Introduction

Emphasis on the developmental role of informal enterprise associations sits awkwardly with the realities of many African clusters. Far from galvanizing inter-firm cooperation and organizing the provision of ‘real services’ for enterprise development, African enterprise associations are noted more for their lack of organizational capacity and their vulnerability to political capture and agendas of personal advancement. A survey of African SME associations found that those that existed were largely ‘assistance-driven’; they appeared more interested in ‘lobbying with government agencies for their attention and support…and far less in the organization and delivery of packages of business development services to the members’ (Haan 1999:167). Organizational weaknesses and lack of autonomy among African small enterprise associations mean that ‘their activities sometimes get derailed by internal power struggles or external forces’ (McCormick 1999:1540). Indeed, there is a growing awareness that collective organization under such conditions may not promote popular empowerment so much as vulnerability to ‘capture’ by more powerful forces in the service of political rather than productive agendas (Beall 2001; Thulare 2004).

The realities of the Aba clusters challenge some, but not all, of these views. Active producers' associations have existed in the Aba shoe and garment clusters for decades, and initially emerged on the basis of popular rather than state initiatives.