We continue our series of interviews on the Policy Supporting Programme (PSP) with Tom De Herdt (UAntwerpen) and Francine Iragi Mukotanyi (Université Catholique de Bukavu, DRC), academic leaders of the Social Protection, Inequality & Inclusive Growth Programme (SPRING).
What are the challenges and issues of social protection that could transform the informal economy sector in Africa? These questions form the basis of a programme run by a consortium of academic players keen to help strengthen the socio-economic resilience of the economies of Central and East Africa.
In this interview, Tom De Herdt and Francine Iragi Mukotanyi discuss the research carried out between Belgium, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda aimed at increasing social protection coverage for workers in the informal sector and supporting social dialogue between all the stakeholders in this major socio-economic issue. The two researchers also emphasise the importance of international scientific collaboration in order to capitalise on the expertise and social, economic and political experience available in the three target countries. From a social and political perspective, they see the purpose of their work as a lever for change that can encourage the political authorities to take responsibility for the issues surrounding work in the informal economy.
Can you tell us about the “Social Protection, Inequality & Inclusive Growth” project?
Tom De Herdt: SPRING is a consortium of researchers interested in the possibilities for strengthening the socio-economic resilience of Central African economies. Starting with case studies in this region, the work aims to be part of wider research and policy debates on social protection and inclusive growth.
What themes are being studied?
Tom De Herdt: We are working on two major themes:
- As part of the ‘informal economy’ theme, we are studying the tension between policies to promote decent work and labour-intensive programmes, the possibilities for social dialogue and social protection in informal economy contexts.
- As part of the ‘public health’ theme, we are looking at new strategies for financing social protection and universal health coverage initiatives in the region.
Who are the academic partners involved in this project?
Tom De Herdt : The consortium is supported by researchers and institutions in the South (Université Catholique de Bukavu, Université Catholique du Congo, Makerere University) and in the North (ULBruxelles, Uliège, KULeuven, UAntwerpen). The whole project is coordinated by UAntwerpen.
Who does your research reach and how do you share your findings and recommendations?
Tom De Herdt: The research is aimed at any organisation working in the field of social protection and inclusive growth in Central Africa, while the results of our research could be of use to any researcher and/or policy-maker working in similar contexts elsewhere.
This project was launched two years ago. What are the main activities carried out and their results?
Tom De Herdt: The initial results of our research are shared in our publications area on websitethe SPP . We also carried out a joint mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo to analyse universal health coverage policies, as well as a collective research phase on decent work in the construction sector in Kinshasa.
What is the added value of bringing together researchers from French- and Dutch-speaking universities, as well as from partner countries such as the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda?
Tom De Herdt : This added value takes shape internally, on the one hand, because working in a consortium enables regular and more intensive exchanges between researchers from different geographical backgrounds. On the other hand, it also materialises externally, by making it easier to communicate our research results (via our website or our newsletters) or by enabling political dialogue with stakeholders such as the DGD.
A huge social and political challenge, given the size of the informal economy
In all three countries, the informal economy plays a very important role. What are the challenges for social protection in such a context?
Tom De Herdt: It’s true that in the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda, the informal economy plays a very important role. In the DRC, for example, the formal economy accounts for no more than 1.5% of the working population. The State itself is highly informalized! This means that we need to go beyond social protection policies for those who work in the formal economy, or develop and test strategies for formalising the economy, or support initiatives to strengthen the resilience of lifestyles independently of the job in the formal economy.
Does Belgium have the levers it needs to get things moving and influence national policies?
Tom De Herdt: We believe that Belgium can play an important role! First of all at international level: just because virtually all economic operators in Central Africa are in the informal economy doesn’t mean that there aren’t links with the global economic system: these are established via value chains, for example, or via the construction of public infrastructures used by the major multinational companies operating in the region. In the end, this global system from which we all benefit is established and made operational in part thanks to a workforce that is underpaid and/or operates in very precarious conditions.
Hence the need for the richest countries, such as Belgium, to intervene to strengthen social protection, either by regulating value chains or subcontracting systems, or by supporting local public players in their efforts to organise workers’ collective action, or by helping to set up social protection systems.
It is not, therefore, a direct role but rather one of support for the players, in three ways: (1) by facilitating learning processes and exchanges of information between them, (2) by providing research and studies to shed light on the working context, and (3) by facilitating links with other regions and other countries so that we can learn from them too.
The added value of a pluralist and international vision
Francine Iragi Mukotanyi , as a partner, what is your contribution to the various aspects of this project?
Francine Iragi Mukotanyi: As a local partner, the Catholic University of Bukavu (UCB) is contributing its local expertise by intervening directly in two Work Packages (WP), namely WP3 on universal health coverage and WP5 on social protection in the informal economy. In addition, as this is a consortium project, we are also collaborating with other WPs on certain specific issues. UCB, through the Centre d’expertise en gestion minière (CEGEMI), is involved in supervising a PhD student and a Masters student in development studies as part of WP5, as well as collecting and analysing data for WP3 through its École Régionale de Santé Publique (ERSP). UCB is supporting the researchers involved in the two work packages.
What is the added value of this local expertise?
Francine Iragi Mukotanyi: Based in one of the project’s areas of operation (Bukavu in particular and the DRC in general) and with experience in running projects on the themes addressed by this PSP, UCB is therefore a reliable partner for seeing the project through to the end and facilitating the achievement of its objectives. Necessary activities aimed at reaching certain local players concerned by the issues of work and universal health will benefit from the involvement and supervision of our university. This additional role as a catalyst will be useful in ensuring that the researchers involved in the two work packages mentioned above do their work well locally, while at the same time making it easier for them to open up to local and regional networks that are strategic in terms of decent work issues in the informal economy.
