Difference between revisions of "Trotro (Ghana)"

|An estimated 85% of the city of Accra – the capital of the West African country of Ghana – moves around in a network of entrepreneurial motor transportation known as the ''trotro'' (Okoye, Sands and Debra 2010: 12). The word “trotro” evokes images of a broken-down 15-passenger van, stripped of its once-plush interior, outfitted with locally-produced seats of metal frames and plywood bottoms and covered with fake leather. This transformation maximizes the number of passengers on any given ride. Mechanics and repairmen in Accra control a process through which vehicles are “tropicalized” and “baptized into the system” (Verrips and Meyer 2001). Along with market trading, ''trotro'' drivers are quintessential examples of the “informal sector” or “informal economy” in Accra, and the history of the ''trotro'' sector highlights the structural conditions through which informal economies grow and thrive. The omnipresence of ''trotros'' embodies the challenges to contemporary analysis of informality and to development policies that seek to reform the informal economy (Hart 1973).