The informal systems that run Africa

Many people may never have heard me talk about my mother in this light, so you might need to take a seat because this is a reflective one.

My mother was a member of Women in Nigeria (WIN), one of Nigeria’s pioneering feminist and activist movements, founded in 1982 by women such as Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Ayesha Imam, Bilkisu Yusuf, and others who believed that women’s experiences could not be separated from the social, economic, and political systems around them. But this is not really a story about WIN.

It is a story about the moments I watched my mother try to navigate a system she could see, but could not always name. Growing up in our deeply religious home, I remember her asking questions that made many people uncomfortable. Why, she would ask, did so many rules seem designed specifically for women? Why did religious leaders concern themselves with the size of a woman’s gele? Why were women’s movements, voices, appearances, and ambitions so frequently subject to scrutiny?

At the time, I did not fully understand what she was wrestling with. Today, I think I do. Because what my mother was questioning were not individual rules. She was questioning systems. And systems are often most powerful when they become invisible.

When we think about inequality, we often think about formal institutions: laws, constitutions, policies, government agencies, and courts. These matter. Across Africa, many of these formal systems have evolved significantly. Constitutions increasingly recognize equality. Governments adopt gender policies and ratify charters. Regional bodies sign protocols and frameworks promoting inclusion. Yet despite these advances, many women still struggle to translate their potential into economic power, leadership, ownership, and opportunity. Why?

Because Africa is governed not only by its formal institutions. It is also governed by informal systems. The unwritten rules, inherited norms, cultural expectations, religious interpretations, family structures, and community sanctions. The invisible incentives that shape who owns, who leads, who inherits, who speaks, who negotiates, and ultimately, who thrives. These informal systems rarely appear in policy documents, yet they often determine development outcomes more powerfully than the policies themselves. And nowhere is this more visible than in the lives of African women.

This article is dedicated partly to my mother, but also to the woman selling tomatoes in my village market who may never describe her experience as “structural inequality.” It exists because of the graduate whose career choices are narrowed by expectations she did not create. It exists because of the entrepreneur who cannot access capital because she does not own land. It exists because of countless women whose potential remains trapped inside systems they did not design.

To understand why so many women remain concentrated in low-income and informal work across Africa, we must first understand the invisible systems that continue to govern economic life long after formal reforms have been introduced.

Informal Institutions and Women

The future of inclusive development may depend less on writing new rules and more on transforming the unwritten ones. Outcomes are rarely produced by formal institutions alone. They emerge from the interaction between formal rules and informal norms. A country may enact progressive laws, adopt gender policies, expand educational opportunities, and establish economic empowerment programmes. Yet if the informal institutions that govern everyday life remain unchanged, exclusion often persists beneath the surface.

This matters because much of Africa’s economic and social life continues to be shaped by informal institutions: family systems, kinship structures, social norms, religious expectations, traditional authorities, and cultural definitions of appropriate roles for women and men. These institutions provide identity, belonging, social protection, and community cohesion. But they can also influence who owns assets, who controls time, who accesses opportunities, who accumulates wealth, and who is viewed as a legitimate leader.

Taken together, these systems can create what I increasingly see as an invisible architecture of exclusion. Consider how land is inherited, who performs unpaid care work, who is viewed as a legitimate leader, or what occupations are considered “appropriate” for women.  The result is that women across Africa are often highly productive yet concentrated in informal economic activities with lower returns, fewer protections, and limited pathways to growth. They participate extensively in markets, farms, and community economies, but frequently remain excluded from the assets, capital, networks, and decision-making spaces that generate long-term economic power. And perhaps this is one of the most important challenges for Africa’s development agenda. We have become increasingly focused on reforming formal institutions, undermined by the informal ones.

What does Institutional Reform look like in Practice?

1. Property Rights: What the Law Says vs What the Community Practices
Formal institution: Many African countries now recognize women’s rights to own, inherit, and control property.

Informal institution: Customary inheritance systems often continue to privilege male lineage ownership, treating women as temporary family members.

What this means for development: Women’s economic participation is constrained not by effort, but by asset ownership. Strengthening women’s effective control of productive assets must therefore become as important as legal reform itself. Rwanda and Kenya’s joint land titling initiatives demonstrate how formalizing co-ownership can strengthen women’s access to credit and investment opportunities.

2. Labour Markets: What Economies Need vs What Gender Norms Expect
Formal institution: Governments promote labour force participation, entrepreneurship, and economic inclusion.

Informal institution: Women continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of unpaid care, from childcare to household management.

What this means for development: The challenge is no longer access to finance alone, but access to growth capital. In parts of East Africa, fintech platforms have begun using Chama transaction histories as alternative credit scores, enabling women to access larger formal loans without traditional land collateral.

3. Financial Inclusion: What Markets Offer vs What Women Can Access
Formal institution: Financial systems promote inclusion through banking services, credit schemes, and enterprise financing.

Informal institution: Many women continue to rely on Esusu, Ajo, Chamas, and other community savings networks because formal barriers remain high.

What this means for development: The challenge is no longer access to finance alone, but access to growth capital. In parts of East Africa, fintech platforms have begun using Chama transaction histories as alternative credit scores, enabling women to access larger formal loans without traditional land collateral.

4. Governance: Who Makes Decisions vs Who Influences Them
Formal institution: Constitutions and public institutions are designed to distribute authority and protect rights.

Informal institution: Traditional authorities, customary councils, and religious structures continue to shape resource access and dispute resolution.

What this means for development: Inclusive governance must extend beyond formal representation into the informal institutions where many economic decisions are still made. In parts of South Africa and Malawi, development programmes have worked directly with traditional leaders to include women in customary land and dispute-resolution processes, helping to strengthen women’s economic rights at the community level.

5. Opportunity: What Talent Can Do vs What Society Expects
Formal institution: Educational systems increasingly encourage women to participate across professions and industries.

Informal institution: Gender expectations continue to channel women toward a narrow range of socially acceptable occupations.

What this means for development: Expanding opportunity requires creating deliberate pathways into high-growth sectors. Nigeria’s recent decision by the Nigerian Air Force to extend its absorption policy to graduates of the Air Force Girls’ Military School illustrates how institutional reform can open leadership and career pathways that were previously reserved for men.

Final Thoughts

My mother’s curiosity sparked mine, and it is in moments like this that I find fulfilment applying my institutional strengthening expertise to gender transformation, in the hope that one or more of these solutions may ultimately be adopted at the institutional and systemic level.

Over the years, I have had many conversations with friends who are economists, politicians, public and private sector governance practitioners, and development professionals. Each tends to approach development from a different angle. Economists focus on markets. Politicians focus on power. Governance practitioners focus on institutions/policies. Civil society focuses on people. Yet real lives are lived at the intersection of all four.

That is why I believe Africa’s next development breakthrough lies in interrogating the space where formal institutions meet informal ones; where laws meet norms, where policies meet culture, and where economic opportunities meet the realities of everyday life, to enable people, especially women, to fully realise their potential.