ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the contribution of the informal sector to the development of both developed and emerging market economies and discuss the prevalence of the informal economy across regions and sectors. Small business marketers, who are the predominant operators in the informal economies, can be distinguished from their mainstream counterparts on the basis of business registration. Early thinking was that informal economy only existed in ‘underground’ or ‘black’ markets that are prevalent in the developing economies of the world. The Lebanese community across West Africa is thought to be between 80,000 and 250,000 strong. Although many Africans openly state how much they hate the Lebanese in their respective countries, but latter’s seed seems to have been sown into fabric of West African economics, politics, and culture. Despite the conflicting conclusions over the nature and size of the informal economy, the general impression is that the size of the global informal market is robust enough to warrant coordinated strategies to harness.
