A TOUGH-looking policeman in his 30s puts his finger against his lips and says: "Shaaa---shaa—shaa. You are not allowed to sell clothes in the middle of the road.”

Then a seek and hide game between policemen, Kigali City Council enforcement officers and hawkers follows. It’s a game hard to win on both sides.

There seems to be an increase of street vendors hawking everything from oranges, mangoes, shoes, newspapers, clothes, jewellery, flowers – everything - and they are now showing up in every corner of the city.

Kigali City Council has on a daily basis been seen flushing hawkers or vendors out of the streets, a move that has received mixed reactions from different people, with others supporting it while others condemn it.

Hawkers: They will sell virtually any item that can be moved. Their heads, shoulders and hands serve as shelves or stalls, displaying their wares.

They are found anywhere in major towns. There is a traffic jam on the streets, and all over towns and cities. Hawkers - boys, girls, men and women - are so common in Kigali City and its suburbs.

They have no permanent sites. They move with the traffic, making a living out of every chaotic situation. Sometimes they are cursed, sometimes they aid citizens by taking services closer to them.

They walk the streets of residential areas, announcing their wares in high-pitched cries for anyone who cares to come and buy.

"On a good day we make money but in most cases we lose. When police begin chasing you off streets, you cannot make money,” says Gaspard Higiro, a 25-year-old.

The hawkers’ wares are varied. They sell electronic gadgets - tacky or expensive, second hand shoes, watches, food items and clothes.

Clothes-pegs, toys, apples, music cassettes - pirated or legitimate - dish cloths, sunglasses, pens, shoes, picture frames - you name it, they've got it, whether locally-made or imported. Their prices are not fixed depending on customer’s negotiation skills.

On the streets of Remera, Kimironko, Nyabugogo Taxi Park or City Plaza road in Kigali for instance, these fast-moving, fleet-footed traders will sell you everything of your choice.

They wander through the maze of vehicles and humans struggling for space on the crowded streets. When a prospective customer emerges, they ‘attack’ you. Woe to you if you don’t buy.

"If you don’t want to buy get away from here, you the wretched of the earth,” one hawker, a young girl, shouted when I wanted to buy a small mirror from her but was not coming out with the money.

Many of them see hawking as a temporary activity - a chapter between leaving school, for instance, and getting a good job, or entering into mainstream business life.

But how temporary it might be, is difficult to say. Emile Rukondo, 30, Asiimwe Rurangwa, 22, and Anita Mukeshimana, 19, all went into hawking because they could not continue with their educational pursuits.

Rukundo, for instance, came to Kigali in 2005 in search of a job. That was after he had completed his secondary education in Kampala, Uganda.

Since his parents could not afford to send him to a higher institution, he had to search for work to fend for his family.
He says after searching for well-paying jobs for four years in vain, he settled for hawking.

And for nearly nine years, he has hawked second-hand clothes on the busy streets in Kigali City.

"It’s not something that I like most,” Rukundo says.

"It is not fun for a 30-year-old man to keep running away from police and exchanging insults.

"Maybe they think we make a lot of money along these streets, which is not the case.

"We spend a lot time in the sunshine striving to get what to take home for meals but in vain!” he said.

"Our wares are not secure at all because they are always confiscated by those police and city council authorities on a daily basis whenever we are victimized.

"Whether they share them among themselves or sell them, no one knows,” Rukundo said.

He would prefer to rent a stall in the central Kigali business area like the Kimironko market, but cannot afford the rent. Asiimwe says a six feet square stall at Kimironko Market costs as much as Frw20,000 every month, while the owners demand payment for at least five months in advance.

And, although he says his capital has increased to Frw30,000, this is still nothing compared with what he would need to rent a shop to display the commodities that he now carries on his head along Kigali’ busiest streets.

"Hawking is a unique phenomenon found in underdeveloped economies where market structures are not well developed and integrated,” an official from Private Sector Federation who spoke on condition of anonymity says.

"People want to exchange goods and services, but the infrastructure is not well developed. Even the transportation doesn't work: no good roads, no vehicles, and where there are roads and vehicles, there is no fuel. And yet exchange must take place.”

While the formal sector may look developed, with showrooms, shops and supermarkets to display goods, behind the facade, the necessary facilities aren't affordable.

