Navigating conflicting moral temporalities: gradual growth, state sovereignty and small-scale trade in urban Ghana

ABSTRACT

This article delves into the moral economy that informs small-scale trade in urban Ghana's growing markets, and that intersects with development, the state, and the global economy. Small-small, emphasizes slow, gradual, dependable progress and inclusiveness. While (re)distributing profit and possibilities, small-small is also used to discredit competitors and is felt to inhibit personal growth. It furthermore often conflicts with neoliberal norms of self-governing and self-optimization. Drawing from fieldwork in Tamale, the study explores how morality intertwines with market dynamics, the nation-state, and politics of informality. Moral economy illuminates the temporal tensions between individual and collective gains against the backdrop of local economic practices and global capitalism. It underscores the moral underpinnings of protectionism and sovereignty amid neoliberal shifts, revealing complex interactions shaping economic life in urban Ghana.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral economy
• Ghana
• informality
• neoliberalism
• temporality

Introduction

This article describes the moral economy that informs small-scale traders’ activities in the growing markets for foodstuff, groceries, clothing and other everyday products of urban Ghana. Framed as small-small (biela biela in Dagbani and kakra kakra in Twi), an emic phrase that implies humbleness and modesty, this morality is based on two sets of norms and values. First, the idea that progress and growth should be gradual, reliable, and slow; and second, the inclusive norm that someone’s individual success must simultaneously enable others to grow. Small-small, in this way, simplifies entry for new traders, and the obligations on fellow traders may work as a safety net. Defining rules of competition in this way, small-small also constitutes grounds for discrediting competitors. While these moral arrangements redistribute profits and possibilities, they simultaneously make it difficult to accumulate the capital needed to grow and create more viable businesses. They form a moral temporality that limits traders’ possibilities to expand and frowns upon desires for quick profits. Small-small illustrates in this way the tension, that Bloch and Parry (1989) addressed, between individual short-term gains and the long-term cycles of transactions and distribution that reproduce the community.

Furthermore, this article attempts to show how temporal tensions between individual profit-making and redistribution in the community of street and market traders is not only activated by entrepreneurial traders but by the state in its desire to formalise small-scale trade. The state emerges as ambiguous and contradictory in relation to small-small. It creates laws and regulations aimed at protecting small-scale retailers from resourceful foreign capitalists, while simultaneously undermining redistribution and obligations between traders by encouraging them to use banks and microfinance institutes for saving and credit services. Demographic changes, increased competition, and a neoliberal development agenda that encourages individualism and self-governance simultaneously create new moral conflicts and contradictions through which both the state and traders need to navigate.

The study is based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2011–2016 among small-scale street and market traders in Tamale, the capital of Ghana’s Northern Region. The material consists of field notes and interviews with female and male traders of almost all ages within and outside of the marketplace. Marketplaces in southern Ghana are strong female domains (Chamlee-Wright 1997; Clark 1994). Although women are in the majority in the Central Market and other marketplaces in Tamale, northern markets are also historically influenced by the male-dominated Muslim trade networks of the countries in the north and east (Eades 1993). Male traders hold more powerful positions in Tamale markets than in the south. Recently, a growing number of young men all over the country have opened small businesses along the streets (Overå 2007). Young men selling items such as clothing, shoes and slippers, or mobile phone credits, while ‘waiting’ for opportunities and the possibility to grow up and become men (see Honwana 2012) also fill the streets of Tamale. Interviews were also conducted with representatives from the state – politicians, tax-collectors, public officers from various departments, and two centrally positioned Dagbon¹ chiefs and numerous representatives of different trader associations. Newspaper articles and official documents were used to contextualise the empirical material.

The paper is organised in three parts. The first part draws predominantly on the work of Carrier (2018) and Bloch and Parry (1989) and outlines what the small-small moral economy theoretically and empirically implies. The second part describes the temporal tensions between individual short-term gains and long-term redistributive relations and obligations that constitute the moral economy. In the third part, these tensions are situated in a context of broader economic and demographic transformations and the Ghanaian neoliberal development agenda. I conclude by arguing that these temporal tensions and transformations affect the redistribution in the market and should be understood in the context of Ghana trying to claim sovereignty in the liberalised global economy.

