Workers in informal employment often lack access to high quality public services, including child-care services. Lack of child-care support particularly compromises women’s incomes. In three African cities – Accra, Durban and Kigali – WIEGO is working to develop child-care solutions for women working in urban informal markets.
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Head Porters Aisha Adam (left) and Hawa Latif (right) carry goods on their heads in Kantamanto Market. Work as a kayeyei, head load porters, is rife with challenges. Aisha describes the physical challenges of carrying heavy loads, the low pay, the risks of violence and theft. At night, many kayeyei, due to their inability to afford accommodation, sleep outside or in the marketplace, making them a target for thieves who would steal their day's wages. Hawa Latif left her hometown of Tulu, in Ghana's Northern Region, to come to Accra to earn a living working as a kayayei. She quickly got a job working with a cassava and plaintain vendor, and day in and day out, Hawa transports the large loads of products for customers from her madame's shop to the customers' vehicles. It's physically tasking work; Hawa speaks of back aches and waist pains, but she can't take a day off just because she feels sick. Photo by Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Images Reportage
Across the globe, working parents, particularly women, find themselves juggling the need to earn an income and care for children at the same time. Women often lose earning opportunities or face reduced incomes and long hours balancing paid and unpaid work. This applies to women working in both the formal and the informal economy. During the COVID-19 crisis, when the care burden increased significantly, WIEGO’s global study found that women with increased care responsibilities faced a bigger income drop than their male counterparts and took longer to recover their earnings.
Child-care services in informal workplaces – such as markets – are particularly challenging to provide because of a lack of regulation and guidelines, space restrictions and affordability issues. WIEGO’s Social Protection Programme, together with the Accra Focal Cities team, Asiye eTafuleni, and SYTRIECI are working creatively to develop sustainable solutions to these challenges.
The city projects are contextually embedded and address different aspects of the child-care challenge. We are working for more appropriate regulation, as well as solutions regarding infrastructure and affordability. Guidelines for child-care centres in Accra markets have been developed, along with the implementation of two pilot child-care centres in Durban’s Warwick Junction markets.
A child-care centre in Makola Market in Accra has faced numerous challenges, exacerbated by tensions between the Accra Metropolitan Assembly and the trader organizations running the centre. Through dialogue, the WIEGO team formed a multi-stakeholder reference group and worked with the mayor and other officials to develop and implement child-care guidelines specifically designed for market-based centres. The team is working to implement these guidelines across all the metropolitan area’s subdistricts.
In Durban, Asiye eTafuleni has been developing infrastructure solutions for the often-cramped conditions in market areas. They have implemented two pop-up child-care spaces, which conform to basic health and safety guidelines. The spaces are being used to test the applicability of urban and early childhood development regulations to small, market-based centres. The replicability of the solutions for different contexts is being explored.
In Accra and Durban, child-care centres that conform to basic guidelines may access government subsidies – and both projects are working towards that goal. But what happens when these subsidies do not exist? Our partner in Rwanda, SYTRIECI, is engaging with a broader plan to see whether linking Village Savings and Loans Schemes to child care might provide one answer.
