Introduction
In sub-Saharan African cities, informality – the relational organisation of work based on social relations – has had visible manifestations and structural traces in public spaces that serve as workspaces for informal workers, who are people earning income through social interactions (Akuoko & Gerber, 2025; Chen, 2023; Watson, 2009). Despite the ongoing discourse about informality and its prospects for inclusive growth and development (Watson, 2008, 2016a; Banks et al., 2020), informality is threatened by the global city agenda in most sub-Saharan African cities (Sassen, 2005; Watson, 2016b). Urban transformation (Cain, 2014; Watson, 2008, 2009) and redevelopment (Lindell et al., 2019; Doshi, 2013) through public policies rooted in global north planning conceptualisation are aimed at modernisation, entrepreneurialism, and formalisation (Watson, 2016b). City governments resort to measures ranging from regulation restrictions (Kanbur, 2009) to forceful evictions of informal workers in public spaces (Lindell et al., 2019; Gillespie, 2016; Obeng-Odoom, 2011) to implement these recommendations.
The informal workers demonstrate agency in their use and access to the spaces earmarked for redevelopment by resisting, complying, and often finding alternate means of accessing the remaining part of the urban fabric (Akuoko et al., 2021). Recent research reveals that informal workers remain in these public spaces (Bonner et al., 2017; Lindell et al., 2019). This article, therefore, aims to analyse how informal workers reclaim and maintain access to urban spaces amid ongoing redevelopments by asking: Why and how are informal workers commoning the urban space in sub-Saharan Africa? In this article, the interest is in (1) the rules that informal workers activate and (2) the ways they can participate in creating institutional arrangements through self-organisation – a process referred to as commoning. Commoning is the collective self-organisation of resource management by actor-users through shared rules valued for everyday use (Nonini, 2017; Linebaugh, 2009).
To answer the research questions, the article defines informality as a relational process of organising access and use of resources based on social interactions and mutual solidarity, informal activities as the various ventures that operate on this relational interaction, and informal workers as people earning income from such interactions. Public spaces are shared open areas accessible to and used by different people for varying reasons. The article proposes that informal workers self-organise through the prevailing local institutions beyond statutory laws. Policy implementation from international organisations by State and local governments through public policies results in multiple institutions governing public spaces (Gerber et al., 2020). More powerful actors in the public space select rules that benefit them (Gerber & Haller, 2021), often to the detriment of the informal workers in public spaces. However, informal workers resort to the commoning of public spaces through their local institutions to legitimise their use of and access to public spaces. The informal workers reclaim and maintain public spaces and remain a part of the urban fabric.
The article argues that the commoning of public spaces can empower certain categories of city dwellers to reclaim their inclusion in resource governance. That is, a shift from public space to common space can have an emancipatory role, as intimated by Kratzwald (2015) and Kip (2015). The next section presents a discussion of informality in sub-Saharan Africa. The subsequent section directs the discussion towards theorising urban public spaces in sub-Saharan Africa and Ghana as sites of urban commoning. Next, the study approach and methodology used to analyse how and why informal workers in Kejetia Market in Kumasi, Ghana, are commoning the space. The final sections are a discussion of empirical findings and a conclusion.
Conceptualising informality in cities
Informality is a widely debated aspect of urban development, particularly in sub-Saharan African cities (Watson, 2009). It is conceptualised along two normative continuums. On one end of the first continuum, informality is viewed as an unplanned and problematic urban element that requires regulation and strict management (Loayza, 2018). Proponents of this perspective associate informality with low-income developing countries (Roy, 2005; Watson, 2009, 2016a), inefficient bureaucracies, and dysfunctional governments, leading to economic activities outside the formal, capital-driven system (De Soto, 2000). Conversely, the other end of this continuum sees informality as an urban element with untapped economic and spatial potential, not limited to poverty or underdeveloped countries (De Soto, 1989; 2000; Dovey & King, 2011). The second continuum presents informality as a temporary response to past economic crises that will be resolved with economic restructuring (OECD, 2009; Yusuff, 2011; La Porta & Shleifer, 2014) or a permanent urban feature. In the latter view, informality reflects the resilience of marginalised groups striving to survive on the social, economic, political, and geographical fringes of mainstream development (Guha-Khasnobis et al., 2006; Kanbur, 2009; Loayza, 2018).
