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COVID-19 pandemic has undermined the functionality of formal and informal economies globally, with developing countries suffering the social, political and economic effects of the pandemic. Economic downturns in the global south, including Nigeria, have given rise to declining state control in the face of human insecurity. This study, hinging on the neoliberal political economy thesis, examines the economic crisis and declining state control the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown engendered in managing the security situation in Nigeria. The study, utilizing the dominant qualitative methods, comprising interviews, focus group discussions, and documented evidence, highlighted that the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown disproportionately affected the people, mainly poor people, households and communities in different parts of the country. The failure of the government to engage in an effective social protection policy generated discontent and led to criminal activities undermining security in Nigeria. The study concludes that the insecurity and economic crisis the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown engendered have weakened the state's authority in Nigeria. The study suggests that engaging effective social protection policy presents an opportunity for mitigating security challenges to bring about socioeconomic stability in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The informal sector is an integral part of several sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries and plays a key role in the economic growth of these countries. This article used a comparative systematic review to explore the factors that act as drivers to informality in South Africa (SA) and Nigeria, the challenges that impede the growth dynamics of the informal sector, the dominant subsectors, and policy initiatives targeting informal sector providers. A systematic search of Google Scholar, Scopus, ResearchGate was performed together with secondary data collated from grey literature. Using Boolean string search protocols facilitated the elucidation of research questions (RQs) raised in this study. An inclusion and exclusion criteria became necessary for rigour, comprehensiveness and limitation of publication bias. The data collated from thirty-one (31) primary studies (17 for SA and 14 for Nigeria) revealed that unemployment, income disparity among citizens, excessive tax burdens, excessive bureaucratic hurdles from government, inflationary tendencies, poor corruption control, GDP per capita, and lack of social protection survival tendencies all act as drivers to the informal sector in SA and Nigeria. Several challenges are given for both economies and policy incentives that might help sustain and improve the informal sector in these two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Nigeria, a significant number of the active labour force exists within the informal economy. For these workers, decent work remains elusive. They are mostly unprotected by existing legal framework and lack basic work rights. One of such right is access to social protection. This lack of access to 'social protection', especially as it relates to their means of livelihood, results in exclusion and marginalisation, and violates the principles of social justice. However, the high financial and structural costs of providing the basic forms of social protection inhibits the Nigerian government from extending social protection to informal workers, even though they constitute the larger percentage of the national workforce. This therefore necessitates an innovative solution that extends social protection to informal workers, and at the same time is independent of the capacity limitations of the government. Based on a desktop research methodology, this article finds that Esusu cooperatives – an informal cooperative system popular among informal workers– represents an existing and functional structure through which social protection can be extended to Nigerian informal workers. Consequently, it is recommended that the 'Esusu Cooperative system' should be adopted and restructured as a means of extending social protection to informal workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Economica is the property of University of Banja Luka, Faculty of Economics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Informal vendors are a critical source of food security for urban residents in African cities. However, the livelihoods of these traders, and the governance constraints they encounter, are not well-understood outside of the region's capital and primate cities. This study focuses on two distinct secondary cities in Nigeria, Calabar in the South-South geopolitical zone of the country and Minna in the Middle Belt region. Interviews were collected with local and state officials in each city on the legal, institutional, and oversight functions they provide within the informal food sector. This was complemented with a survey of approximately 1097 traders across the two cities to assess their demographic profile, contributions to food security, key challenges they face for profitability, engagement with government actors, and degree of access to services in the markets. The analysis highlights two main findings. First, informal traders report less harassment by government actors than has been observed in larger Nigerian cities. At the same time, however, the enabling environment is characterized by benign neglect whereby government-mandated oversight functions are not comprehensively implemented and service delivery gaps remain a major hindrance to food safety. Second, there are important differences in the needs of traders across cities, suggesting that policies focused on food safety and improving the livelihoods of this constituency more broadly need to be properly nuanced even at the subnational level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the political economy of collective organising in the motorcycle taxi economy of Nigerian cities. Using the mixed-methods approach, this study demonstrates the nature and problems of collective organising in the motorcycle taxi economy. It notes that implementation of a neo-liberal development policy in Nigeria in the 1980s gave rise to job losses and catalysed the creation of a motorcycle taxi sub-system as a livelihood. While collective organising in the motorcycle taxi sub-system is sometimes exploited to advance the ambition of some politicians, the informal economy is often paradoxically victimised through the initiation and implementation of hostile urban policies, such as banning motorcycle taxis, soon after electoral mandates are secured. This paper, however, argues that despite the challenges, collective organising represents a struggle to influence urban policy and could present an opportunity for a new form of engagement between the state and the informal economy in development policy and urban governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of municipal solid waste has remained intractable in Nigeria despite the state’s central role in municipal solid waste management (MSWM). Policy and reforms of the MSWM system have invariably excluded the informal economy, with this exclusion frequently reinforced by uncritical implementation of neo-liberal development policies. Yet, the informal economy fortuitously remains active in solid waste collection, recycling, and disposal. This article is the aggregate outcome of an 8-year multi-stakeholder engagement in MSWM in Nigerian cities. It draws on insights from first-hand qualitative engagement with informal waste workers, interviews with key stakeholders, policy documents, and relevant literature to situate the Nigerian informal waste economy within current international development discourse. While highlighting the implications of social acceptance and inclusion of the waste economy in post-2015 MSWM and development policy, the study notes the lack of an articulate policy on MSWM in Nigeria and canvasses a specific policy to integrate the ubiquitous informal waste economy in MSWM. The paper suggests that inclusionper séis central to the sustainable development goals (SDGs), and argues that an inclusive MSWM policy in Nigeria is desirable as it maps onto the SDGs which aim to improve lives in the post-2015 development era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article draws on fieldwork data to argue that while the reality of widespread privations does indeed play a role in generating legitimate grievances upon which social action in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta is based, those who are able to violently animate their grievances are invariably part of a very complex network of clientelism that is both intimately connected to the structures of state power at the same time and opposed to its very logic. It therefore challenges notions of Niger Delta militants as members of a disempowered and marginalized social category. It highlights the importance of social networks to the ability of youth to take advantage of perverse incentives of the oil economy and calls for policy frameworks that recognize their embeddeness within the overall architectures of power in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines how the Post-2015 commitment to economic inclusion affects informal economic actors in developing countries. It highlights the selective dynamics of inclusive market models that generate new processes of exclusion in which the most vulnerable continue to be left behind. The case of Nigeria reveals how inclusive market initiatives reinforce parallel processes of informalization, poverty and Islamic extremism in the north of the country. Fieldwork in northern Nigeria shows that inclusive initiatives are intensifying competitive struggles within the informal economy in which stronger actors are crowding out poorer, less educated and migrant actors, exacerbating disaffection and vulnerability to radicalization. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Review of African Political Economy is the property of Review of Political Economy (ROAPE) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)