The present paper deals with the informalization of economic activities in Cameroon by Chinese migrants, indicating that China’s influence on the country’s economy is also perceptible in the informal sector. it aims to provide relevant references and data on the causes and impact of a new informal economic entrepreneurship in which local Chinese have become key actors.

Moreover, the research offers a thoughtful analysis of emerging unregulated economic practices that are not necessarily associated with economic destitution, nor are they used as survival tactics by marginalised local populations. This means that contrary to traditional analyses, this project rather discusses the informalization of Cameroon’s economy from a transnational perspective. It also interprets this informal economic entrepreneurship, which is primarily driven by Chinese migrants’ scramble for the country’s resources, as an instrument for capital accumulation and economic predation.

Moreover, the research highlights the strategic diplomatic and economic alliances between Cameroon’s government and its Chinese counterpart. It therefore demonstrates that in exchange for China’s growing contribution to their country's major infrastructural and development projects, Cameroonian authorities facilitate the massive migration of Chinese nationals and sometimes deliberately disregard their participation in informal as well as illicit activities.

Short bio

Basile Ndjio is Professor of anthropology at the University of Douala and currently a Fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He has held visiting professorships and research fellowships  in several European, African and North American universities as well as research centres. He has written extensively on urban popular culture, material culture, gender and sexuality, Chinese sex labour migration, African queer, governance and the politics of belonging. His most recent works include: “Transnational Chinese beautyscapes: ghetto glamour and the fake beauty in Abidjan”(Africa Spectrum, 2024a), “In the name of the (God)father: The unnameable name” (Ethnography 2024b); “Coronavirus, Imagined Location and disenchanted Home in Africa”(Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies  2023a); ”Rhizomic authoritarianism: power, biopolitics and transnational practices in Cameroon,” (Globalizations, 2023b); (with Kerstin Pinther and Kristin Kastner) Fashionscapes: Histories, Materialities and Aesthetic Practices in the Afropolis(Bloomsbury 2022).