Inclusive Markets and Paradigm
Maintenance:
Informal Enterprise, Economic Inclusion
and Islamic Extremism in Nigeria
Kate Meagher
London School of Economics
Making Growth Inclusive
• Market-led dev’t has brought jobless
growth, expanding informality and
poverty
• Rise of more inclusive approaches to
development – post-2015 buzzword
• Inclusive markets/BoP as solution to
unemployment and informality –
connect poor into global markets
• Dynamics of inclusion create new
dynamics of exclusion
Considering Inclusive Markets
Inclusive Markets:
• Poverty as market failure – solution is
greater integration of poor into markets
• beyond redistribution, aid dependence
• Incorporate poor as agents of dev’t
• Focus on structural transformation – link
business and finance to BoP to create
jobs, foster entrepreneurship, financial
inclusion
New Dynamics of Exclusion
• Processes of inclusion selective –
selectively engage and reshape
institutions, workers, subjectivities
Dark side of inclusive markets:
• Open up new inequalities between
regions, workers, consumers
• extractive effects on included;
displacement, marginalization,
criminalization of those who don’t qualify
for inclusion
A Tale of Two Nigerias
National inclusion:
• Inclusive market success story -- MINT –
high grwth rates, rising investor engagement
• Parallel tale of poverty, illiteracy and Islamic
terrorism
Inclusion: solution or problem?
• exacerbated regional inequality – North: ed.
disadvantage, economy gutted by SAP
• Fractious, uned. labour force, poor gov’ce –
unattractive to investors
• Consider dynamics of exclusion unleashed
by inclusive markets
Methodology
• Fieldwork in April 2014 in Kano and
Kaduna
• 8 common informal activities –
stratified into modern, trad.,
survival
• 53 interviews with associations and
rank and file
• Survey of 187 operators
• Core issue: inclusion generating
new patterns of competition in IE
among those who don’t qualify
Contestation over Access to IE
• Saturation of informal economy
• Nearly 1/3 don’t own own enterprise, esp.
survivalists
• Avg 12 years in business – absorbed as
workers not entrepreneurs
• Contestation by state indigenes over
access to IE
• crowding into activities once dominated
by migrants – 55% indigenes
• Resentment against entry of nonindigenes – take jobs, reduce incomes
Activity
Type
Years in
This
Owner
Activity
Work for Share of
others Indigenes
Modern
10.4
73.8
26.2
63.6
Traditional
15.3
79.3
20.7
58.3
Survival
9.6
53.3
46.7
42.6
Average
11.7
68.9
31.1
55.1
Education
• High levels of education in IE
• 42% seced or higher
• In lowly activs, 12% post-sec.
• Lucrative activ’s – 61% at
least seced; ~20% post sec.
• In lucrative activ's, graduates
crowding out traditional
actors – monopolize market
opp’ties
New Religious Movements
• Rise of fundamentalist
Islamic movements -competitive ethos, intolerant
• Eroding econ networks
between Muslims and
Christians
• dominating lucrative activ’s,
monopolizing associations,
marginalizing Christians,
other Muslims, poor
Internal Dynamics of Exclusion
• efforts to promote graduate
entrepreneurshp, link informal
services into GVCs (transport,
butchers)
• Ignore existing stresses on N.
Nigerian IE
• Channelling graduates into IE,
upgrading, exacerbates crowding
out of traditional operators
Beyond Inclusion
• National inclusion selective – put investors
over needs of poor and unemployed
• regional dynamic of marginalization, internal
dynamic of competition over scarce informal
jobs
• Inclusive policies make things worse –
indigenes, fundamentalists and graduates
crowd out losers -- radicalization
• Inclusive markets offer adverse terms and
perverse dynamics of exclusion -- another
‘Faustian bargain’?