Although there are many studies on informal workers juggling multiple jobs, how workers differentiate their jobs economically and morally is less examined. Based on 18 months of fieldwork among urban middle‐class entrepreneurs in Brazzaville, this article argues that entrepreneurs in the informal economy work on multiple projects that complement each other in terms of economic gains and moralities, a pattern I call “patch‐work.” Some projects are pitched in entrepreneurial competitions to gain funds, awards, and training and traveling opportunities. Others can generate more stable cash flows to support other projects. Yet others are not for profit but rather to expand one's social network. Despite being unable to generate income quickly, projects deemed entrepreneurial are kept for years, as they have high moral value. Thus, rather than simply maximizing profits, an entrepreneur in the informal economy “patch‐works” to pursue economic, social, and moral goals at the same time. Moreover, the moral values are highly diverse and debated among the entrepreneurs, showing that they cannot be reduced to a single logic. Patch‐working shows that, rather than passively coping with precarity or following neoliberalism, some working in the informal economy actively construct their working patterns to meet their multifaceted pursuits.

Africanists have written much about interactions between multiple currencies in Africa, yet paperwork-based regulations that apply to these interactions remain less studied. Meanwhile, ethnographic studies of paperwork examine the roles of documents more in state administration than in commercial transactions. Based on ethnographic research with individuals and institutions involved in the international transfer of the franc CFA in Congo-Brazzaville during a severe foreign exchange (forex) shortage from 2016 to 2021, this article argues that the participants in forex transactions manoeuvre paperwork to regulate the speed of the forex outflow – where paperwork functions as what I term ‘bureaucratic valves’. Responding to the outflow of forex caused by the oil price slump since 2015, the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) required numerous documents from buyers of forex to justify their demand. This policy slowed down international money transfers because it took more effort to meet the paperwork requirements. Yet banks, money-transfer agencies and individuals in Congo subsequently developed their own paperwork-based mechanisms to cope with this change. These manoeuvres show that paperwork is a flexible and essential tool for adjusting transactions for different participants, especially in the money markets and in (central) banking in Africa.