Despite the extensive coverage of informality across various regions and disciplines (Williams, 2014), its applications and studies remain focused on specific fields of study (Banks et al., 2020; Galdini & De Nardis, 2023) rather than being applied across them. This focus is mainly because much of the literature still frames informality as a temporary measure associated with unplanned urban elements that require long-term resolution. In contrast, informality continues to expand (La Porta & Shleifer, 2014) and significantly contribute to the economies of many countries, accounting for over 70 per cent of urban income in most African nations (Chen, 2023; Vanek et al., 2014). Additionally, a growing body of research highlights informality as an important aspect of the labour market in the global north (Williams & Nadin, 2010).
More than ever, most informal workers use urban public spaces as workspaces and contribute significantly to their national incomes (Chen, 2023). Current studies call for dialogues and dynamic relationships between what is ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ to produce an analytical focus on informality that highlights the obscured persistent negotiation and alteration of boundaries on issues of (il)legality and (il)legitimacy (Galdini & De Nardis, 2023; Kanbur, 2009). Further, a dialectic relationship effectively interprets the varying and multiple-dimensional realities that prevail in cities. Such an analysis discloses those disadvantaged by their inability to be “formal” and those advantaged by their ability to be selectively “informal” (Galdini & De Nardis, 2023; Banks et al. 2020) and highlights the disproportionate representation of women in informal work (Bonnet et al., 2019; Brown et al., 2010).
Consequently, this article advocates for new forms of urbanism in African cities to incorporate and embrace informality. More specifically, it calls for urban plan implementation procedures that include the actors who usually resort to customary law to secure their access to urban resources and who can become an important component of the institutional arrangement that governs the process of urban transformation, particularly in sub-Saharan African cities. The article argues, along with critical urban scholars, that the extent and pace of city growth in sub-Saharan Africa necessitates a drift away from theories of planning purely rooted in the global north conception (Chatterjee, 2023; Porter et al., 2011). Urban transformation in sub-Saharan African cities calls for the analysis of the varying institutions driving all actors who access and use public spaces and outlines the qualities of informality as a mode of transaction to contribute to urban governance (Porter et al., 2011).
The analysis of the governance of public spaces as a meeting point of formal public policy implementation and use and access by informal workers through commoning produces the network of relationships among the actor-users of public space (State, local governments, customary leaders, private investors, and informal workers). Therefore, there is a need to focus on the conditions that make a deliberative process aimed at sustainable urban governance possible. Subsequently, informality is not a problem to be solved but a potential pathway to collectively act on spatial and representative modification with an immense prospect for sustainable urban governance (Porter et al., 2011). The next section explores how user actors of a resource produce commoning and conceptualise the public spaces as resources for collective self-organisation to contribute to an analytical framework that can positively affect urban governance and policy implementation.
Commoning of public spaces: A conceptual framing
Commoning refers to the collective self-organisation of a group of people for resource management through collective rules and appraisal for everyday use (Nonini, 2017; Linebaugh, 2009). Linebaugh emphasises commoning as resource management through creating, applying, and interpreting rules to preserve and use that resource beyond capital accumulation. This understanding of commoning makes way for analysing the challenge of creating commoning institutions in the context of diversity, anonymity and change that comes with the urban space (Huron, 2015; 2017). Moreover, commoning in the urban context demonstrates shared resources to which people make claims as a space for political struggle (Hardt & Negri, 2009).
The discussion of commoning in this article builds on the long-term maintenance of common resources (Ostrom, 1990; 2002). Huron (2015) explores the political contestation surrounding the emergence – and maintenance – of common resources in urban centres that ensues when actor-users reclaim use, access, and benefit from resources. Scholarship categorises the commoning of material or tangible resources as “old or traditional commons” (Gerber and Haller, 2021; Hess, 2008). In contrast, the contemporary conception of commons includes non-material and dynamic resources such as knowledge, parks, public spaces, and housing in what is referred to as the “new commons” (Hess, 2008). The new commons insists on the social and political processes that lead to reclaiming (partly) privatised urban resources and maintaining existing commons. Accordingly, the article explores the commoning of public space in the urban centres as a product of the social, political, and economic relationships among actors in cities to discuss the commoning of public spaces in sub-Saharan Africa as an ongoing phenomenon that can offer some insights into the planning of public spaces in cities.
In sub-Saharan African cities, public spaces are primarily managed for social interactions, economic exchange, and cultural expression by various actors: state and local governments for investment projects, customary leaders based on communal ownership and ethnic ties, investors seeking profit, and informal workers relying on these spaces for their livelihoods (UN-Habitat, 2018; Lindell et al., 2019; Watson, 2009). These spaces are often jointly managed by informal workers, governments, and infrastructure investors. However, the coexistence of multiple legal systems in these cities leads to frequent disputes over access and use rights (Berry, 2017). Conflicts arise when state policies clash with local laws and communal norms, resulting in unclear access and use rights for public spaces (Du Plessis, 2005).
