NAIROBI KENYA | CBD STREET VENDORS Vs CITY COUNCIL OFFICIALS | City Center | Urlaub in Afrika (2022)

Are you trying to sneak into Nairobi Are you the one making the big decisions in the economy Are you going Is that all you can do That's why you are far from the goal What is good to do and what is not Good That is what you are doing And Yes you are doing it wrong Welcome to Nairobi the capital city of Kenya This is East Africa's largest economy It's also Africa's smartest city alongside Cape Town It's the green city under the sun and also a home to a people who are so resilient industrious and progressive entrepreneurial young friendly optimistic just to name but a few Nairobi was recently voted the best city in Africa for expatriates to work in Welcome to Africa Welcome to Kenya Welcome home Nairobi no worries In this limited series that we are calling Guelab in Africa we have lined up several episodes that are going to show you just a glimpse of the vastness of this astonishingly Beautiful country of Kenya And in today's episode here is what you can expect We're going to take you through one of the most vibrant parts of the city center To understand exactly what the situation is regarding street vending in Nairobi These stores are owned by the city council of Nairobi What it would require for you to have a store like this I think this will be very eye-opening and very interesting So let's get started We're driving on Haile Selassie Avenue one of the main streets here in Nairobi And actually what you see behind this wall is the Muthura market Which is one of the allocated or officially allocated vending zones for street vendors And that you see there is actually the entrance or one of the entrances to the Muthura markets But as you can see there are so many traders who choose to be outside of the vending zone which actually makes it illegal Some of the reasons known to us are that most of the street vendors set up outside here to take advantage of the commuting customers who are in a hurry to get home or to get to the workplace And there is also the cost There is a cost to having a stall in one of these dedicated zones or the trading zones that the government the city government has set up But what exactly is the cost of having such a stall Let's check it out Let's have a look at one of the vendors who's actually running a stall inside or a stall that has been set up by the city council of Nairobi I'm Michael Okimoto I'm a fruit vendor around Nairobi Hospital Most of these stalls are owned by the Nairobi City Council What would it take for you to have a stall like this one It's only we do pay a rent of 7 500 per annum We do pay the city council a daily payment of around 50 shillings They come for the money We require an amount of capital of around 150 000 for you to have all of these stocks We do buy our fruits from the highway range in town and most of them in Gekomba For example the bananas we buy them at Gekomba The most important thing is that You know now here we are near Nairobi Hospital Most of our customers do come and buy the fruits and take them to the people in the hospital there Except for fruits we also sell things like juices and waters We use the same fruits to blend our own juice The most popular product is our fruit salad That one here costs 100 It contains various types of fruits On a good month we can make 150 000 On a bad month it goes even to 50 000 What influences the business is the weather For example on a rainy day customers are very few And other days a common day like this one the weather is very good Customers do come as usual Other costs involved in making the business It's just that you have to have a shade like this one You see this tent You need to have shade for your customers The tents will range from 5 000 to 20 000 depending on the size We do buy tents for chairs One is 700 So you have to order about 10 chairs We do buy unripe goods so that when they arrive here they ripen very slowly so that when customers come At least when we buy them unripe we wait for them to ripen As an entrepreneur you know you have to take risks So the days cannot be the same You can incur a loss or make a profit For one store you need four to five employees to run such a store And that requires about 3 000 per day What it requires for you to set up such a business you need to look for a location that has a lot of foot traffic That's what it takes for you to start such a business Wow 150 000 Kenyan shillings That's almost 1 200 euros a month in profit That's very impressive But can everyone afford to have such a business If this is what it means to have a legal business then can everyone actually have a legal business 65% of jobs in Kenya are in the informal sector of the economy And the informal sector trading is among the most vibrant of the activities So city vendors or street vendors have been nonexistent In the city of Nairobi for the longest time And actually they are hawking in the buses they are hawking in city streets And actually they've also gone all the way The nearby residential areas like in the Ngara area in Buruburu The areas that are nearby the city center that's the CBD the Central Business District So they have always been here as far as we can remember So you find that the hawkers are dealing with secondhand clothes household items and foodstuffs And usually they lay out these things in gunny sacks which are normally easy to roll up and run off with whenever the city council officials approach And much as city