Rethinking the sustainable livelihoods framework: insights from the vulnerabilities of itinerant women traders in Nigeria’s border economy

Abstract

This paper critiques the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) by foregrounding its inadequate attention to political and physical risks in border environments, drawing on evidence from itinerant women traders in Nigeria’s informal economy along the Nigeria–Benin borderlands. Rather than simply documenting challenges that are already well established in the literature, the paper demonstrates how the SLF falls short in capturing the layered vulnerabilities that emerge from border insecurity, systemic marginalisation and state neglect. Despite their central role in sustaining cross-border commerce and household livelihoods, these traders operate in precarious contexts where institutional protections are minimal and political risks are acute. The analysis shows how women traders’ adaptive strategies such as informal networks, resource pooling and diversified trading practices both expose and complicate the SLF’s treatment of vulnerability and resilience. By engaging critically with the framework and anchoring it in the lived experiences of borderland traders, this paper extends existing critiques of the SLF and calls for its reconceptualisation to account for the political economies of risk in informal cross-border trade.