Small-small moral economy

Mohammed,² a young shoe and slipper trader explains: ‘Don’t rush it. The money don’t like that. Follow them small-small. Those who rush it, steal.’ To follow the money small-small was his business strategy. His father taught him to think like this, that one should progress small-small, slowly, step by step. Small-small thus refers here not only to what is little in size, but to the gradual temporality of small steps. In this instance, Mohammed was talking about how he was planning ahead. He had expanded his business gradually and without greed, constantly aware of the impression he made and of his relations to friends, customers, and fellow traders. Each time he travelled to Nigeria to buy shoes in bulk, he had been able to bring back more money than the previous journey. When I met him the first time in 2012 his business was doing rather well. Although he was still selling his shoes from a small rickety shed above a gutter, he had recently bought a store, a locally produced container made of corrugated steel walls with a roof, which he had placed in another market in town. He was planning to shift his business into hardware. But the container was still empty when I met him again in 2016. While waiting for enough money to buy products to sell, he waited for the opportunity to have a family, causing him frustration and anxiety. His skill and thoroughness as a trader, along with his humility and loyalty, made Mohammed an economic resource for friends and distant family members. With each gift and loan, his waiting extended.

Mohammed is one of the many young men who work along the streets outside the Tamale Central Market. He exemplifies how the market is a space for gradual progress. It is easy to start a business through shared social or ethnic ties with existing traders or store owners. The first piece of ware, such as clothes, provisions, electronics, or mobile phone credits, can be borrowed from established traders and reimbursed when sold. Newcomers often begin their careers by roaming or hawking the streets, while carrying their goods or pushing them on wheelbarrows. As turnover increases, the vendor begins purchasing products in bulk from a larger local store, eventually sourcing larger quantities at a lower cost in Kumasi or Accra and reselling them in Tamale.

Small-small contributes to the redistribution of resources. Drawing on Lanzano, Salverda and Wiegratz (this volume), distribution refers here to the ‘distributional outcomes of an economy’ while redistribution concerns the deliberate ‘practices and mechanisms’ that transfer resources, such as profit, from one actor to another. In central Tamale, traders have the obligation to provide opportunities for others, to let others make a living from the movement of money. Offering selling spaces and extending credit for goods enables others to initiate businesses and sustain themselves. While these norms inform trading practices, their redistributive effect is also a result of rational calculation, where individuals anticipate occasions when they themselves may need support and help. In a Kampala study, Monteith and Camfield (2021, 14; italics in original) emphasise that this moral obligation is not solely about direct gains but revolves around gaining ‘access to the means of livelihood.’ The principled right to support oneself and one’s family drives a redistribution of resources, even if equality is not inherently a moral virtue. In fact, the inclusive part of small-small also reinforces hierarchies and patronage. In Tamale, some of the more established traders along the streets had increased their turnover to such an extent they could allow small-boys to work for them. These young men, often residing in the same neighbourhood, were handed the down-ones, the clothes in a bale that were the hardest to sell. They then roamed the streets in search for buyers. To gradually grow and expand without risking loyalties and obligations defines how actors ought to relate to their work and social surroundings. ‘Squeezing’ profits and failing to financially assist friends in need are frowned upon.

The concept of moral economy entered anthropological debates first through the work of cultural historian E. P. Thompson (1971) and political scientist James C. Scott (1976). To them, it reveals the standards, norms, and values within an economy, but also describes how these legitimise struggles, resentments, and resistance against a more powerful other. They both see moral economy as central in class conflicts, in which the moral is a source for legitimising resentment. More recent work (Palomera and Vetta 2016) suggests that all economic activities are influenced by values and norms. From this point of view, neoliberalism is a project that fosters some values over others (Whyte and Wiegratz 2016; Wiegratz 2016).

The small-small norms are binding obligations connecting individual traders to the community in a normative economic temporality. Over time, these obligations foster trust, solidarity, and the emergence of claims and demands. Building on Carrier's (2018) perspective, this approach defines moral economy through the obligations arising from economic interactions, extending not only to individuals but to the entire community. In addition to providing market access, traders are bound by obligations to each other through various organisational forms like trade unions, commodity associations, and susu schemes. Many feel social pressure to engage and contribute to these structures for credibility and competitiveness (Hendriks 2017; Schindler 2010). The normative economic temporality of small-small resonates with the long-term and short-term transactional orders that Bloch and Parry (1989) identified. They see long-term transactions as what reproduce the entire social and cosmic order of a society. Others (see Carrier 2018; De L’Estoile 2014, 69–71; Heslop 2016) argue that long-term order can be understood as the relationships formed by obligations and continuous interaction among actors in the market over time. In this context, short-term transactions involve individual appropriation, competition, and profit-making. These activities mutually influence each other, with goods from short-term transactions becoming part of the redistributive long-term cycle, contributing to the reproduction of social and moral orders. Appearing humble and modest by claiming to ‘make something small-small’ legitimises prosperity. Small-small does not inherently disapprove of profit or success. According to Bloch and Parry (1989, 26), the two transactional orders define when individual acquisition is seen as a legitimate and commendable goal and when it is morally criticised. Criticism arises when short-term gains are perceived to jeopardise long-term social reproduction.

