Becky Asch
Nakuru, Kenya
Kenya National Alliance for Street Vendors and Informal Traders
Post taken from: http://beckyasch.wordpress.com/
On Monday morning, I boarded a matatu from Nakuru to go to Migori. The trip was supposed to take 5 hours (at least that’s what I was told), but that turned out to be a VERY optimistic estimate… in the end it took me nearly 9 hours. So I got a lot of reading and thinking done on the ride, and got to see the countryside which is absolutely beautiful and so lush as you drive southbound through Nyanza Province… rolling hills quilted with maize, tea, sugarcane, groundnuts and bananas, dotted with huts and houses.
Migori is a town center in the district by the same name in southwestern Kenya. It’s inhabited mostly by Luo (I got to use some of my Acholi that I learned in Gulu), and there are some Kisii and Maasai living there as well. I went there to learn more about what KENASVIT’s urban affiliate MISVESTS does, the challenges they face, their ongoing projects, and the way they operate.
After quite an odd night at the hotel on Monday (I met some really interesting people, to say the least), MISVESTS’ Secretary met me first thing Tuesday morning to walk into town, meet some of the members at their places of work and attend MISVESTS’ management meeting.
We walked through Suna Marindi Market in town, which is swarming with vendors selling tilapia (from Lake Victoria), veggies, fruit, meat, “cereal” (beans, grains, etc.), electronics/plastic products/clothing (from Nairobi, originally US/Europe/China), shoes, soaps… you name it. There’s a definite method to the madness, with particular sections designated to different products. The sections are also very gendered, with women selling most of the food products and men selling electronics and plastic goods, with women outnumbering men in the market (the ratio of men:women in the informal sector here is about equal, but the informal transport sector, such as boda-boda and matatu drivers, is almost entirely male). The vendors are centered in and around a circular brick wall that encloses a fraction of them, and the rest have set up stands or sheets on the ground with their products around the perimeter, often under the shade of an umbrella.
After about an hour of roaming the market and speaking with vendors, we went to a small open cement room in a one-story building just beyond the market, where the management meetings are temporarily being held. The meeting began with a prayer (as is very common here) and introductions, and then committee members all contributed to tell me the story underlying the organization and the market:
Before the current market’s existence, vendors used to sell their products in a makeshift area that they built with scrap materials and corrugated iron sheets. This marketplace regularly caught on fire, and many of the vendors’ products and selling areas were destroyed. The traders were constantly harassed and bribed by askari (police), who would charge them with obstruction or trading in a non-designated area and confiscate their goods, a problem that was exacerbated by the unofficial nature of the makeshift market. (This harassment, bribery and confiscation takes place almost uniformly across the country, as the informal sector does not have a legal framework, is often excluded from urban plans, and traders can’t afford to the days off of work or the court fees to follow through with a case that they have little chance of winning anyway… the actual numbers of those arrested each day in urban areas is staggering). In addition, the levies for trading licenses in Migori were being raised every month, with no rhyme or reason (well, the reason was just to fatten the tax collectors’ wallets), and they were unaffordable. After such routine injustice and frustration, the vendors decided to get together and form MISVESTS to be able to more loudly and effectively voice their concerns to the Municipal Council and other relevant authorities.
Since MISVESTS’ founding, it has accomplished a great amount, but still faces a lot of obstacles. One of its first goals was to have a market officially designated for informal traders, which would reduce the level of harassment and bribery, provide better working conditions, and would represent acknowledgment of their work. The Municipal Council (MC) repeatedly told MISVESTS that they were willing to but didn’t have the funds to support such a project. Two years ago the EU agreed to give a grant to the Migori MC to build the market, under the condition that the Council would contribute funds as well. As there were already kiosks existing in the area designated for the new market, the owners agreed to have their kiosks demolished if they would get first priority for stalls in the new market (MISVESTS took an inventory of over 200 kiosk owners which this applied to). After 1 year, the first phase of building (the brick perimeter) had been completed… BUT, when the EU came to assess the progress, they found that the Council had misused some of the grant money, and decided to terminate their support altogether. Understandable I guess, but not a solution; it left the traders without a market and those who had sacrificed their kiosks for the sake of the new market in a particularly bad position.
