities in Nigeria's informal sector
Making Finance Work for Africa
South Africa’s success in getting the financial sector to extend services to poorer communities could be adapted for other African countries, said Trevor Manuel, Minister of Finance of South Africa. He told participants that this is exactly what has been achieved by South Africa’s Financial Sector Charter. The charter was developed some four years ago by the financial sector, including banks and insurers, after the government urged it to transform its practices and policies
4.1.2 Enterprises with growth potential: The demand for training
Most training strategies in the informal sector have targeted manufacturing microenterprises that are considered to have some growth potential. However, even within this relatively better-off segment of the informal sector, the effective demand for training has frequently been found to be quite limited.
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