While my focus is on Tamale's urban market, the presented ethnography suggests that small-small may have broader implications. For instance, Clark (2010, 229) discerns a consensus among the Kumasi market women she interviewed that ‘incremental betterment’ is necessary for making any changes and improvements in the country more likely to last. Madame Ataa, for instance, recommends ‘slow but steady progress, kakrakakra (literally, little by little)³ over the lure of ‘easy come, easy go,’’ and argues that many improvements lately have ‘undermined economic stability, and community autonomy. They [the changes] make the country poor by making its people envious, lazy, and greedy for quick profit.’

I propose using the moral economy as a lens to examine urban economic transformations, including neoliberal restructuring, (in)formalisation, and the nation's growing global ambitions. This perspective also contributes to the vast literature on African urban economies (Chamlee-Wright 1997; Clark 1994; Guyer 2004; Hart 1973), which often stresses its informal dimension (Elyachar 2003; Lindell 2010). In this context of economic and demographic shifts, the status of this specific economy as outside of state regulation and as a political project adds further temporal tensions to these transformations. The traders’ obligations and responsibilities towards each other gain additional significance when considered in the context of the prolonged and politicised conflict involving the Dagbon royal elites and their supporters – a conflict explored by myself and others in separate works (Jennische 2019; MacGaffey 2013).

Temporal tensions between the individual and the community

The norms of small-small enable self-improvement and social economic inclusion. It provides livelihood for many, as middlemen, small-boys, retailers, and by acknowledging the right of others to trade. It is as if money or profit within the market is a kind of commons, a collective resource that must be shared. The individual short-term profits and progression of each trader is necessary for the collective small-small moral economy to be upheld, which opens for a wider discussion about morality and redistribution as situated in the relation between the individual and the community.

Community is here understood as a non-essentialist and descriptive term (Pieterse 2008, 87–88, also see Cleaver 2001) for the common experiences shared by traders in central Tamale. It describes a diverse and complex group of traders marked by social stratification, hierarchies, and conflicts. The community's formation relies on internal processes, encompassing interconnected social and economic networks creating boundaries. Additionally, external factors unite urban small-scale traders as a target for political programmes and urban space regulation.

This section illustrates how the tensions between short-term and long-term manifest among traders in Tamale. Actors criticise successful competitors on moral grounds, revealing that the moral economy is not only normative but also serves as a strategic tool employed by traders, causing further tensions and contradictions. First, I discuss sakawa practices, often referring to the pursuit of quick profits through deceptive means, particularly targeting foreigners online and in person. In Tamale's streets and markets, ‘sakawa’ is now used to label young traders deviating from small-small by appearing greedy and unabashed. Subsequently, I discuss what traders term ‘foreign influx,’ representing foreign traders engaging in morally questionable practices by bypassing middlemen and blurring the line between wholesalers and retailers. The moral considerations arising from these cases stem from increased involvement of Tamale and Ghana in the global political economy.

Sakawa

A sakawa boy is a young man who regularly breaks the norms of the moral economy. Normally, the term sakawa (a Hausa word, meaning ‘putting inside’), refers to cyberfraud activities mixed with occult rituals that some men are increasingly engaged with to raise quick money (Warner 2011). Feeding on the fluidity of the digital world and global economy, it has been a common theme for several TV-shows and films in recent years (Oduru-Frimpong 2014). But in the streets of Tamale, it also refers to different trickster activities, and the cheating of foreigners. Sakawa connects ideas about how to get rich, occultism and globally spread conspiracy theories. Oduru-Frimpong (2014) describes how sakawa practices are condemned all over Ghana. There are plenty of moral narratives in which seeking quick profits through engaging in occult rituals have terrible consequences for the actor, but also about the money involved becoming contaminated, and seen as dirty or evil. A popular Twi saying is: ‘ape ntem, anyantem, ene owuo ne nam (seeking it quick, getting it quick, [both] leads to death)’ (in Oduru-Frimpong 2014, 135).

