Olu Allen
At Nigeria’s busiest land border with Benin Republic, a woman carrying a modest consignment of goods may look like just another trader trying to make a living.
She is much more than that.
She is part of an economic network that moves goods across borders, connects producers to consumers, sustains households and keeps commerce alive far beyond the statistics usually cited in discussions about Nigeria’s economy.
Yet the women who occupy this space remain largely invisible in economic policymaking.
That invisibility is increasingly difficult to justify.
At Sèmè-Kraké on Friday, Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Adewale Adeniyi, said women account for more than 70 per cent of informal cross-border traders across Africa.
He also disclosed that about 22 per cent of Benin Republic’s informal exports are destined for Nigeria, while informal trade accounts for roughly one-fifth of Nigeria’s economic activity.
Those figures should force a rethink of how Nigeria understands its informal economy.
Because when women constitute the overwhelming majority of informal traders, and informal activity represents such a significant share of economic life, the women operating within that space cannot reasonably be treated as peripheral to the economy.
They are part of the economy. A significant part.
The National Bureau of Statistics provides another piece of the puzzle: about 93 per cent of employment in Nigeria is informal, with the proportion rising to roughly 96 per cent among women.
That should not merely be a statistic for a labour-market report.
It should be a policy alarm.
If almost all employed Nigerian women are operating within an informal economy, then the question is no longer whether government should pay attention to them.
The question is why it has taken so long to do so.
Allen writes on public affairs and advocates for good governance.
