The Urban Informal

Sector
What is Informal Sector?
 unorganized, unregulated, and mostly legal
but unregistered businesses

 large fraction inhabit shacks and small

cinder-block houses which generally lack
minimal public services such as electricity,
water, drainage, transportation, and
educational and health services
What Activities comprises the self-
employed in Informal Sector?
Characteristics of Informal Sector
 Dar es Salaam–based
UN-Habitat, in its “State of the World’s
Cities” reports.
 “The Report unequivocally
demonstrates that the current
urbanization model is unsustainable
in many respects.”

https://unhabitat
.org/books/world-cities-report/
“It conveys a clear message that the
pattern of urbanization needs to
change in order to better respond to
the challenges of our time, to
address issues such as inequality,
climate change, informality,
insecurity, and the unsustainable
forms of urban expansion”
Policies for the Urban Informal Sector
 measures might be adopted to promote the
informal sector (International Labor
Organiztaion):

1. Governments
will have to abandon their hostility
toward the informal sector and adopt
a more positive and sympathetic
posture
 2. by providing proper skills and other
incentives, such
measures might promote legal activities and
discourage illegal ones

3. provision of credit

4. Access to improved technology

5. Providing infrastructure and suitable

locations for work (e.g.,
designating specific areas for stalls)
6. better living conditions must be provided

7. Promotion of the informal sector outside

the urban areas may also
help redirect the flow of rural-urban
migration
Women in Informal Sector

Employment Sector, International Labour Office, Women and Men in the Informal
Economy: A statistical picture,International Labour Organization, Geneva, 2002, page
Development programs that may
benefit women:

 legalization
and economic promotion
of informal-sector activities

 governments must abolish the

laws that restrict women’s rights to
own property, conduct financial
transactions, or limit their fertility
 barriers
to women’s direct
involvement in technical training
programs and extension services must
be eradicated

 provisionof affordable child care and

family-planning services