The informal sector in West Africa has some distinctive characteristics. Informality usually connotes small and unorganized producers operating on the fringes of the formal economy. In West African countries, however, the normal situation is to some extent reversed: a dynamic informal sector dominates the stagnant formal economy. Moreover, in these countries, small operators coexist with very large and politically well-connected informal enterprises and well-organized networks. Notwithstanding its importance, there have been relatively few systematic studies of this dual feature of the informal sector in West Africa, and consequently too little is known about it. One of our hypotheses is that determinants and appropriate policy responses are likely to differ between “large” and “small” informal operations.