After a lengthy period of stalled construction (the MC wouldn’t continue building), MISVESTS decided to take matters into its own hands, and persistently petitioned the MC to allow the vendors to build it themselves (this was after an intensive consultation process with all levels of membership/management — general member meetings, management committee meetings, and executive committee meetings — to agree on the terms of negotiation). In one of the committee members’ words, “If you wait you could even die before it is built, so we decided to build ourselves.” MISVESTS’ management even traveled to Siaya to see an example of a market that they would model Migori’s after.
The MC eventually accepted this proposal, and decided that they would allow the traders to finish construction of the market themselves, with their own money, albeit with a few stipulations: KSh 5,000 is to be paid to the MC for the right to build each stall, and the construction must be complete by early June of this year. This was a mixed blessing. In one sense, it demonstrates the incredible resilience, determination, ability and agency that these vendors have in demanding their right to trade and have a decent place of work. On the other hand, it confirms the fact that if they are to have their own market, they will have to fight for it and use their own money, underscoring the lack of acknowledgment of their work at the government level.
The success of this agreement has been tainted with a number of challenges. To start, the construction is very expensive: approximately KSh 9,000 per stall for building costs, plus the 5K for the right to the stall (the exchange rate is about KSh 89 to US$1). Since most if not all vendors do not have this kind of money to spend all at once, construction has been slow and the June deadline passed with many of the kiosks still unfinished (albeit in progress). The MC had initially agreed that if construction were not done by the deadline, they would meet with MISVESTS management to discuss the next steps. Instead, they have avoided all of MISVESTS’ attempts to contact them and set up a meeting, and in the meantime have been unlawfully repossessing and selling the unfinished kiosks at hiked up prices (KSh 25-30,000), pocketing the difference. Furthermore, the MC had agreed to provide services such as garbage collection, water and toilet facilities to the market, but has not followed through on this. There is currently 1 toilet facility for the entire market (there are probably more than 1,000 vendors working there on any given day), and proper garbage collection and water provisions are nonexistent.
But for all of the predictable obstacles that stem from the pervasive corruption in the municipal government and the refusal to properly acknowledge the informal sector in Migori (as in most of Kenya), the market project demonstrates MISVESTS’ incredible dedication, persistence and ability to improve the working conditions of their members. This organization is not a group of outsiders who have come in to help the less fortunate: it is a group made up entirely of street vendors and informal traders who have come together to demand acknowledgement of their sector and better working conditions for themselves and their fellow traders. It’s quite difficult to describe my emotions as I walked through the market and saw people building the stalls to work in, as I listened to the committee members proudly and eagerly sharing with me the purpose of their organization, their accomplishments and their challenges. Bittersweet is the best word I can come up with, but doesn’t do it justice. I sat for 3 hours attentively listening and writing pages of notes as they shared with me, and I learned so much and felt so privileged to be a part of their efforts.
One conclusion that this case demonstrates, and that has been increasingly clear to me since I started work here a month ago, is the misleading nature of the term ‘informal’. Of course, there is a reason the sector has such a name: it is not captured in official economic indicators such as GDP (even though it constitutes nearly 80% of Kenya’s economy); workers do not have formal contracts that guarantee certain work protections (such as overtime, maternity leave, safe workplace conditions, etc.); there is no uniform legal framework pertaining to the sector… I could go on. But the term ‘informal’ seems to mask the extent to which the sector is inextricably linked to the ‘formal’. Indeed, many of the products that are sold are purchased from the formal sector (i.e. electronic products from China, airtime for mobile phones, etc.), the vendors pay levies for licenses and business spaces to the government, organizations such as MISVESTS take up roles that are officially delegated to the formal/public sector (building markets, providing members with access to credit, service provisions such as water, garbage collection and sanitation facilities) — the informal sector’s very existence both supports and is supported by the formal sector. In many ways, the formal sector has actually proved to be just as informal as the informal sector, if not more: government officials pocketing money from made-up fees, making empty promises, police harassing and bribing the workers, and the like. Thus, we can see that these terms are often misleading, as both sectors straddle the line between formal and informal. Just something I’ve been contemplating a lot since I arrived.
Next post I’ll write more about what I’ve been doing at KENASVIT in terms of projects and responsibilities, and talk a little bit more about how I understand my role here, both at work and in the community.