Adjunct Research Professor Allan Cain tells the story of Luanda’s informal marketplaces in a recent book, In/formal Marketplaces: Experiments with Urban Reconfiguration.

Edited by Peter Mortenbock, Helge Mooshammer, the 432-page book was published in October 2023 by nai010 publishers.

Cain contributed a chapter titled What Ever Happened to the Roque? Towards De-criminalizing the Angolan Informal Market, in which he follows the traders who, after the closure of Roque Santeiro, began to sell in the streets or from their homes.  

“The informal market does more than just employ two-thirds of Angola’s urban families,” he writes. “The informal market provides Angolans with almost all of their basic needs, from housing, water, and transport, including getting to their informal jobs.”

Cain is co-founder and head of Development Workshop, the oldest and one of the most trusted NGOs in Angola.

In the book, he presents research by his organization, which has tracked the evolution of public attitudes to the informal economy and official government policies as they have changed over almost two and a half decades.

“This chapter provides evidence of the resilience of the informal economy, despite decades of Angolan government attempts to eradicate it, then marginalize it to the periphery or at least control it, or even profit from it,” he writes.

 “However, the pattern of cyclical repression and tolerance prevails,” he says. “The research discussed in this chapter demonstrates a close link between electoral cycles and the promises of reform that are offered periodically to an electorate, the majority of whom earn their livelihoods in informal markets.”

The chapter is a follow-up to a piece that appeared in the 2015 book Informal Market Worlds Atlas.