Among especially young traders, sakawa is used as a label they put on traders whose success they cannot explain. Habib was an established and successful trader with two wives, six children and loyal customers. However, he also liked breaking several taboos. At times, he was arrogant to potential buyers, demanding them to pay more for the shirts he sold than the standard price. He came late in the mornings, sometimes not at all, letting his junior brother (cousin) do the work. Even his senior brother, Yakubu, and their friend Saibu, who sold shoes in the same corner, sometimes did not see him as taking the business ‘seriously.’ Many around him were annoyed at his undeserved success and claimed he was sakawa without any clear motivations beyond his appearance and the way he greedily conducted his business.

A common theme in understandings of sakawa is the presence of juju, commonly referred to as magic. Despite being deeply religious, people in everyday life recognise the effect of juju. One day the junior brother of Habib came running, urging me to come and see what was going on in the crowd across the street. Inside the crowd of young people, a small-boy sat on a bench, leaning backwards, with another boy’s head on his stomach. The boy sitting had swallowed a phone and took money from people who called the number and then listened for the signal through his belly. ‘It’s juju,’ Habib’s brother explained. By greedily rush after quick money and by turning to magic and the occult as this boy was accused of doing, the sakawa embodies small-small traders’ complete immoral other.

These practices have also generated a concern from the government and the political elite. In 2009, the Youth and Sports Minister argued that ‘the eagerness of the youth to be rich in the shortest possible time is a contributing factor to the rise [of] this social menace’ (quoted in Oduru-Frimpong 2014, 139). Comaroff and Comaroff (2000) argue that ‘occult economies’ have proliferated since the turn of the millennium because of a global economy in which the mechanisms of producing wealth seem to lay beyond the conventional and the rational. Salifu (2021), for example, shows how Asante market women in Ghana relate to the economic changes brought about by neoliberalism and increased financialization through superstition in which untrustworthy buyers use ‘bad money’ which reduces the value of their assets.

This points to a paradox of the moral economy, that to become successful, one must go beyond what is allowed but appear to remain within it. For young Muslim men in the streets of Tamale, the internal struggles between the moral guidance of the restricting small-small and alternative ways of becoming rich and successful, co-construct their everyday (see Cassiman 2019). While Habib maintains a comparatively lavish lifestyle, other young traders struggle to make ends meet, and are stuck in what Honwana (2012, 3) and others have described as ‘waithood’. Having left childhood, these young men are still awaiting to be considered mature social adults. This ‘emasculating experience’ (Matlon 2015, 149) of not being able to provide for a wife and family as living on small-scale trade may at times be close to stagnation, the question for many of them was how to get wealthy without jeopardising their social position. It was therefore common to perceive one’s future in another kind of economy, where they would be employed with salary and security. While stuck in time, they were also stuck in space. Images of foreign spaces through mobile phones, TV, and the internet connects them with an outside of Africa or ‘elsewhere’ (Matlon 2015) that motivated them to leave. But small-small, that had allowed them into the market, simultaneously constrained their possibility of moving.

Foreign influx

The morally correct way of doing business was among many traders perceived to be increasingly challenged by economic and demographic transformations and outsiders’ way of doing business. Following norms and values becomes even more difficult in a context of increased competition, lack of work, and general economic uncertainty (see Wiegratz and Cesnulyte 2016).

Foreign retailers have a long history in Ghana, Lebanese and Indians came already during colonial rule (Marfaing and Thiel 2013, 649). The 80’s structural adjustment programme and the opening up of the economy meant an increased interest among foreign traders to establish themselves in Ghana (Appiah-Adu 2001). More recently, Chinese traders have come in great numbers and partly changed the social fabric through new networks and methods (Dankwah and Valenta 2019). With more traders also coming from neighbouring West African countries, this has spurred a political debate with nationalist and xenophobic connotations.

The Progressive Traders Association (PTA), the umbrella organisation for various trader associations in the Northern Region, was established in 2006 in direct response to what its secretary and co-founder termed as foreign influx. According to him, Lebanese, Syrians and Chinese traders had by then opened stores around the market to sell imported rice, flour, and cooking oil directly to end consumers, and Nigerians had begun dealing in motorcycles and spare parts. While PTA and most traders viewed foreign investors as key to development, the short-term gains of these traders were perceived to threaten the livelihood of small-scale traders. The problem for PTA was that they were doing retail instead of wholesale, thus outcompeting established traders with cheap alternative products. Depending on the commodity, different actors had separate roles. Wholesalers, such as traders of bags of rice or piles of yam, or bales of clothes, did not usually also do retail. And if they did, they had separate locations for that (see Clark 1994, 141). It was the task of trader associations to uphold the distinctions between those roles. Importing cheap goods and selling them directly to end consumers, cutting away the possibility for other people to trade those products in between, was considered immoral, as this hindered rather than enabled people to make a living.

