From Engines to Heads: Sisyphus’ Task and the Almost Normal Logic of Africa’s Informal Economies

Grounded in long-term fieldwork across Africa, this lecture connects two interrelated inquiries: the enduring struggle of youth employment and the survival logic of the informal economy. 

Through observations of everyday workers—such as boda-boda motorcycle drivers and head-carrying women—it examines how people sustain order, resilience, and dignity within conditions of structural precarity and institutional absence.

The notion of the almost normal captures a paradoxical balance between stability and uncertainty, where informality is not an exception but a defining mode of social functioning. Using Sisyphus’ task as a metaphor, the lecture explores how repetition, endurance, and creativity shape both individual livelihoods and wider economic structures. It argues that within these persistent, 'almost normal' routines, the realities of economy and governance become most visible. By linking macro-level imbalances with micro-level practices of survival, the lecture rethinks development and normalcy—asking how stability can emerge from instability in African urban life. 

Speaker

Dr. Chongsheng Yang is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for International and Area Studies, Tsinghua University, and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford. He has long focused on the socio-economic development of Sub-Saharan Africa, with over five years of fieldwork experience across South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Mauritius. His research centers on African economic development, the informal economy, grassroots employment, special economic zones in Africa, and China–Africa relations, emphasizing the complex interactions between everyday economic practices and institutional environments. He has published two academic monographs and multiple papers in both Chinese and English.  

Image credit: Zach Wear via unsplash