Competitive resource use and conflicting statutory and customary regulations have given rise to self-organisation in cities. Although interest in self-organisation is rife in urban governance theory and praxis due to its key role in shaping spatial planning and development (de Bruijn & Gerrits, 2018; Korah & Cobbinah, 2025), reactions remain mixed about its effectiveness in securing urban resources in Africa. In the Ghanaian instance, urban planning scholarship is yet to grapple with the collective forms of self-organisation (Abubakari et al. 2023). As such, the widespread clash between state and customary rules and logics is misconstrued as a barrier to successful self-organisation and possibilities of commoning to secure urban resources. This is partly due to the fixation of self-organisation on Ostrom’s traditional commons approach – as isolated agents who have effectively managed resources – falls short of the new forms of self-organisation that require interaction with the state and market. Such indistinct use of self-organisation has led to ‘misunderstandings, dubious definitions, and questionable practical suggestions’ (Cozzolino & Moroni, 2024, p. 24). Therefore, there is a need to reanalyse and nuance the forms of self-organisation to better understand the role of commoning in urban governance.
In urban contexts, meanings of self-organisation have advanced from Ostrom’s autonomy of resource users to devise their own institutions without interactions with the State or market to striving for a balance between State and market, especially under the currents of neo-liberal order (Huron, 2017; Kip, 2015). Self-organisation arises from gaps within an inconsistent and insufficient institutional context, often propelled by unequal power relations, resulting in exclusion and marginalisation due to unequal access to resources. Self-organisation is not a standalone system of resource management but emerges as relatively independent organisations to complement and align with existing systems of resource provisioning. Distinguishing forms of self-organisation is helpful in highlighting the kind of commoning arrangement that can pose challenges to urban governance and sustainable resource management.
We draw on Cozzolino & Moroni (2024) to distinguish forms of self-organisation. These are (i) self-organisation as self-building, (ii) self-organisation as self-governance, and (iii) self-organisation as self-coordination. Self-building manifests as the capacity of urban residents to initiate their own projects and actions instead of being solely passive consumers of provisions from others. Self-governance encompasses self-regulation, which involves the deliberate establishment of a group’s own rules concerning the utilisation and modification of spaces and buildings, alongside self-management. Self-management refers to the intentional administration and operation of shared services and infrastructures within a specific locale, all occurring without direct and significant oversight or assistance from public authorities. The last typology, self-coordination, is the process whereby self-synchronisation occurs in society without being intentionally organised by anybody (Moroni, 2024).
This process creates a system in which the actions of separate, independent individuals are spontaneously coordinated. Distinguishing these types of urban self-organisation is a crucial initial step in developing a critical understanding of the relevant issues and providing well-informed practical suggestions for commoning resources in urban environments (Cozzolino & Moroni, 2024). Therefore, to better understand the collective self-organisation of resource governance in cities, the article claims that commoning of public space through the lens of informal workers would take a self-governance form. As such, it is rarely the case that self-organisation will occur independently from state, customary and market operations. Specifically, informal workers can reclaim and protect the public spaces under redevelopment if they draw on collectively shared customary law to give them leverage with state, customary and private actors to guarantee collective use. By doing so, the article sheds light on the forms that self-organisation collectives take and their practical implication on the urban.
In the analyses of commoning in urban spaces, the article explores the underlying politics of exclusion in the formation and maintenance of resources (Huron, 2017). The interest is in understanding how institutional arrangements can emerge through self-organisation in the governance of public spaces, i.e. through the selective activation of rules by resource users, making their participation in decision-making possible. The next section justifies the choice of cases and methodology.
Study design and methodology
The article utilises a single case study in Ghana, a West African country undergoing rapid urban (re)development. The aim is to start a conversation around public space commoning by informal workers in sub-Saharan Africa. Single case studies are useful to examine conflicting theoretical findings. Also, it will serve as a basis to gain new insights into the underexplored phenomenon of commoning in urban Ghana (Hunziker & Blankenagel, 2021). Currently, ongoing and proposed redevelopment projects in city centres of Ghana are being carried out in public spaces where customary authorities have oversight responsibility based on their fiduciary duties to their communities regarding land ownership (Constitution of Ghana, 925:198). However, by citing the Land Use and Spatial Planning Act of 2016 (Act 925) in Ghana, municipal authorities persistently limit the rights of most informal workers from working in public spaces. These authorities enforce clauses in section 148 of the Land Use and Spatial Planning Act of 2016 that give them the power to renew public spaces and evict public space users in the ‘interest of the public’ to disregard the space users’ access and use rights in section 145 under the ownership and use of public spaces.
