“Mobile Work: Handcart and Bicycle Workers Across the Urban Economy of Greater Accra Region”

This article explores the role of handcart and bicycle workers—mobile workers—in the urban economy of Accra and Tema, Ghana. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, it shows how their practices of food vending, e-waste collection and mobile trade exemplify a form of relational infrastructure that sustains urban life through improvisation, cooperation and mobility. By engaging AbdouMaliq Simone’s concept of people as infrastructure and Milton Santos’s theory of urban economic circuits, the paper highlights how these workers articulate local practices with broader flows of capital in African cities.