Informal sector employment opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa: legitimate or illegal?

In this chapter questions about the legality and the legitimacy of the informal sector as a viable economic form in sub-Saharan Africa is examined from an emerging but a neglected intellectual perspective. Using a neoliberal-Marxist theoretical stance, we demonstrate how the informal sector embodies ‘indigenous entrepreneurial dynamism’ in which actors, sometimes acting with the complicity of the State, generate sustainable employment for the individual. It is shown that the informal sector - which has become a permanent feature of the modern African economy, in particular, through a complex system of linkages with the formal sector - contributes a significant proportion of household income in sub-Saharan Nigeria. On this basis, strategies were proposed that might be leveraged to legalize informal sector businesses. Successful implementation of these strategies could open new possibilities towards transforming the informal sector in Nigeria.