Petronilla Wandeto (ESR 14), attended the 2024 Conference of the Development Studies Association (DSA) which took place from 26 - 28 June, 2024, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. There, Petronilla presented in a panel on ‘Alternative Agendas on urban planning and governance in Africa - A social justice perspective’ which sought to explore pathways to urban futures that work with informality, rather than dismissing it as ‘a chaotic jumble of unproductive activities’.
Her presentation with the title '(De)criminalization of informal enterprise - Rethinking the place of second-hand clothes street vending in industrial policy' drew on findings from a segment of her research that looks into industrial policymaking in predominantly-informal economies. She explored the linkages between informal street trade in East Africa and emerging dynamics in the regional and global textile industry.
Her findings demonstrated how the exclusion of informal street trading in textile value chains has contributed to (dis)incentive structures that reproduce ongoing patterns of dumping, bifurcation of the region’s textile industry, and systemic disenfranchisement of informal enterprises, which make up the bulk of the region’s economic activity. Some of these effects have also translated into mixed outcomes in key policy instruments such as the EAC’s attempted ban on second-hand clothing imports, AGOA, and the EU’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) decree.
She, therefore, argues that a re-think of the place of informal enterprise in industrial policy and economic transformation ideologies offers new opportunities in the push for sustainable private sector development.
Petronilla attended the DSA 2024 conference together with several other ADAPTED consortium members. Among them were the ESRs Ahmed El Assal, Beatrice Gibertini, Guido Maschhaupt, Irene Among, Kate O'Donnell as well as Prof. Andrew Fischer