摘要：

Despite the advances in modern retailing, millions of people throughout theworld still make their living partly or wholly through selling goods on thestreets. This is particularly the case in Africa. A vibrant array of tradersselling everything from fruit and vegetables, to clothes, traditional medicineand even furniture is what characterises African cities. This paper, ratherambitiously, aims to outline broad trends about these activities in Africa. Ithopes to assess what is known about this phenomenon in the continent andhow it has been understood over time, with a view to assist in framing futureresearch.The paper is divided into four sections. The first section considers thetheoretical lenses employed in analysing street trading in the academicliterature. It starts by considering how street trade is dealt with in the debatesof the 1970's and 1980's arguing that these debates still have resonancetoday. It then reflects on the conceptual tools increasingly being used -livelihoods and social exclusion and the implications of post-modern waysof understanding informality. The second section reviews street tradestatistics. These are contextualised in urbanisation, migration and economicdevelopment trends. The little data that is available about street traders isreviewed. The evidence suggests that the surge in numbers of street traders,partly caused by economic restructuring processes, is likely to continue. Thethird section concentrates on trends in policy, planning and governance.Research on the issue suggests that state responses to street trading form acontinuum from violent sustained evictions on the one side, to a moreinclusive approach on the other. Having reviewed the empirical evidence,cross-cutting themes are identified that are either important in understandingprocesses of inclusion and exclusion of street traders and/or factors toconsider in future research and advocacy. What is clear from Section 3 isthat the processes of incorporation or exclusion of street traders is part ofeveryday political struggle. The ways in which street traders are organised,articulate their concerns and wield power, is therefore critical. The fourthsection thus concentrates on trends in street trader organisation.

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