Dealers at Deckon: A Presentation of the Survival of the Poor

Abstract

Africa is the place where the world poorest people are living. The majority of these people are experiencing living difficulties such as lack of food, shelter, job, education and other basic needs. Some of them even though well educated, have no opportunity to work to satisfy the above basic needs. Therefore, in order to deal with those issues people try to be organized into groups. They create opportunities that are sometimes illegal. It is the case of the market at DECKON, an example of self-employment solution that has created an economic area for selling various electronic equipment especially mobile phones. The traders are organized either in informal business for the ones or formal business for the others. However, their main problem is the lack of proper funding for their activities and the regularization of their business. In addition, they are sometimes abused by some government’s agents who deliberately delay the procedures or attempt to bribe them for the issue of their business legal papers. The traders also acutely lack the proper training in phone repairing, business management and entrepreneurial skills. The document proposes an ICT infrastructure named Peoplenet to improve access to knowledge that will help deal with the issues of dealers at Dekon.