The profiles of the three types of informal urban enterprises are rather similar, in terms of owner characteristics, sector, and motivation for informality, with most differences emerging in earnings, business practices, and access to financial tools. Informal enterprises are primarily led by prime-aged men and women (gender balanced) with a secondary education or less. Seventy percent of firms are younger than five years, reflecting challenges in firm survival, though firms with paid employees are a little older and report higher earnings, suggesting that firm growth is possible. Most firms are in the retail sector, which is also a disproportionately productive sector. These firms use few modern financial tools and practice poor business practices. Half do not see the value of formalizing, do not have information on how to formalize, or do not want to pay the taxes associated with formalization. More productive firms are led by prime-aged adults, are young, and are in the retail sector. HE-SE enterprises have the highest productivity while profits are highest among employers.

Urban variables were weakly correlated with job type. A minority of urban firms express a need for urban public services (electricity, water). Among those who need these services, HE-SE and employers have high access while LE-SE do not, even when controlling for firm productivity level. All express a need for, and access to cell phones, with sufficient cell tower across urban areas. More crowded neighborhoods are home to informal business owners while less poor neighborhoods house more structured work arrangements.

The findings of this study are suggestive due to data limitations. Although the study covers a wide range of African countries across the continent, the GMD only include data for 26 of 48 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, equivalent to 61 percent of the region’s population. The IES only includes three countries for which we have recent data. The worker and firm data are not strictly comparable due to differences in the number of countries included in the analysis, the national versus main cities representativeness, and the informality focus of the firm level data. The worker and firm data have some overlap – namely among LE-SE, HESE, and employers – though comparisons across surveys on this subset are limited due to the IES sample frame limitations by region and industrial sector.

The paper findings offer some general policy guidance. First, informal employment and informal firms dominate the urban space, suggesting an immediate need for greater policy attention to these segments of the urban labor force and enterprise landscape. Second, the rate of formalization does not seem to have increased systematically in the last decade, despite economic growth and poverty reduction, pointing to a need for policies to support the urban informal sector to be more productive and resilient rather than assuming that SSA will “grow out of” informality in the short term. Third, increasing the availability of data on informal firms should become a priority especially for African countries where most firms are in the informal sector; this would allow for better policy making. Fourth, policy will need to take into consideration both heterogeneity across the informal sector in terms of job types and the different characteristics of those working in each job type. Gender and age are particularly relevant variables for informal self-employed (former) and unpaid (latter) Page **46** of **60**