Informality, Tax, and Markets in Kinshasa: Everyday Realities and Resistance
Market taxation is central to local governance and livelihoods in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), yet remains poorly understood. This research explores the experience of taxation in Kinshasa’s markets. The working paper documents how taxation operates in environments where formal state authority intersects with, and is often embedded in, informal institutions and governance structures, and where a plurality of state and non-state actors engage in revenue extraction. Specifically, the study focuses on how market vendors experience taxation, both formal and informal, how they perceive it in terms of fairness and reciprocity, and how these perceptions shape their relationship with the state and govern their willingness to pay.
An important contribution of the study is how these lived realities and responses to taxation vary across different types of markets – those authorised and regulated by the state (what we call formal markets), those unauthorised by the state (what we call informal or pirate markets), and those managed by customary authorities (what we call customary markets). Looking at structural variation in this way helps to shed light on the broader governance implications of taxation in a context where both formal and informal systems coexist.
https://doi.org/10.19088/ICTD.2025.033