One of the issues addressed is the informal economy. How can social protection be organised in a context where too few workers are in a position to finance this social security?
Francine Iragi Mukotanyi: There are no ready-made or magic recipes for organising social protection in the informal economy. However, some local and regional experiences (in the DR Congo’s neighbouring countries) can be taken into account (in particular the experiences of artisanal miners and their health insurance system in Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, etc.). Any initiatives that have produced good results in a given area can be tried out in other regions or countries, obviously taking into account certain specific features: the characteristics of the informal employment sector, the operation of the administrative and political institutions involved, acceptance by the players, etc. In our view, it is practically and politically possible to better target certain categories of informal workers with assistance programmes (social assistance) and others with contributory programmes (social insurance).
Who are the players involved in this huge project?
Francine Iragi Mukotanyi: In DR Congo, for example, our work targets the provincial divisions and the Ministry of Labour (also national), which are at the top and play a role in certain labour regulations and supervision. It also concerns informal workers’ associations (cooperatives, trade unions, informal committees) and the workers themselves as the central subject of the work and no longer an object of reflection. Finally, many other structures may be interested in our research, such as civil society actors interested in informal work, research centres involved in labour issues in the region and other international NGOs involved in promoting decent work in DR Congo.
From informal to formal, a few ways forward
Promoting decent work is one of the components of this process. How can we move from the informal to the formal economy? How can workers make their voices heard? What role should governments play?
Francine Iragi Mukotanyi : The approaches that have been tried and supported at international level have been based primarily on a formalist approach. These perspectives seem unsuitable in the case of fragile states such as DR Congo, with their rather ghostly administration in certain areas where the informal economy is nonetheless flourishing. Consequently, in order to make progress towards the formal economy, it would be more effective to also consider grassroots initiatives (formalisation from the bottom up, based on the regulations developed by the players, the impact of which would be more likely to produce good results if these regulations are genuinely taken into account and understood by political decision-makers). There are also ways of providing incentives, by making formalisation laws more flexible. However, we need to go further and step up incentives, by aiming to improve working conditions, by encouraging networking or partnerships between informal and formal businesses to create areas of influence, so that informal workers are stimulated by some of the good experiences of formal businesses in terms of working conditions. In short, formalise, but how? For what and in what interests for informal workers?
As regards the promotion of social dialogue in the informal economy, it seems that the development of genuine trade unions for informal workers is a necessary strategy. The aim should be to form unions that can transcend local boundaries (villages, groupings) and thus adapt unions to the realities of permanent mobility in certain informal activities such as mining. In addition, we need to focus on the diversity of trade unions, in response to the plurality of informal activities and their realities. There is also a need to stimulate the creation of federative trade union structures at grassroots level, through which the members, who are associative groupings, would already have the activities of their worker-members formalised. If such federations are created from above, they run the risk of being more formalistic and less interesting for some of the target groups. WP 5 also analyses these avenues and the potential challenges involved.
Governments (in this case, the DR Congo) should take the reality of the informal economy into account, so that it is better included in the vision of the global partnership for decent work . Not everyone is in favour of formalisation or legalisation. The other approaches and their subtleties deserve political support and attention if they are to include many people.
Can you give examples of initiatives that illustrate better social protection for workers?
Francine Iragi Mukotanyi: In the DR Congo, the experience of mutual health insurance schemes provides interesting ways of providing health insurance to informal workers (and their dependants). Mutual health insurance schemes operate on a contributory basis. However, they are not exclusive to formal workers. However, the potential challenges posed by their specific status should be taken into account. There are also experiments in other sectors of the informal economy, notably savings banks operating on certain artisanal and small-scale mining sites. They are often organised by small groups of companies, friends, nationals, etc. These savings banks provide a degree of resilience. These savings give members a certain overall resilience to a range of vulnerabilities (illness, hunger season, etc.). Such initiatives represent a real potential to be capitalised on with a view to pilot experiments in social protection, particularly contributory social protection. One of the aims of the WP5 research is to study this potential and these informal groupings. At regional level, there are other initiatives that also shed light. They are often more formalistic and sometimes come up against resistance from informal workers when their interests do not lend themselves to it.
In very concrete terms, what are the possible repercussions of your research and work for the DR Congo, but also for Belgium?
Francine Iragi Mukotanyi: For the DR Congo, this includes producing academic research (theses, master’s theses) on working conditions in the informal sector, focusing in particular on the social protection gap for vulnerable groups (women, self-employed workers, etc.) in the informal economy. It may also involve raising awareness among informal workers and their bosses with a view to stimulating interest in decent work, raising awareness (via policy briefs) and lobbying provincial and national political authorities about the problems of informal work and the need for sustainable responses with a view to strengthening the responses and strategies needed to make decent work in the informal economy a reality. Finally, it also aims to promote and produce a master plan for social protection in the informal economy in conjunction with informal workers’ organisations, partners and political authorities.
For Belgium, there is above all the scientific contribution of the project’s activities, which could be used to guide the approaches of certain projects carried out or virtually envisaged for the DR Congo in the field of decent work. It is also possible that our contribution will be in unison with Belgium’s all-important efforts to combat inequality in the Great Lakes region. The purpose of our work is not purely academic or scientific. Our research also offers a social and political perspective to further alert and stimulate the political authorities on the issues of work in the informal economy.
Find out more
- Discover the SPRING programme website
Photos : SPRING & Philippe Dunia Kabunga
