Ethics and Companies: Heading Economic development

“L ’ informal economy” with the rescue?

ARIANE Lafrenière

The itinerant salesmen proposing an incredible variety of goods, the farmers exploiting their plot of land, the women making of the households in the easy districts and the small workshops installed with the crossroads of the main streets form integral part of the landscape of the developing countries in Africa. These activities are at the base even of what L ’ one calls L ’ informal economy, this saving in survival which occupies a broad fraction of the population. The creativity and L ’ innovation whose proof the actors of this medium make fascinate some several which detects the germs D ’ there a new type of development.

For ONG which work on the African continent, the informal sector is impossible to circumvent whose L ’ importance as driving economic N ’ is more to prove. Having definitions varying D ’ an organization with another, even D ’ a country with another, this economic sector is generally regarded as that gathering the practised licit activities with L ’ external of the regulation framework imposed by L ’ State.

Nevertheless, for several, the true debate posed by L ’ informal economy N ’ is not to determine the characteristics which are clean for him, but rather D ’ to establish if L ’ informal economy has bases necessary to offer better prospects D ’ future to its protagonists.

Rémy Hallegouet, national delegate of L ’ French Association of the Volunteers of Progress (AFVP) to Benign, confirms what the many statistical studies revealed jusqu ’ with maintenent, “in the countries where J ’ worked [Niger, Burkina Faso and the Benign one], the informal sector occupies an important fringe of the active population and L ’ saving in these countries puts back D ’ elsewhere on this sector”.

In a report/ratio entitled decent Work and informal economy, the International office of Work (the ILO) estimated as for him that “during these some ten last years, abstract work represented nearly 80 percent of L ’ employment nonagricultural, more than 60 percent of L ’ urban employment and more than 90 percent of new employment in Africa”. This phenomenon is particularly visible in sub-Saharan Africa where the proportion of L ’ abstract employment compared to L ’ formal employment is most important universally. “This is without counting the agricultural sector which almost entirely forms part of the informal sector but which N ’ is not entered in the national statistics”, adds Jacques B.Gélinas, Québécois sociologist and author of many works whose And if the Third world S ’ financed.

L ’ informal economy is thus prosperous and gains constantly in popularity near the poorest layers of the company which are continuously in search of better living and working conditions. However, the informal sector also has a darker reality, that of L ’ exploitation, precariousness of the incomes, bad work conditions, L ’ insalubrity, L ’ inexistence of all forms D ’ insurances and L ’ absence of unionisation. The Total Ploughing Institute, an organization which makes the promotion of the international solidarity of the trade unions as well as other organizations of the civil society, points out qu ’ while existing out of the regulation frameworks, informal sector N ’ is not covered by the laws the labour.

This context makes informal sector a ground very indicated for the development projects worked out by ONG. Dependently organizations with L ’ œ uvre, goals divergent and strategies to also reach them.

“The role of ONG is to take part to give a vision”

Jacques B.Gélinas describes the development programs turn-key certain organizations, “to build a school, that N ’ development aid not as long as people on the spot does not take in hand their own development”. For this former co-operator, “the role of ONG is to take part to give a vision for an alternative economy. […] One speaks D ’ here to organize co-operatives, but also D ’ to learn to people how to manage their economy and to control their saving”. According to this prospect, the work of ONG must go in the direction of L ’ “impowerment”, C ’ is to be said to make it possible the local populations to take in hand their own economy.

At the south east of Benign, in the departments of L ’ Ouémé and of the Plate, L ’ French Association of the Volunteers of Progress set up an agricultural development project which goes appreciably in this direction. “The role of L ’ team of L ’ AFVP affected on this project is D ’ to support the agricultural organizations and the producers in the assembly of their file of financing to increase their production capacities. We also play a big role D ’ intermediation between the producers and the institutions of micro finance (IMF)”, explains Rémy Hallegouet. In this project, the goal of L ’ AFVP was to work with the agricultural professional organizations for qu ’ they can in their turn support the farmers in their step at the IMF. However, L ’ ONG was to as accompany the agents by credit of the financial institutions, “we realized quickly as the IMF knew little about the agricultural medium”, tells the delegate of L ’ AFVP to the Benign one. According to him, C ’ was a crucial step “for qu ’ they have the comprehension necessary of economic projects qu ’ they were to realize”.

“We thought qu ’ once the relation established between the IMF and the organizations of producers, and that first vague D ’ granting and of refunding of appropriations would have been completed successfully, we N ’ let us need more to play this part D ’ intermediate”, continues it. “Unfortunately, because of the regular changes of the agents of credit of certain institutions of micro finance, L ’ AFVP is brought to continue these supports and these formations in L ’ action. ”

To obtain concrete and durable results with this kind D ’ initiatives, ONG still run up against the current economic system, like says it Jacques B.Gélinas, “C ’ is difficult and of the obstacles, there is full”. These projects, which aim at giving again with the population the possibility of choosing, are worth however well the sorrow of it.