Matteo Rizzo

Testing Claims about Large Land Deals in Africa: Findings from a Multi-Country Study

Abstract Despite much research on large land deals for plantation agriculture in Africa, reliable data remain elusive, partly because of limited access to information and practical and methodological challenges. International debates are still shaped by misperceptions about how much land is being acquired, where, by whom, how and with what consequences. This article aims empirically to test some common perceptions through an analysis of findings from research conducted in three African countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, and Tanzania. The article presents new evidence on the scale, geography, drivers and features of land deals, relates findings to data from earlier research and international efforts to monitor land deals, and outlines possible ways forward for ongoing monitoring of the deals.

Being taken for a ride: Privatisation of the Dar es Salaam transport system 1983-1998

This paper analyses the effects of privatisation and deregulation of the Dar es Salaam transport system. It starts with an account of the decline of the government-owned transport company and the first opening of the market to private buses in 1983. The analysis then moves to the progressive deregulation of the sector and its impact on transport supply. Competition between private operators in the oversupplied market manifests itself in noncompliance with safety rules, and inefficiencies in the fare structures. Labour relations with the private sector are then examined to illustrate the logic of the market. The results of a questionnaire answered by 668 workers suggest that the reaction of casual workers to exploitative conditions of employment characterises many aspects of the operation of the transport system. The impact of deregulation is therefore most clearly to be seen in the nature of labour relations within the sector, and it is argued that there is a need for state regulation to monitor and enforce conditions of employment within the private sector if service provision is to be improved.

The political economy of HIV

This is an editorial introduction to a special issue on the political economy of HIV, co-edited by Kevin Deane, Deborah Johnston and Matteo Rizzo for the Review of African Political Economy.

The Invisibility of Wage Employment in Statistics on the Informal Economy in Africa: Causes and Consequences

Abstract This article challenges the claim, along with the statistics that support it, that self-employment is by far the dominant employment status in the informal economy. The article begins by reviewing key insights from relevant literature on the informal economy to argue that conventional notions of ‘wage employment’ and ‘self-employment’, while unfit for capturing the nature and variety of employment relations in developing countries, remain central to the design of surveys on the workforce therein. After putting statistics on Tanzania’s informal economy and labour force into context, the analysis reviews the type of wage employment relationships that can be found in one instance of the informal economy in urban Tanzania. The categories and terms used by workers to describe their employment situation are then contrasted with those used by the latest labour force survey in Tanzania. The article scrutinises how key employment categories have been translated from English into Swahili, how the translation biases respondents’ answers towards the term ‘self-employment’, and how this, in turn, leads to the statistical invisibility of wage labour in the informal economy. The article also looks at the consequences of this ‘statistical tragedy’ and at the dangers of conflating varied forms of employment, including wage labour, that differ markedly in their modes of operation and growth potential. Attention is also paid to the trade-offs faced by policy-makers in designing better labour force surveys.

Neoliberalizing Infrastructure and Its Discontents: The Bus Rapid Transit Project in Dar es Salaam

This chapter focuses on Dar es Salaam Rapid Transit (DART), a Bus Rapid Transit project (BRT) and the new face of public transport in Dar es Salaam since operations started in 2016. A PPP funded by the World Bank, DART aimed to transform public transport through large-scale infrastructural work, the introduction of new buses, and phasing out pre-existing public transport providers from the city’s main public transport routes. The chapter challenges the presentation of BRT as the ‘win–win’ solution to tackling the crisis of public transport in developing countries. A contextualized political economy of DART highlights why the project proceeded so slowly (implementation began in 2002), documenting the capacity of some Tanzanian actors to resist. Tensions over the displacement of existing paratransit operators by foreign investors, the inclusion of the existing public transport workforce, employment destruction, affordability of the new service, and their management by the government are a window into ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ in Tanzania.

A response to Gundula Fischer's comment

I welcome the fact that my article, ‘Informalisation and the end of trade unionism as we knew it? Dissenting remarks from a Tanzanian case study’ (2013), has led to a debate about informalised workers and unions in Tanzania, and about how to research labour struggles. Gundula Fischer’s comment raises two criticisms of my article. The first concerns what Fischer terms ‘Rizzo’s and Standing’s (implicit) assumptions about labour history’, a problem of overgeneralisation of the trade union experience, allegedly. The second is that its lack of contextualisation of the history of, and current debates within, the Tanzanian labour movement prevents ‘a more sophisticated picture’ to emerge. In this rejoinder I will explain why I find these two lines of critique unconvincing.