• Careless drivers: Reputation, accusations and counter-reactions

• Station relations: The pressures and prospects of networks and connections

• Striving for successful driving

The first chapter on commercial driving explores the chances and challenges of working in the transport business. Focusing on minibus drivers plying between Accra and provincial towns located on the AKR, I first deal with the professional drivers’ negative public reputation (‘careless, uneducated, greedy’) while also looking at how drivers justify some of the behaviour for which they are criticised. This leads on to an assessment of drivers’ pressuring work conditions and of the mostly conflictual relationships in which they are caught with their driver colleagues and ‘masters’ (car owners, employers). Finally, I deplore the multiple various entrepreneurial strategies that drivers employ in order to cope with the pressures and to strive for more successful driving. The latter requires careful negotiation of driving plans, routes and different modes of loading passengers.

[Overview Chapter 5]