info.afrindex.com
China-Africa Trade Information Service
info.afrindex.com
China-Africa Trade Information Service
African News Agency (ANA)
The “office” overheads are cheap and the furniture basic. The two brothers have set up an informal business repairing shoes, belts and other miscellaneous items, as well as sewing and altering garments on a street corner near a busy Randburg intersection in Gauteng, where they work from Monday to Friday.
Today the brothers, who are from Sunyani in Ghana’s Brong-Ahafo Region and have been in South Africa since 1999, are a neighbourhood fixture and make a modest living with life looking promising.
The informal economy is one of the key economic drivers, not just South Africa, but the entire continent, keeping a huge segment of the population engaged, productive and able to support themselves and their families.
They are respected by the locals, with one household nearby providing the brothers with free electricity and another neighbour in the wealthy neighbourhood allowing the brothers to sit under the shade of his trees.
Michael, 44, has a family and three children back in Ghana. His work in South Africa has enabled him to put his two sons through school and they now earn good livings.
“I think I will stay in South Africa for another two years until my daughter has finished school and then I will return home to Ghana because I miss my family so much,” Michael told the African News Agency (ANA)