Hawking cuts the economic "distance” between the seller and consumer of the products. "And when you cut this distance, you lower costs," he says.

Unlike the formal sector where buyers must go to the sellers, in the informal sector, the hawkers are willing to go to the buyers and even sell them at a subsided price.

KCC speaks out

According to Bruno Rangira, Kigali City Council public relations officer, alternatives are being made in a bid to get vendors off the streets.

"We want the vendors to join formal markets like those of Kibagabaga and Kimironko,” Rangira said.

He said there are some projects being designed by KCC that will boost vendors financially to make them forget the streets.

"Most of the projects are in their infancy. Bricklaying is one of them,” Rangira added.

Though it is difficult to tell why vending is slowly becoming part of our living conditions in the city, sometimes we have only complained to ourselves while the situation continues to deteriorate.

Poverty and lack of gainful employment in the rural areas and in the smaller towns drive large numbers of people to the cities for work and livelihood.

These people generally possess low skills and lack the level of education required for the better paying jobs in the more organised sector.

And due to unemployment that has hit the country, even those with relevant skills and knowledge required end up not getting jobs.

For the urban poor, hawking is one of the means of earning a livelihood, as it requires minor financial input and the skills involved are low so it makes vendors earn a living. Jackson Nsezibeera of Kimihurura says that most vendors operate in places or areas which do not belong to them.

"Occupying a place which is not yours is enough to rule it out that what they are doing is illegal too,” he said.

He further said that hawkers shouldn't be allowed to set up shop, stand wherever they want most especially on someone else’s property.

Vacant or not, unless the vendor has the property owner's permission to be there, he or she is regarded as a trespasser, which makes it illegal.

Many vendors give you their best price and highest quality service when you first start doing business with them. This makes sense, as they want you to come back as repeat business. 

But then they start getting too comfortable and charge you a little more and don’t provide as good a service as they once did.

"I just have an issue when these guys are standing on the street corner of my neighbouring shops trying to flag down a car to sell some newspapers and many other small items,” he said.

Hawkers should get allocated to particular defined areas for them to carry out business, but shouldn’t be allowed to be wherever they want to set up shop, he said.

Patrick Kimanuka says that selling in the middle of the road should be banned because they reap big in terms of profits yet they are not taxed like shop owners. These permanent traders pay operating licence and taxes to city council.

"There are times that I buy from them because I'm not looking for anything special,” a city resident, Timothy Kakuba says.

Mukaneza Stella of Kabeza, a stall operator and a widow with five children, said that putting a small stall alongside the road is not the best thing that a parent like her would like to do.

But because of poverty and other related responsibilities of taking care of her children, selling of simple items such as onions, tomatoes, cabbages among others becomes the only option to earn her a living.

City residents’ take

One trader Andrew Saku, a motor mechanic in Kigali says people will breathe a sign of relief when the city streets are free of informal traders.

"Despite the fact that hawkers in most cases create easier markets for goods in our warehouse, they should leave the streets and organise themselves into something more productive.

"They narrow our market structure because most customers that would come in our shops to buy simply stop on the way,” he said.

He said that street hawkers are a nuisance. They don’t even contribute to the economy in form of taxes. Another city resident in Remera, Sande Kanamugire, says sending hawkers off the streets will amount to denying many of their sources of livelihood.

"I can remember selling rice on the street with my sisters in the 80s to support my mother when we lost our father,” he said.

Getting a shop may sometimes be too expensive so the only way out will be to go out and sell along the streets where you don’t pay rent. This can, however, be regulated by the government to prevent its being abused.

"Hawking in the highways should, however, be prohibited,” adds Kanamugire.

Yes; hawkers should be moved off the streets. They become a nuisance when they make the city become very unruly and unkempt.

"Traffic jam serves as a breeding space for criminals, not to mention the eyesore they've become. These people need a market place. Some kind of order and regulation is needed,” Tersis Ruhimbana, a resident of Kabeza in Gasabo District stresses.

KCC says the only thing the government can promise is to give them (hawkers) a central place where they can sell their goods because if they are chased from the streets they will come back since they don’t have any alternative.

Without hawkers loitering and littering the city, cleanliness in Kigali will also be enhanced.

Ends