This chapter’s objective is to recall that the study of wage labour and salaried workers in sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. industrial workers and civil servants) has been under way since the middle of the twentieth century. Empirical and historical researches have then proved that the so-called pre-capitalist relationships (importance of family ties, of communal identities like ethnicity and of non-wage forms of remuneration) do interplay very strongly with capitalist constraints that have to adapt to the multiple demands of local societies. This has led to active debates within the Marxist and neo-Marxist communities of researchers keen to demonstrate that classes and class struggles can also evolve in the non-capitalist context of African societies. These debates were all the more contradictory that they were conducted within an important international and interdisciplinary network of researchers. African case studies were thus confronted with south or central American and south-east Asian examples and of course more importantly with non-Francophone African countries. This quarter of century research dynamic has allowed the author to propose a more global view of labour including capitalist relationships, ‘informal’ economies, and family forms of exploitation. It has also led him to suggest that wage economy could be considered as a historical exception, especially today in Africa.