The various actors in public spaces lay claim to these spaces by drawing on a range of legitimate sources- politico-legal to customary laws – to claim their access and use rights to these public spaces. The article employs the case of Central Kumasi in Ghana. In this public space, actors who draw on public policy claims and those who draw on customary law claims constantly contest the management and use of the space. The article attempts to analyse how informal workers in this public space maintain and reclaim the space through existing institutions to advocate for the possible integration of informality into the logic of the planned city in sub-Saharan Africa.
Further, the article adopts Central Kumasi in Ghana as a case study to represent public spaces in cities of sub-Saharan Africa. The prevalence of informality in Kumasi, specifically the Kejetia Central Market, has been discussed in scholarly works but in differing contexts (Abedi-Asante, 2022; Akuoko & Gerber, 2025). Kejetia Central Market is a public space in the Metropolitan Planning Scheme of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA). However, it is located on customary land of the Asante Traditional Council with differing rules of engagement concerning use and access rights. Informal workers’ commoning of this market has become more apparent during the implementation of the Kejetia Central Market Redevelopment Project (KCMRP). This presents a prime case of interest in understanding urban commoning in cities, allowing for the generalisation of findings in sub-Saharan African cities.
Given that the redevelopment, which introduced a ‘modern’ spatial configuration of Central Kumasi through a public-private partnership, brought new interests into an already competitive space, reallocation became necessary. However, this reallocation was subject to new rules of the game. In the language of the new institutionalism heuristic framework of Gerber et al. (2009; 2020) as applied in this article, this was not a complete redefinition of the structure of property rights distribution—specifically, the customary means of access—but rather a restriction on the content of property rights, thus limiting access to former areas. Since user-actors are not passive, they employ commoning strategies to challenge the processes and outcomes of what they perceive as unfair distribution. It is expected that in all instances of evictions in Ghanaian cities, there is some level of resistance that raises questions of access and use rights which have intensified in the last three decades (Steel et al., 2014). The case is a semblance of contestations between governing statutory rules and everyday practices emerging from customary norms.
Approach and methods
The article analyses the motivations and interactions of actors and institutions governing Kejetia Central Market, focusing on how informal workers assert claims to access and use of space in the context of the market’s redevelopment. It examines the experiences of workers who were displaced, relocated, or evicted during the project and considers how state-led redevelopment is simultaneously managed through customary laws and practices enacted by informal workers.
In addition, the article explored existing data or secondary analysis to gain both exploratory and deep knowledge. The data analysis was built from particulars to general themes and the researcher’s interpretations of the meaning of the data, semi-structured interviews, direct observation, field visits, transect walks and participant observation methods. The research complemented the analysis of policy document reviews and news articles. A total of 20 semi-structured interviews and 1 focus group discussion were conducted with respondents directly involved in informal work and public space governance, including informal workers, national authorities, local government staff, customary leaders, and opinion leaders.
Respondents were asked questions that directed their focus on the various institutions they devised and employed in their management of Central Kumasi. The entry themes bordered on how actors gained access to these spaces and self-organised to manage access and sustain use rights. At the same time, the study explored the motivations and objectives underlying the proposed and ongoing redevelopment projects, the perceptions of the public space users and the idea of a city that drives individuals and groups to react to public policies in the manner they do. Primary data were collected over 12 weeks.
Case description – Central Kumasi
Kumasi, the capital city of both the Ashanti region and the Asante Traditional State, remains Ghana’s second largest and most populous city and has experienced several physical, political, demographic, and cultural dynamics over the years. Central Kumasi is a key public space in the Ashanti region of Ghana. Central Kumasi has been a historical trade and transport hub since precolonial times, mainly due to its strategic location. It is an economic space, and workers here are mostly Asantes, particularly women. Until the commencement of the redevelopment project (Figure 1), Central Kumasi was comprised of Adum, Kejetia transport terminal, and the Central market. This strategic central location, however, has had dire consequences for the political, social, and economic management of Central Kumasi as a public space. The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly, the Asante Traditional Council and workers in the public space concurrently manage Central Kumasi. Central Kumasi, for over five decades, has consistently experienced varying forms of redevelopment. Since 2015, however, workers in Central Kumasi have been relocated, displaced, and even evicted to make way for the ongoing redevelopment project named Kejetia Central Market Redevelopment Project (KCMRP). The objective of the KCMRP has been extensively discussed to include among other things, the elimination of frequent fire outbreaks, modernising the city centre and enhancing the entrepreneurial gains of the city.
