"Southern Africa's 'Invisible' Entrepreneurs"

BBC News has a photo gallery on South Africa's "'Invisible' Entrepeneurs," the traders who cross borders throughout the region to engage in the full array of the informal economy. The Africans, disproportionately women, live on the fringes of society, on the fringes of the economy, and on the very fringes of respectability in the countries they enter as visitors. These individuals are ubiquitous at border crossings, chaotic at the best of times, and yet the region's ecomomy relies on this trade while at the same time rarely recognizing their importance or facilitating their transitions.

Hat Tip to Robert Nolan of the Foreign Policy Association, who sent me the link.