Public Authority and the Governance of Informal Cross-Border Trade in Eastern DRC, 2023

This dataset contains qualitative interview data collected as part of the research project Public Authority and the Governance of Informal Cross-Border Trade in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (PAGICBT). The data consist of anonymised semi-structured interviews with small-scale cross-border traders (predominantly women), representatives of cross-border traders’ associations, border and customs officials, and development actors operating along the DRC–Rwanda and DRC–Uganda trade corridors, with fieldwork conducted in Goma (North Kivu) and Bukavu (South Kivu) in 2023. The interviews explore trading practices, legal recognition, collective economic organisation, access to finance, dispute resolution, and the interaction between informal trade practices and regional trade governance, including the COMESA Simplified Trade Regime. The dataset supports socio-legal, law-and-development, and political economy research on informality, legal pluralism, gender, and regional integration in Africa.