Informality in the Zambian urban economy rarely means to people who practice it what it does in other contexts – the lack of business registration, tax compliance, and/or social protection. ‘Informal’ in the ‘informal economy’ is closely tied to the notion of entrepreneurship and implies that it is a set of economic activities that occur outside the government domain (civil service or government contracts) or big business space. The desire to get a glimpse of the government world via contracts and tenders is what often motivates people to eventually register with the authorities as it is seen as the main option for business growth. Despite registration, entrepreneurs still un-formalise themselves by identifying out of the formal economy and operating in predominantly informal economic spaces – marketplaces, streets, and backyards. While the prevalence of the informal economy and government policies supportive of entrepreneurship stimulate people’s self-reliance, despite the decades of neoliberal reforms, people continue to see the government as a solution to entrepreneurship’s risks, precarity, and limitations. This partly has to do with the economic history of Zambia as it is a former labour reserve and government-driven economy and partly with the economic hardships and prevalence of precarious livelihoods, especially in women-dominated sectors, which makes entrepreneurship, especially informal economic activities, the only income-generating option for many people. These experiences shape people as economic and political subjects who, on the one hand, seek a dependent relationship with the government to boost their businesses and, on the other hand, seek to un-formalise themselves to escape the limitations of formal employment. In this talk, I draw on rich interview data collected in Lusaka and Kitwe in 2023-2024 with entrepreneurs and people with informal livelihoods, informal economy organisations, and government to discuss the grassroots understandings of informality among Zambian urban entrepreneurs and argue that they lead to varying experiences of entrepreneurship, formalisation processes, and relationships with the government.