The xenophobic dimension to this should not be underestimated. As Hann and Hart (2011, 136) argues, populism and xenophobia are common responses to the ‘multiple forms of dispossession’ that may result from increased marketisation. At the same time, xenophobia alone cannot explain the reactions of traders in Tamale in relation to foreign influx. For example, the Indian-owned department store in the centre of the city was not described in negative terms. It had a policy of offering small-scale traders a volume discount, enabling them to resell the items and turn that discount into profit. Furthermore, the Malian fabric seller Ibrahim in the Central Market was very appreciated by other fabric sellers. He was very careful to conduct his trade in the same manner as his neighbours, meticulous with pricing and terms of purchase. Unlike many of the Ghanaian traders, he regularly and proudly paid the taxes. In that regard, it is very likely that the demands for correct behaviour were greater on him than on local traders.

Traders often argued that outcompeting local smaller actors with access to larger funds and import channels was even against the law. As one trader explained:

The government supports the local business. So, doing business like that, which can destroy others’ business is not good. And illegal. Foreign businesses are coming with a lot of money which can hurt people.

Despite being commonly viewed as unresponsive to traders’ needs, the government, in this case, was perceived as protective by allowing market access exclusively to Ghanaians. The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act (GIPC Act 865, Republic of Ghana 2013) regulates foreign investments in the country, and it states that foreigners are not allowed to do ‘petty trading’ and other types of business with small endowments, unless they invest 1,000,000 USD and employ a minimum of twenty Ghanaians (Republic of Ghana 2013, Section 28). The idea behind GIPC (despite its intention to promote investments) is in this way to deter foreigners from trading in the marketplaces and to protect the moral wellbeing and collective welfare of Ghanaians.

The PTA and its mother organization Ghana Union for Traders Association (GUTA) argues this is a morally righteous legislation that ought to be enforced since newcomers’ way of conducting business is improper. GUTA directs much of their advocacy work toward the government, demanding it to enforce the GIPC Act. Responding to the pressures of GUTA and others, task-forces have been set up all over Ghana to monitor and enforce compliance with the law. However, GUTA argues that this has not been enough. In 2014, thousands of Ghanaian traders belonging to GUTA protested the government’s inefficiency by closing their stores. As a response, the Ministry of Trade and Industry issued a 30-day ultimatum to non-Ghanaian retailers in 48 markets (including the Tamale Central Market) across the country to leave. But the task-force did not enforce the decision (Effah 2014). Removed from the dense social relations of the market, foreign influx at the level of GUTA and GIPC emphasises otherness. Foreigners are here almost per automatic characterised as immoral, portrayed as greedy and unsocial.

In safeguarding markets from foreign investors, Chalfin (2010) demonstrates how the government asserts sovereignty and addresses neoliberal state restructuring towards the global economy through customs and border control. Ghana's government, in its strategy with the GIPC, aims to preserve the characteristics of the urban economy, representing an effort to establish moral sovereignty (see Wiegratz 2016, 333–334). However, this assertion of sovereignty creates tension as Ghana also aspires to participate in a liberalised global economy. The enforcement of the GIPC Act contradicts free trade regulations within the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS), leading Nigerian traders to challenge Ghana in the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice in 2013 (Citifmonline.com, September 19, 2014). The signing of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in 2019 and placing the secretariat in Accra has reignited the conflict. GUTA anticipates the continued application of the GIPC Act even with AfCFTA implementation (Ngnenbe 2019), while others argue it breaches the agreement (Ayitey 2021). In 2020, a Nigerian government delegation pressed Ghana to reconsider the law (Business News, 23 September 2020). The political protectionism of the GIPC Act not only reveals powerful domestic interests in small-scale trade but also underscores how these interests are rooted in a moralised perspective of sovereignty.