Figure 1
Aerial picture of Central Kumasi (Kejetia/Central Market Redevelopment Project).
Source: Field visit, April 2023.
Understanding commoning in Central Kumasi as self-governance – Findings
Central Kumasi is the trading hub of the Ashanti region of Ghana. The market is part of the historical development of the Asante people, and it has significant customary relevance that has developed from trade between the Asantes and other ethnic groups since pre-colonial times. The workers are predominantly Asante women with a growing immigrant population. Mr Safo Kantanka, a chief historian in the Manhyia palace – the official seat of the Asantehene– recounted that Kumasi is “spiritually, politically, and economically” the capital seat of the Asante people (Key informant interview, Kumasi, April 5, 2023). The men and women leaders of the Asante people met at the centre of the city in the olden days to conduct their affairs. Over time, Asante women started to bring farm produce to exchange for other goods with the other women of the town, which is how the market commenced.
The space is now occupied by diverse informal workers (mostly women as traders and men as transport operators) and a few workers in various establishments such as banks, clinics, and even schools. Most workers here are Indigenous Asante women who engage in trading activities. Several people migrate from other parts of the country to work in Central Kumasi. They mostly engage in activities such as hawking goods, working as head porters (Kayaye), and working in informal private transportation of people and goods in the city centre. Central Kumasi developed around the central market and transport terminal, where most people go in the early mornings and leave when the market and the city centre are closed in the evening. It has served as the market square for the Asante people in the exact location over centuries. The findings from the study reveal that user actors of central Kumasi selectively apply customary rules to regulate the redeveloped market space and surrounding spaces to reclaim and maintain access and use of what most informal workers consider their inheritance and communal property.
Organising use and access of space through commodity Market Queens
Central Kumasi is managed locally by Market queens, who are elected by traders based on the commodities they sell. For instance, cloth sellers have their own queen, as do tomato sellers and other groups of workers. These Market queens are chosen according to the organisational arrangements and customs of the Asante people, reflecting their cultural traditions and beliefs. They regulate market activities and act as intermediaries between the market workers, the Asante leadership, and, by extension, the local government authorities. They ensure that market workers adhere to shared operational rules and are obligated to periodically provide market produce to the chiefs, the custodians of the land, as a gesture of appreciation. They also report any incidents to the palace for resolution (Market queen, Central Kumasi, 29 March 2023).
When asked about market ownership, it was unanimously stated that, like all markets on Asante lands, the market belonged to the Asante people and was overseen by the Asantehemaa (the Asante queen mother). The Market queens serve as representatives of the Asantehemaa, with oversight responsibilities in the markets. The traders, particularly the women, view the market as their heritage, something to be passed down to their daughters as Asante women.
One market queen praised the efforts of informal workers, especially women. She emphasised that traders are willing to cooperate with the government and customary leaders as long as they can trade without the threat of eviction. She noted that the women in the market should not be underestimated because many have and support their homes. She further highlighted the market’s significance to the traders and the Asante community by referring to their belief in the deity associated with Subin, the major water body flowing through the market. Subin is considered a nurturing mother to the traders, and they attribute their success to the deity’s mercies. They emphasise that the waterbody is mystical, with its source believed to be untraceable.
The market queen expressed that anyone who comes to the market with good intentions will prosper. The traders rely on customary inheritance claims and mutual support to protect and maintain their market space, demonstrating their commitment to preserving this vital aspect of their culture and livelihood.
Collaboration towards Public Space Redevelopment
In 2015, the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) initiated the Kejetia Central Market Redevelopment Project (KCMRP) to modernise the city centre, reduce congestion, and provide safer trading spaces for workers. Despite protests and legal challenges, funding was secured for the first phase of the project from the Brazilian government, and the contract was awarded to the Brazilian company Contracta Eng. Ltd., and construction commenced in July 2015. The project was divided into three phases, with the first phase initially scheduled for completion in January 2018; however, it was not handed over to a section of traders until February 2020. The second phase is still ongoing was funded by the government of the United Kingdom.
To facilitate construction, traders and drivers were relocated. While many shop owners agreed to the relocation, those trading in open spaces faced forced evictions and displacement. The first phase of the redevelopment did not provide sufficient space for all informal workers, leading to a shortage of market spaces. Many traders, particularly those unable to afford the costs of the upgraded stalls, lost their market spots. This created opportunities for new entrants, while previous traders with insufficient capital risked permanent displacement, shifting the dynamics of legitimacy. In response, some traders reverted to their previous practices, disregarding the assembly’s new regulations that restricted access.
