African home-based workers are at the bottom of craft supply chains. Through an increased understanding of those supply chains they could overcome some of the challenges they are facing and improve their livelihoods.
In city streets and markets across the Global South, street vendors have little protection from harassment, brutality, and theft. The perpetrators might be criminal gangs. Or, where insufficient regulation allows abuse of power, the perpetrators might be local authorities. In either case, vendors say police too often ignore their complaints.
In this article, our Organization and Representation Programme Director, Jane Barrett, tells us about an innovative mobile money dues collection initiative. It was launched by the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union of Uganda (ATGWU) and has revolutionized an antiquated administrative system. She spoke with John Mark Mwanika, ATGWU’s project coordinator, for this piece.
Accra’s colorful, bustling markets run on the back-breaking labour of some of the city’s poorest and most vulnerable. Goods are shuttled from stall to stall or from delivery areas to individual vendors atop the heads of kayayei – women who do some of the most physically demanding work in the markets.
The women become kayayei for lack of alternatives. Many have come to Accra from extremely poor villages, arriving with few marketable skills and often low-literacy levels. They take up this work to survive.
En este Día Internacional de los Trabajadores y Trabajadoras, el futuro del trabajo es un tema candente. Las nuevas tecnologías, la globalización y los grandes avances en inteligencia artificial han generado debates sobre cómo serán los puestos de trabajo, de dónde vendrán, y qué papel desempeñarán en la reducción de la desigualdad.