Small-small redistributes resources through creating avenues for others to sustain themselves, but participation requires adherence to certain business practices. While Mohammed, as mentioned above, internalise small-small as normative guidelines for his own business, the examples of sakawa and foreign influx, show how actors condemn others, especially the behaviour of other competitors, on the same moral grounds. The foreign influx and sakawa, situated at the intersection of intrapersonal and interpersonal functions of morality (Wong 2014), initiate moral discussions and demands. Regarding the foreign influx, the state, embodying the ambivalent guarantor of the moral economy, discursively and legally protects small-scale trade from resourceful foreigners. However, enforcing these laws proves challenging not only due to disparate ideas of regulatory orders (Beek and Thiel 2017; Roitman 2005), but also due to their incompatibility with ideals of economic liberalisation. The state grapples with mediating between conflicting moral registers, as the capitalist morality of choice and competition clashes structurally norm of social inclusion, gradual progress, piety, and modesty. The moral economy is rife with contradictions emerging from the tensions between the long-term and short-term. Small-small serves as a moral guide, yet it is perceived as limiting. While supporting livelihoods for some, it can also be wielded to exclude foreigners.

Development, neoliberalism and moral transformations

The previous section highlighted moral temporal tensions between individuals searching for quick profits and the long-term redistributive collective gains, extending to ambivalent state actions. This section explores how the state, in advancing its development agenda, has altered the moral foundations of small-small by favouring individual entrepreneurialism.

Neoliberalism in Ghana can be traced back the structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s (see Amponsah 2000; Hutchful 2002). The structural adjustment programmes and the ‘roll back’ of the state (Peck and Tickell 2002) had conflicting effects on local markets. While they opened up new trading and production opportunities, this simultaneously forced many previously formally employed and new job-seekers into those activities to survive (Potts 2008, 159). Economic liberalisation and fewer formal employment opportunities increased competition within the Ghanaian ‘informal economy’ (Clark and Manuh 1991, 228). Alongside continuous demands from the IMF and the World Bank on Ghana to deregulate and liberalise its market, the government has been trying to retake control over local markets, people, spaces, and procedures that it characterises as ‘informal’ (or ‘non-formal’) (Jennische 2012), a process similar to what Peck and Tickell (2002) see as the constructive ‘roll-out’ phase of neoliberalism.

Besides striving to regulate urban space, the government has been also pushing for microfinance services and welfare projects designed on neoliberal incentives and principles (see Adésínà 2009). For instance, the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) informal pension scheme intend to include recipients in the formal economy (Jennische 2012, 2018). However, both the NHIS and SSNIT informal pension scheme are insurance-based systems financed partly by taxes and partly by premiums but covers only those individuals who pay the premiums or who are formally employed. In this context, it is not being a citizen by law that give small-scale urban traders access to the welfare system. Instead, it is by being a successful market actor, through taking loans and by paying the premiums, that they get access to these services.

Neoliberalism is here understood in broad Foucauldian terms as a technology of government in which the market logic infiltrates politics (Ong 2006). In this process, Miller and Rose (2008, 214) argue, dependencies and obligations toward one another are becoming less important compared to individuals working as ‘actively responsible selves’ striving for self-fulfilment. Neoliberalism involves, in this sense, a ‘marketisation of social relations’ (Wiegratz 2016, 19). In the context of these neoliberal developments that promote individualism and self-governing as well as the demographic transformations addressed above, several, at times conflicting, moral regimes exist simultaneously, changing the moral foundations of redistribution in the market. Self-governing and self-optimisation often conflict with the morality of gradual progress and letting others in.

Below I will show how these transformations take form first regarding susus – the informal collective saving schemes that through the involvement of microfinance institutes and banks are increasingly becoming individualised and provided alongside micro-loans, and secondly by the way some traders attempt to move away from moral obligations with the aim of expanding more quickly than would otherwise be possible.

The transformation of susu

Historically, susu refers to the rotating savings and credit associations common in various forms across the developing world (Ardener and Burman 1995; Rodima-Taylor and Bähre 2014). Susu serves as a means for market traders to stabilise their fluctuating incomes and align them with regular family expenses. The term likely originates from the Yoruba esusu, though its history in Ghana predates the term itself (Bortei-Doku and Aryeteey 1995). Traditionally, susu is organised collectively by traders sharing commodities, ethnic ties, or proximity. Members contribute daily or weekly to the scheme, with the organiser distributing the pooled amount, after having deducted a small fee. This collective savings approach remains crucial for many traders, farmers, and others across Ghana.

