Addressing the Challenges of the Informal Economy Through Special Zones
The SDZ Alliance promotes the development of SDZs, including by reaching out to all actual and potential stakeholders to make SDZs a reality in countries around the world. We also develop the physical and institutional structure of SDZs, including legal, policy, administrative, financial, masterplanning, and operational needs.
Our approach has been lauded internationally as an innovative response to migration, informal economies, and political instability. For example, Günter Nooke, Chancellor Angela Merkel's personal Africa Commissioner, endorses our work.
Featured Projects:
Ethiopia
Currently Supported by the Robert Bosch Foundation
Ethiopia currently faces a drastic rise in urban migration as internally displaced migrants flee poverty, conflict, and climate change for more opportunity in the cities.
At the same time, building a new life in those urban areas can prove to be impossible: for example, it costs at least 70% of an average annual income to get a business license. In addition, the current legal framework is limiting legal housing options.
As a result, the country has seen its informal economy grow exponentially, with low-income and even middle-income Ethiopians creatively earning money and building homes in the informal sector.
While the informal economy happens organically and has allowed many people to address their own needs to a certain extent, it also leaves people vulnerable to the law, unable to access finance, and living in fear they could lose everything at a moment’s notice.
The SDZ Alliance has joined with UN-Habitat, the Robert Bosch Foundation, the Ethiopian Government, and European stakeholders to respond to these challenges through a sustainable development zone (SDZ). This SDZ will make development more feasible by forming a social-enterprise development company and special administrator that perform several delegated functions on behalf of the government. These functions would lower the barriers to starting and operating a business, finding legal employment, leasing land, building and owning a home, and paying taxes. The prosperity generated within the SDZ would be shared with the government and residents, ensuring that everyone has an interest in making the SDZ succeed.
Libya
In collaboration with Libyan mayors and European stakeholders like the EU Committee of the Regions’ Nicosia Initiative, we have developed a new approach for rebuilding war-torn Libya by engaging with local governments in order to create sustainable development zones. This bottom-up approach would complement existing international and national efforts for regaining peace and stability.
The SDZs would serve as “islands of stability.” They would develop strong legal and governance frameworks that help grow their local economies, provide security and inclusivity for local communities, and improve the livelihoods of Libya’s growing migrant and refugee population.
Additional Projects:
The SDZ Alliance has projects at different stages all around the world. We look forward to sharing more information on the following as they develop: