1 NIGERIEN SECOND-HAND CAR TRADERS IN COTONOU: A SOCIOCULTURAL ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC DECISION-MAKING J. Joost Beuving * ABSTRACT This article discusses the economic decision-making of migrant traders from Niger who operate in large second-hand car markets found in Cotonou (Bénin). Like the Cotonou car trading community at large, these traders continued to import cars despite the fact that local demand dropped in 2002. Case analysis uncovers that Nigerien car traders show a propensity to live up the expectations of people in authority. It is at odds with the dependency on reliable exchange of information about the conditions of supply and demand in geographically separated markets. This cultural element that is associated with ethnicity and kinship, in turn, leads to a belief of profitability in the car business that is no longer grounded in observable facts and hence leads to financial losses. Not long after I had completed my West African fieldwork in 2003, my Nigerien 1 friend Hadj Amadou Hamidou came to Europe. Though he had accompanied his father, a wealthy trader, on business trips to Belgian second-hand car markets before, this time Hamidou had come by himself. We could therefore meet in Amsterdam, where he shared his doubts about the purpose of his European visit. ‘We still have so many unsold cars in Cotonou’, he said, ‘and we’re losing money everyday, but father told me to buy cars from Brussels.’ He bitterly added: ‘It’s me who knows what goes around in Cotonou; he does not know that this business is no longer what it used to be.’ Hamidou concluded his complaint by stating: ‘Now my friends sell for me. But I would have liked to stay there, it’s best to sell the cars myself’. * The author is a research fellow at the University of Amsterdam (ASSR) in The Netherlands. This article is based on a 15-month fieldwork period, carried out between June 2000 and December 2003 in West Africa and in Europe. This article draws from an ongoing research project, funded by The Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO). An earlier version of this article was presented at the biennial conference of the African Studies Association of the UK in London (2004). 1 ‘Nigerien’ is the English adjective referring to the West African country Niger.