African Engineers: Apprentices and Earnings

In the kokompes, the informal industrial areas of Ghana, such as the large Suame Magazine in Kumasi, the typical small auto repair business consists of a master craftsman assisted by four or five apprentices. The apprenticeship system has been heavily criticized as a form of exploitation. The apprentices are not given a regular salary but only ‘snack money’, enough money to buy food, and the working hours are long, often twelve hours a day, six days a week, but generally the Apprentices appear to be reasonably satisfied with their lot, and the apprenticeship is seen as providing an appropriate and highly sought-after initiation into the career ahead. Some teachers are more enlightened than others and provide better instruction and more pleasant working conditions. For those apprentices who encounter tyrants, there is always the option to flee; a choice that many take. In most of the workshops the atmosphere is relaxed and the pace of work unhurried. A lot of time is spent waiting for work to arrive, and when it arrives there is a chance to see someone else serve it. When one’s turn comes around, it’s a welcome distraction.

Although the hours are long, leave for personal errands, illness, or attending funerals is easily granted. The pattern of discipline is more domestic than industrial. For the new apprentice, only the work of his hands is new. The social environment is totally familiar to him and, in this sense, he experiences much less trauma than his European counterpart, who enters a new and strange factory environment. If he does have a complaint, it is usually a lack of cash, and this problem is addressed by various means, some legitimate and with a lot of tolerance extended in most cases to the illegitimate ones.

The informal sector forms a bridge between the legitimate and the illegitimate, the formal sector and the underworld. It is this less than tasty aspect of the kokompes that makes them unpopular with law enforcement agencies and tax collectors. There is a tendency among those in authority to regard the kokompes as dens of robbers, and there is no doubt that certain criminal elements take refuge among them. Manufacturers of master keys and gear shifters find a ready market for their products in a society where high unemployment and large-scale poverty coexist with conspicuous wealth, and auto parts stores are not always reluctant to recycle some of the swag.

Although the vast majority of artisans and apprentices in the informal sector are not thieves, they can bend the law to its limits in West Africa. At a time when imported spare parts are in short supply, they are never found in formal sector shops and service stations, but only in magazines and kokompes. The diversion is carried out by master installers who take advantage of their links with automobile agencies in the formal sector. A brother in the store department will ensure that all goods received from abroad are sold in bulk to the family parts store or assembly shop in the magazine. The sale is nominally legitimate and the correct ‘government controlled’ price is paid, but it creates the opportunity to make profits that, in percentage terms, would satisfy the insiders of the New York Stock Exchange.

The effective monopoly on the supply of all imported spare parts was a major factor in the rapid expansion of the informal sector in Ghana in the late 1970s and early 1980s. from the formal sector were directed to the kokompe to obtain the necessary spare parts. Soon the custom passed directly to the kokompe where the work was done faster and with less hassle. In this way, the workshops were eliminated from the formal sector and the kokompes absorbed all the businesses available in their domain. The client ended up paying more for his repair but the many mouths of the master’s extended family were well fed and all of his sons and nephews became apprentices. Suame Magazine in Kumasi became an economic powerhouse attracting an impressive new branch of the commercial bank of Ghana with reputedly the largest vault in the country.