Crisis as resource: entrepreneurship and motorcycle taxi drivers in Kigali

ABSTRACT

Crisis has been a common experience in sub-Saharan Africa, at least since the 1980s with disastrous results for countless Africans. Such crises, however, can represent opportunities for entrepreneurship for those prepared to take the often-mortal risks involved, or the imposition of entrepreneurship as a strategy for getting by. In this paper, I explore the case of motorcycle taxi drivers in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. I argue first that Rwanda is not a state in crisis, exhibiting instead tight governmental control and effective social and economic regulation. To make a living in this political environment, motorcyclists are compelled to generate crisis within the systems that supposedly regulate their business. This converts governmental control into a simulacrum, at the same time as it compels motorcyclists to ‘invest’ life and limb in these ambiguous relationships. Thus, while current developments in Rwanda suggest that there is now no ‘crisis’, the way in which the country is governed demands the creation of a continuous state of crisis for many, since it is only in crisis that the opportunities to make a living can be created.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa
• crisis
• entrepreneurship
• motorcycle taxis
• Rwanda
• urban

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For a parallel case in Rwanda, see Newbury’s (1988) account of the abuse of uburetwa (ubureetwa in her orthography) labour obligations by chiefs.

2. I am grateful to Nicolas Argenti for this formulation.

3. See https://data.worldbank.org/country/rwanda. Accessed 16 October 2017.

4. The Rwandan Franc (RWF) was worth around £0.10 during my time in Rwanda.

5. In recent years, a few private companies have entered the market, but during my fieldwork, employed only tiny numbers of riders, who were usually also co-operative members.

6. Honeyman (2016) reports that a boss can also be called shebuja, the term for a patron in a formal clientship relationship such as ubuhake (Maquet, 1961; Newbury, 1988). Umukoresha literally means a person for whom one works, and has none of the connotations of abusive hierarchy carried by shebuja. I never heard shebuja in use by motari who generally said how they enjoyed working without a ‘boss’ in this sense.

Additional information

Funding

The research on which this paper is based was funded by Brunel University London.

Notes on contributors

Will Rollason

Will Rollason is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Brunel University, UK. His research to date has focused on Papua New Guinea and Rwanda.