The well-documented weaknesses of structural adjustment policies have led to a reconceptualisation of the World Bank’s approach to neo-liberal reforms. The ‘Doing Business’ reforms aim to foster a better climate for business in a number of ways. The main policy documents reject interventions targeted at specific groups but, although they identify informal small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as likely to benefit disproportionately, they specifically exclude micro-enterprises as a target group. The general argument of this paper is that reforms may well impact non-target groups through interactions with several areas of policy and law, with public attitudes and with multiple economic sectors. In particular, it is argued that the exclusion of micro-traders from the reforms contributes to their marginalisation in political and policy arenas, increasing their vulnerability to state intervention. The paper draws on a four-month study conducted by the authors in Tanzania in 2007.

The World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ reforms were originally expected to help the growth and formalisation of SMEs and micro enterprises. The expectations that reforms would support the growth and development of SMEs were challenged by scholars, but the reforms’ impact on the micro enterprises of the poor has received little scholarly attention. Drawing on a desk study and on field studies of street-vendors carried out in Tanzania in 2007 and 2011, this paper argues that the growth and formalisation of micro-businesses are badly served by the ‘Doing Business’ reforms.

Normative approaches to urban governance and planning and idealised visions of city space too often result in relocation or forced eviction of street traders and other informal economy workers from public space as a policy of choice. Often a response to a short-term political imperative, clearances take place with little understanding of the interconnected nature of the urban informal economy or widespread poverty impacts that result. As a result, street traders feel ostracised and often describe themselves as refugees. Drawing on a property rights perspective, and the ‘legal empowerment’ paradigm, this paper compares the major clearances of street traders that took place in Dar es Salaam in 2006–2007 and Dakar in 2007, with very different outcomes for traders. It explores the political initiatives behind the clearances, the dual property rights regimes in both countries, and the different roles of social movements, resulting in emerging political power in one city and passive marginalisation in another. Finally it argues that the conceptualisation of public space as a hybrid ‘public good’ would allow for a more appropriate property rights regime for the urban informal economy.

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Globalisation, liberalisation and urbanisation have contributed to a rapid growth of urban informal economies in sub-Saharan Africa. Commerce has become a dominant feature of national economies, and street vending has become a prime source of employment for poor urban dwellers, yet most work illegally, and evictions and harassment are common. The paper examines the process and impacts of three pro-poor reform agendas in Tanzania, each representing a different ideology of reform, and draws on survey results from 2007 and 2011 to assess their potential to legitimate the activities of street vendors and to ameliorate their relations with the state.