Doing Business in Ghana's Informal Sector – Auntie Muni & the 'Waakye' Kitchen

Abstract

This exploratory study pools together two complementary streams of literature – i.e. marketing and entrepreneurship, drawing upon a single case study of “Auntie Muni,” an informal woman-owned business in the food sector in Ghana’s East Legon area. In our estimation and based on our in-depth interview, Auntie Muni has braved all odds to remain in business despite all the harsh conditions facing her line of business. With a poor educational background, her resilience as a mother not just to her kids (but to most young people in the community, hence the name Auntie) and her optimistic outlook to life in general makes her a worthy case deserved of research attention. It also highlights some policy implications on the need of the government to recognise, reward and assist such informal ventures into more formalized ones. In the end we hope to have a holistic view of the entrepreneurial landscape of the food business (i.e. restaurants) in what we hope would become an assemblage of challenges and achievements for class and other scholarly discussions in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is with a view to teasing out areas where lessons might be learnt, and identifying other areas for further policy intervention as the continent muddles its way towards the 2015 deadline of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Informal sector, Small Business Marketing, Ghana

JEL Classification: J16, M13, M31