The local government office, KMA outlined its responsibilities in Kumasi, which included reviewing zoning plans, issuing development permits, conducting public education and advocacy, and encouraging the participation of space users. The assemblies’ primary tasks involved approving plans and generating revenue from these users (Physical Planning Officer, KMA, 21 March 2023). However, KMA Development Planning Officers admitted that their influence over access to these spaces was limited, as informal workers often negotiated access based on shared norms and customary laws rather than formal regulations.
Officials acknowledged that while there was general support among informal workers for the redevelopment project, they were reluctant to accept the governance changes that accompanied it. Officials argued that the high number of people using the streets had contributed to the deterioration of Central Kumasi, making intervention necessary. They also highlighted the economic potential of the area, which justified the need to restructure physical infrastructure. The Physical Planning Officer noted that the KMA was enforcing policies to demolish structures under two storeys in the city centre to encourage infrastructure growth and attract investment (Physical Planning Officer, Kumasi, 21 March 2023).
Reclaiming access to Central Kumasi
The informal workers interviewed expressed a shared belief that the land and market space were communal properties of the Asante people, and they were committed to protecting and maintaining their access and use of these spaces. In the redevelopment process, the Asantehene (the leader of the Asante people), along with his chiefs and queens, was actively involved in decision-making and collaborated with the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA). The Project Consultant highlighted that the Asantehene was the key figure the informal workers trusted during the relocation process, as they believed he negotiated with their best interests in mind.
Asante women, who inherit their trading spots from their mothers through the matrilineal inheritance system, continue to dominate the space. They regulate the affairs of traders by relying on their inherited rights. When necessary, they provide documented store numbers and registrations with the KMA as part of a practice Gerber et al. (2020) called “selective rule activation”. The Market queens, who serve as organisational and representative figures for various trader groups, play a crucial role in this process. This system, recognised by the local government, has also been adopted in other parts of Ghana.
For example, some shop owners allowed head porters to rest in front of their shops despite regulations, while others permitted mobile vendors to stop and sell goods in these areas. Many shop owners even formed informal agreements with hawkers, inviting them to sell goods near their shops when needed. A cloth seller explained that shop-based traders often invite hawkers because they cannot leave their stores unattended, so the hawkers help facilitate their trading needs. Through such arrangements, informal workers in Central Kumasi have gradually reclaimed and maintained access to both the redeveloped market space and surrounding areas.
The CEO of the Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority (LUSPA) acknowledged the agency and self-organisation demonstrated by these informal workers in managing the public space of Central Kumasi. When asked about the governance of Central Kumasi, the CEO stated:
“The changes over the years there [in Central Kumasi] are a collaboration among the government at the central level, the KMA at the local level, and the Asante Traditional Council, led by the Asantehene. You see, Kumasi has a unique situation because when the Asantehene speaks, nobody can go contrary to what he has said” (CEO, LUSPA, March 07, 2023).
Thus, informal workers in Central Kumasi demonstrate self-awareness and intention in their self-organisation, selectively engaging with both formal and informal systems while upholding their customary practices to secure access.
Discussion of findings
This article explores the self-organisation of informal workers in managing Central Kumasi through the customary laws of the Asante ethnic community. In line with Linebaugh’s (2009) assertion, it examines “commoning” as a form of resource management where rules are applied to preserve and utilise resources beyond capital accumulation. The redevelopment of Central Kumasi initiated a political struggle over access claims (Hardt & Negri, 2009), demonstrating how individuals’ claims to urban shared resources reflect the dynamics of diversity, anonymity, and change, as noted by Huron (2015; 2017).
Like many public spaces in sub-Saharan Africa, Central Kumasi is managed by multiple actors, including the state, local authorities, customary leaders, and informal workers, to facilitate economic exchanges, cultural expressions, and social interactions. These interactions create multiple rules governing the space. The findings show that informal workers rely on social ties and customary laws to negotiate localised arrangements, underscoring that self-organisation in urban contexts is less about the creation of rules to address issues of under-maintenance like the Ostromian commons (1990), and more about the continual management and pursuit of social, political and historical identity within contested governance processes, as Huron (2017) argues.
In Central Kumasi, informal workers use customary laws to reclaim and maintain access to the redeveloped space, a process referred to in this article as commoning. This practice goes beyond individual strategies of survival; it is grounded in long-standing traditions of shared responsibility, collective negotiation, and reciprocal obligations that sustain access to public space. Commoning here involves the inheritance of trading rights within families, the mutual recognition of entitlements among traders, and the collective enforcement of customary rules that regulate how shops and spaces are allocated. These practices reflect both continuity with customary practices and their adaptation to the changing urban landscape, illustrating how workers create and sustain a shared resource through negotiated, relational forms of governance.