Voluntary associations like collective susus play a crucial role in organisational life and resource access in the market (Rodima-Taylor and Bähre, 2014). In Ghana, traders increasingly create their own susu, either alongside or instead of the traditional rotating method. These schemes, mainly organised by microfinance institutions and banks, offer both saving and loan services. Susu collectors and ‘mobile bankers’ collect savings or instalments from traders, noted in a passbook kept with the traders. Neither rotating susu systems nor susu collector systems provide interest or account for inflation. Their popularity thus highlights the burden of cash, emphasising traders’ vulnerability to claims from others and irregular expenses, as their businesses and personal lives intertwine.

Bortei-Doku and Aryeetey (1995) argue that this individual ‘susu collector system’ first became popular as a response to the economic hardships of shortages and high inflation during 1975–1985, which increased the need for financial liquidity and quick access to funds. The structural adjustment programmes which complicated the situation for households by reducing their incomes, further augmented its popularity. The present and previous governments have promoted the individual susu as it simplifies regulation. Presumptive moneylenders and susu collectors now require to obtain a license from the Bank of Ghana (Bank of Ghana 2011; Republic of Ghana 2008) and register with the Ghana Cooperative Susu Collectors Association (GCSCA). According to Gyasi Jnr (2012) it is common that many susu collectors have transformed into microfinance institutes, and simultaneously, microfinance institutes have expanded their business and evolved into full-fledged banks.

Through the formalisation of susus, the government has attempted to change the economic behaviour of small-scale traders and others to increasingly use the banks and thus reduce the restrictive and constraining effect of small-small. This agenda is in turn part of a broader global political direction to bank the unbanked and of financial inclusion (Schwittay 2011). The formalisation Ghana’s banking system is crucial for development and should not necessarily be characterised as negative for market relations. Krige (2015) has for example shown how the increased financialization in South-Africa led to the rise of collective savings groups and clubs, which allowed many young men to realise themselves and become adult citizens. But for traders in Tamale, saving is increasingly an individual activity. Many traders express how they used to belong to a collective susu but now prefer to save alone. One senior trader said she was unable to regularly provide the daily amount for her collective susu, causing her to lose the little she had deposited. Her individual susu, on the other hand, was not affected by her occasional default.

Microfinance institutions and banks can offer susu saving services alongside profitable microloans. The ‘public transcript’ around microfinances emphasises credit as a right, self-reliance, and empowerment (Roy 2010). According to Bateman and Chang (2012, 14), the international push for microfinance aligns with a ‘neoliberal worldview,’ prioritising individual entrepreneurship for economic development (see James 2015). In Tamale, one microfinance institute provided loans to traders after a two-month daily saving commitment of 1-5 GHS. Borrowers could access five times the saved amount, repaying it in daily instalments, with an annual interest rate potentially reaching 98%. While individual susu and loans ideally enable traders to expand more quickly, substantial growth through these means is challenging. Susu savings are costly, and loans from the same institutions are financially disadvantageous. The individualisation of these schemes may also erode solidarity within the community. While appreciated by some, not all traders find these effects favourable, altering the conditions for (re)distribution.

Traders seeking independence

The moral obligations to assist others creates a safety net, but it also puts pressure on the trader’s business possibilities. The constant need of money from friends, relatives, and business partners makes it difficult to accumulate the capital needed to grow beyond the speed of small-small.

Linda, a senior market trader in underwear, sponges, towels, belts, and handkerchiefs was one of those traders who always felt limited and restrained by the moral obligations that come with being a trader in the market. She strove to be as ‘independent’ as possible and she had the resources. But this required her to reformulate her relationships with other traders by changing the nature of her business from retail to wholesale. This shift enabled her to evade many of the demands and obligations that other traders experience in relationships with their market peers, which was a prerequisite for her faster growth. Linda did not want to be member of any association or rotating susu; she wanted to conduct a straightforward business in which things were paid for directly. When she and her family first came to Tamale from the south, she began selling clothes and fabrics. Yet there were too many customers wanting to buy on credit and pay ‘next week’ instead. She found her assets and money locked and inaccessible, and therefore she changed her sales range. She began taking the role as wholesaler rather than retailer, selling her goods to roaming traders. ‘These things move fast,’ she said, ‘since people buy to sell.’ Her prices were fixed and buying on credit was not allowed. As a wholesaler this did not cause problems. She couldn’t refuse everyone the possibility to buy on credit. Close friends and kin were exceptions, as well as a few fellow traders in the Central Market, and some ‘church sisters.’

