Publication Date
Spring 2025
Abstract
This paper explores how order materializes as people, vehicles, and resources exchange on Yaoundé’s streets. Using qualitative and descriptive research approaches, it draws on primary data from interviews with prominent groups of informal sector actors, street vendors, and taxi drivers, as well as observations conducted throughout Yaoundé. The study also includes a literature review of twelve scholarly articles that assemble a robust foundational understanding of how “order” has been influenced and adapted within Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the past fifty years. The study reveals that kinship as a basis for urban order arose due to state distrust and mismanagement of public services. Findings uncovered that these occurrences promote the shirking of civic responsibility by relying on patronage/kinship demands rather than regulations to control the informal sector and supporting the good of the collective whole. Resultantly, public goods such as streets and sidewalks become sites of active contestation where multiple claims of ownership are made. By shedding light on the construction of order in the informal economy of Yaoundé, this paper contributes to contemporary literature on how African cities are attempting to navigate the conservation of traditional kinship practices amidst the infusion of Western economic development practices.
Disciplines
African Languages and Societies | Arts and Humanities | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Recommended Citation
Messer, Quentin L. III, "What is Order? An Exploration of Exchange and Mobility within the Streets of Yaoundé, Cameroon" (2025). Cameroon: Development and Social Change. 5.
https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/cmr/5