The commoning of Central Kumasi highlights both the competitive use of public space and the lack of coordination between planning institutions and customary authorities typical of many sub-Saharan African cities. In this context, the self-organisation of informal workers is discussed as a form of self-governance. These workers regulate their own affairs in ways that resonate with Cozzolino and Moroni’s (2024) argument on self-governance. They deliberately apply customary laws and local arrangements to secure access to and use of redeveloped spaces. Although officials of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) are aware of these practices, they generally do not intervene.
Informal workers and other users selectively apply institutional rules, and their interactions with formal institutions shape the commoning of public space. In Ghanaian cities, this process is strongly structured around customary law. Traders, for example, organise their working arrangements through systems of inheritance that regulate tenure among market actors in Central Kumasi. Planning officers and the CEO of the Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority (LUSPA) recognise Central Kumasi as a collaborative space that brings together informal workers, state and local governments and customary leaders. This demonstrates how self-organisation can sustain resources while accommodating the needs of diverse actors through existing institutional rules.
In this sense, self-organisation in Central Kumasi exemplifies the ‘self-governance’ typology proposed by Cozzolino and Moroni (2024). The customary practices governing tenure relations among users involve adapting and reworking pre-existing institutions, rather than inventing entirely new governance arrangements.
The findings indicate that the economic potential of Central Kumasi would be stifled without self-organisation, which re-establishes access to resources. This challenges Abubakari et al.’s (2023) claim that self-organisation is absent and incapable of sustaining urban commons in Ghana. Unlike self-coordination—an unintentional form of self-organisation identified by Cozzolino & Moroni (2024) and Moroni (2024) as problematic for planning—self-governance of informal workers explored in this paper, however, flags, and emerges from necessity to overcome, exclusionary outcomes of market-centred redevelopment while offering possibilities of co-governance by accounting for customary institutions in the overall planning. These insights encourage planning institutions to respond better to local resource needs, particularly regarding access and social inclusion.
Central Kumasi is described as a hybrid of traditional and new commons. The space has been accessed, managed, and regulated through the Asante people’s customary laws for centuries. However, state and local government involvement, coupled with Kumasi’s economic growth and potential, has attracted new entrants seeking access through government channels, threatening the space’s commoning. Despite this, Asante women continue to negotiate access using their inheritance system and customary laws. Workers demonstrate agency through these customary laws and social relations, maintaining these urban commons.
Through commoning, urban informality persists, with kinship relations and inheritance sustaining public spaces. The informal workers in Central Kumasi exhibit social relations, from mutual solidarity to resist relocations, displacements and evictions. The workers self-govern aimed at protecting and perpetuating their access. Through commoning, informal workers in Central Kumasi generate use value in public spaces; social, economic, and cultural value embedded in kinship, inheritance, and everyday practices of solidarity and negotiation. These relations are not without friction: while traders cooperate to defend access, they also compete over inheritance claims, stall allocations, and market positions. Commoning is therefore best understood as a dynamic process of negotiation and conflict through which access is reproduced collectively, even amid internal inequalities.
The use value created by these practices sustains livelihoods and community reproduction, but it also makes central spaces attractive to the state and investors. Redevelopment and infrastructure projects reframe this collectively produced value as exchange value, expressed in rents, real estate appreciation, and investment returns (Borch & Kornberger, 2015). This is not a benign engagement with informality but an appropriative act that displaces those who have created and sustained the value of these spaces. In this sense, Kumasi exemplifies Harvey (2003) notion of accumulation by dispossession: the state, in collaboration with capital, converts the socially generated use value of public space into commodified exchange value. Such dynamics connect Central Kumasi to wider patterns of urban capitalist development, where the labour and social reproduction of informal workers underpin processes of value creation, only to be appropriated through market-oriented redevelopment. Informality, rather than being outside the urban growth model, is integral to it, producing the very conditions that capital and the state later capture and revalorise.
The article further contends that commoning by informal workers, exercised through self-governance, not only sustains access to public space but also reinforces inclusive urban practices. Crucially, this signals a viable alternative for urban planning: rather than privileging eviction and exclusion, authorities could recognise and engage with informal governance arrangements as a legitimate means of managing and co-producing public space. While some actors work to maintain the commons, others work to reclaim them through various rules. Therefore, the findings suggest that informal workers in sub-Saharan African cities, like those in Central Kumasi, are commoning public spaces through customary laws. Informality thrives in these public spaces because it derives legitimacy from customary laws. These public spaces have a history tied to user-resource interactions, creating collective rules that empower informal workers. Conclusively, in Ghanaian cities, the governance of urban commons is strongly influenced by customary rules. However, these rules often face challenges in gaining recognition within policymaking, as noted by Hess (2008) in her assessment of new commons.