hawking has become a key survival mechanism in cases where the formal economy has failed to provide sufficient employment the practice has also been a recipe for frequent often low-level confrontations between traders and local officials They are running away They are running away because it's illegal to be doing what they are doing here It's not allowed to sell on the floor like they are doing So you can see these ladies are carrying their things It's because the county council usually stops them from selling on the street like this So normally they are always ready To pick up their stuff and run It's actually very interesting The guiding virtues between the county council and the hawkers But I think it's impossible to stop the hawkers from selling you see how they are always on the lookout Many times when we hear of hawking we always associate it with being illegal But actually hawking is very legal If done properly it is actually legal Street vendors are protected by an act of parliament under the Protection of Livelihood Bill 2021 which provides a standard that entrenches the right to informal trading It regulates areas of conducting such trading as well as licensing that is given by counties It also provides a standard for the designatio or allocation and use of public space formal trading and also the effective organization and regulation of informal traders and the public participation in the allocation of the vending zones Okay so we are talking about vending zones And you might be curious as to what a vending zone looks like I'm just going to walk you into one of those vending zones right over here so you can take a look and see This area used to be Sunbeam I don't know if you guys remember this particular area where there was always a vending zone We used to call it Sunbeam I don't know how they're calling it right now but it's one of the zones where the vendors are actually here legally Let me take you back to the illegal street vendors Some of the barriers that people face in formalizing their business are first and foremost the lack of awareness People don't really know that they need to register their businesses in the first place And if they know and when they know they don 't know the potential benefits of registering their businesses There's also the fear of taxation There is a fear of punishment for the years That the business has operated and registered And also there's a belief that compliance yields little value for the business the small businesses or the informal businesses But there are incentives formalization at the city has offered to the businesses So the incentives that the city promises are that there will be improved access to finances improved access to procurement opportunities networking opportunities and generally there's a benefit of being a legitimate business But I personally think the government could do a little more in educating and making people aware of the benefits of registering their unregistered or informal businesses What is the benefit of actually operating legally operating legally in the city And generally the finance departments also need to make it very easy for people to access finances because if you're going to set up a business then you most definitely need all the support That you can need to set up a business Coming up with the initial capital to start a business needs to be reviewed so that the mamboga or the person who will just get up And go sell bananas by the roadside is able to actually confidently be legitimate and sell bananas or sell whatever they're selling at a very low cost low capital cost This is called OTC If that's possible that the people can actually be given financial aid because I think if someone is starting a business that 's so much better to support such a person It's more than just giving out handouts to people and saying okay these people are poor let's give them food Stuff you know the handout kind of economy There are people out here in the streets who have little or no capital to start little capital to start businesses in a legitimate way and if the government the local government actually puts a lot of importance In financing these very small businesses then that could be the beginning of clearing the streets of illegal street vendors Yeah that's my feeling That's my opinion Let me know what you think in the comment section below For sure this is a Nairobi that we do not want you to see Generally Nairobians are We are more interested in the more organized parts of the city The other parts of the city that we feel are very disorganized yeah we feel like this is the more chaotic and disorganized part of the city Every city resident wants that the city It is a nice and cozy place to live in Every part of the city is a nice and cozy place to live in and I place that responsibility squarely on the council on the local government e Nairobi local government and I know it's possible because it has been able to do this in other parts of the city and of course the biggest my biggest recommendation is that first and foremos Put money in the businesses the informal businesses if they account for 65% of the employment in the country then this is very important to make sure That you put a lot of money into it in these informal businesses and make it possible for them to get registered legalized and eventually have a more coordinated way of doing business without having to resort to running battles I hope you've enjoyed that video and until next one tschuus Peterson kwaheri