Professor Kate Meagher is on sabbatical from September 2024 to September 2025.
Kate Meagher has expertise in the informal economy and non-state governance in Africa. She has carried out extensive empirical and theoretical research on cross-border trading systems and regional integration, the urban informal sector, rural non-farm activities, small-enterprise clusters, and informal enterprise associations, and has engaged in fieldwork in Nigeria, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her research focuses on the changing character of the informal economy in contemporary Africa, and the implications of economic informalization for development, democratization and globalization.
She is the author of Identity Economics: Social Networks and the Informal Economy in Nigeria (James Currey 2010); The Bargain Sector: Structural Adjustment and the Non-Farm Sector in the Nigerian Savanna (Ashgate 2001), and Globalisation, Economic Inclusion and African Workers: Making the Right Connections (Routledge 2018) edited with Laura Mann and Maxim Bolt.
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Meagher, Kate (2018). ‘Cannibalizing the Informal Economy: Frugal Innovation and Economic Inclusion in Africa’, European Journal of Development Research, 30(1):17-33.
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Meagher, Kate (2018). ‘Taxing Times: Taxation, Divided Societies and the Informal Economy in Northern Nigeria’ Journal of Development Studies, 54(1):1-17.
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Connectivity at the BoP Forum (2017). Connectivity at the Bottom of the Pyramid: ICT4D and Informal Economic Inclusion in Africa’ white paper for Bellagio Centre Conference on ICTs and African Informal Economies, coordinated and drafted by Kate Meagher and Laura Mann, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/internationaldevelopment/2018/02/01/connectivity-at-the-bottom-of-the-pyramid/.
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Meagher, Kate (2016). ‘The Scramble for Africans: Globalization, Demography and Informal Labour Markets’ Journal of Development Studies 52(4): 483-497
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Meagher, Kate (2015). ‘Leaving no-one behind?: informal economies, economic inclusion, and Islamic extremism in Nigeria’ Journal of International Development, 27(6): 835-855.
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Meagher, Kate (2014). ‘Smuggling Ideologies: From criminalization to hybrid governance in African clandestine economies’ African Affairs 113 (453): 497-517.
- Meagher Kate (2012). ‘The Strength of Weak States?: Non-State Security Forces and Hybrid Governance in Africa’ Development and Change 43(5)
Dr Meagher has degrees from the University of Toronto; the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex), and a D.Phil in Sociology from Oxford have been interspersed with lecturing and research positions at IAR/Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria (1991-1997) and at the African Studies Centre, University of Oxford (2005-2008).
She has working knowledge of the following languages: Hausa and Setswana