Conclusion – commoning as an alternate urban governance pathway
This article analysed the interactions among user actors and institutions in governing Central Kumasi after the implementation of the Kejetia Central Market Redevelopment Project. It aimed to explore how informal workers reclaim and maintain access to urban spaces amid redevelopment, using Central Kumasi as a case study. The analysis focused on the strategies employed by informal workers to assert their claims and access rights following relocation, displacement, and eviction triggered by the Kejetia Central Market Redevelopment Project. The study primarily engaged informal workers affected by these changes to understand how they navigate these challenges. It assessed how informal workers utilised primarily customary laws and practices to manage space and support others in accessing and using the redeveloped area. The article also discussed how these user interactions and the institutions they engage with shape the commoning of public spaces, demonstrating that urban commons in Ghanaian cities are structured around multiple institutions rooted in customary laws.
The main findings revealed that the interactions among various actors—including informal workers, the State, local governments, customary leaders, and investors—highlight the conflicting uses of these urban commons due to the spaces’ entrepreneurial potential, leading to relocation, eviction, and demolition activities.
Central Kumasi emerged as a hybrid of traditional and new commons, where long-standing inheritance systems coexist with the possibility for new users to gain access through local government mechanisms. This supports Hess’ (2008) observation that while urban commons in Ghanaian cities are regulated by customary laws, these everyday practices often struggle for recognition in policymaking. The findings further indicated that urban commons in sub-Saharan Africa are, to some extent, structured around communal customary laws, and informal activities in these public spaces depend on these laws for their continuity. These urban commons have a historical context tied to the interactions between users and resources, producing rules that empower informal workers. Therefore, while theories of commons maintenance and reclamation hold some validity, they must be contextualised with an understanding of customary laws to apply to sub-Saharan Africa. The article also argued that commoning in Central Kumasi enhances the use and exchange value of these spaces, reinforcing the importance of customary laws in both pre-colonial and post-independence Ghana. The State recognises the value generated in these spaces. It implements redevelopment policies and infrastructure investments in response, showing how informality remains a vital part of the urban fabric despite formalisation pressures. However, capitalist redevelopment has also spurred eviction and displacement of informal workers through rent appreciation, which has priced out some initial traders in favour of the highest bidders. This resonates with De Angelis and Harvie’s (2014) argument that “capital needs a commons fix”, positioning commoning as an alternative to capitalism and globalisation (Huron, 2017). But whether the customary-based self-governance can render urban commons immune to capitalism and the mechanism through which it can occur in sub-Saharan Africa remains a potential direction for future research, especially since customary institutions are fundamentally non-capitalist.
The article explored how public space users organise to maintain and reclaim access, using Central Kumasi as an example. It identified informal workers as the primary users of public spaces who legitimise their presence and claims through a complex application of customary laws, presenting an alternative to globalisation and capitalism (Kratzwald, 2015; Galdini & De Nardis, 2023; Huron, 2017). The findings showed that the actors involved in resource management in sub-Saharan African cities extend beyond the State, private entities, and corporations to include customary leaders and informal workers who claim access through these laws (Bryant & Bailey, 1997; Berry, 2017). Our findings suggest the importance of integrating informality into urban governance. Rather than radical formalisation, a practical starting point will be for public authorities to document and accord customary rights and inheritance laws upon which informal workers access and reclaim space, a status of ‘de facto rights’ with guarantees of protection from the state before redevelopment. But this requires trust. Hence, it is necessary to reframe debates in informality research and praxis, not as autarkic physical development leading to unplanned settlements needing stricter regulation. Instead, when viewed as a relational process of commoning that takes the form of self-governance, it might boost the trust between city authorities to collaborate with informal workers. This is because self-governance inherently acknowledges other actors, such as the state and private actors, and suggests possibilities for various actors to collaborate.
Commons management involves a power dynamic shaped by cultural, political, and economic relations, influencing how access, control, and benefits are distributed. The findings also resonate with Ostrom (1990) and Hess (2008), indicating that successful commons are governed by rules that regulate and sustain resource management. In sub-Saharan Africa, these rules often derive from customary laws that may conflict with international, State, and local policies. Commoning by resource users offers the potential for reclaiming and sustainably managing resources. Therefore, integrating informality and its organisational structures into urban governance can help resolve conflicts over power and access rights through commoning.
Competing Interests
The authors have no competing interests to declare.