Reluctant to give credit to her customers, buying on credit from her suppliers in Accra was essential for Linda to avoid being short on goods. But she was always quick to repay her debts. ‘So, I'll be free,’ she said. In addition to credits of this sort, Linda took large bank loans (up to 15,000 USD) to maintain her big turnover. Normally, this kind of amount requires a registered company or formal employment. Linda had neither. However, the bank officer could vouch for her, and her brother and his wife, who were both teachers, acted as guarantors. It would take most teachers several years to be able to repay that kind of loan, while it took Linda three months. Schindler (2010) contends that informal credit, often seen as cheap, is actually costly for market women in Tamale, prompting a preference for bank contracts. This shift impacts on the redistribution of value and reflects a neoliberal short-termism (see Wiegratz and Cesnulyte 2016), as maintaining relationships and moral obligations slows down growth. The transition from informal credit to formal bank loans emphasises a development agenda that favours the premium-paying entrepreneur. Linda embodies this developmental ideology. Replacing informal credit networks with formal bank loans, she was able to grow rather quickly, and send her children to universities abroad. Her disentanglement from associations also makes her apolitical, a figure who poses no threat to the political regime yet is fundamental for economic growth. Linda exemplifies how the formalisation involves a redefinition of what it means to be a market trader from a moral perspective. Yet, feeling free is different from being free. The autonomous individual is in Comaroff and Comaroff’s (2016, 51ff) reasoning an imagined construction of European modernity that has not existed there, nor anywhere else. The shift is to whom actors have obligations, not a disentanglement from them in general. In this case, obligations are transferred from other traders to banks, political trader associations are abandoned in favour of religious institutions, and obligations within the family are limited to those closest to them.

Conclusions

This article has explored the tensions that exist in the moral economy of small-scale trade between individual short-term gains and collective long-term redistribution. The individual and the community are bound together in a moral relation, which views individual greed as endangering the foundation of the community. Still, or because of that, traders always balance between what is socially legitimate with what is not, navigating a market characterised by conflicting moral temporalities. While small-small enables newcomers and actors who lack financial capital to start a business, it is simultaneously restrictive, and used to exclude resourceful competitors. Obligations and responsibilities to others limit the possibilities of real expansion. These moral relations are further complicated by the transformations brought about by the formalisation of small-scale trade. Trying to protect small-scale trade from foreigners, the government simultaneously designed policies, such as the regulation of susu, that break the economic interrelations of the market and redefine traders into separate governable individuals. It is Ghana’s increased engagement in the expanding global economy, that has allowed for this moral positioning. In striving to assert sovereignty in the political field surrounding the global economy, the government can thus also be said to navigate discordant moral temporalities. Economic growth, development, and large investments are balanced against protecting the practices of small-scale trade.

By highlighting the moral dimensions of protectionism and sovereignty, moral economy can thus help us explain the ambivalence that characterises many African states in relation to the global and the domestic economy. Moreover, moral economy enables us to explore transformations in state-market relations through describing the social and cultural implications of changes in the political economy. In the context of urban Ghana, small-small encapsulates the tensions and struggles involved in the politics of informality and how the government morally engages with the everyday lives of traders. On the one hand, it is the struggle between the short-term and the long-term, and pitting self-interest, maximisation, and profit-making against communal norms, mutuality, and gradual progress. On the other hand, it is also the struggle between encouraging development and growth, against stagnation.

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to the four anonymous reviewers who have read various versions of this article and provided constructive and insightful comments. I also want to extend a big thank you to Jörg Wiegratz, Tijo Salverda and Cristiano Lanzano for their feedback and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Nordic Africa Institute: [no number]; Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: [FOA11H-356]; The Lars Hierta Memorial Foundation: [FO211-0396].

Notes on contributors

Ulrik Jennische

Ulrik Jennische achieved his PhD in social anthropology from Stockholm University in 2018. He is currently a researcher at Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research, SCORE and a Junior Global Horizon Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, SCAS. His research has focused on small-scale trade, politics, and citizenship in northern Ghana and anticipatory governance in international organizations. He is currently involved in a large research project on the role of corporate-funded think tanks in the global governance of climate change.

Notes

1 The kingdom of Dagbon comprises large parts of northern Ghana.

2 All informants have been given pseudonyms.

3 Little by little, and small-small, refer to the same expression that exists in both Twi and Dagbani (biela biela). Generally, Ghanaians say small-small when speaking English. The difference is likely to derive from Clark having done her interviews in Twi.