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Abstract
Studies focusing on street trade in sub-Saharan Africa place great importance on the continuity with the colonial period and on the neocolonial characteristics of public action. This frame of reference, however pertinent it might be, does not account for all of the dynamics at work. I argue that it can benefit from an additional reading of what I characterise as the neoliberal dynamics also at work in these processes, drawing from governmentality studies and from the theories of ‘the urbanisation of neoliberalism’. The article discusses this hypothesis by examining the evolution of spatial politics on the streets of Nairobi's Central Business District (CBD) in the 2000s, focusing on a specific episode: the displacement of the street traders to an enclosed market located on the outskirts of the CBD. The first section considers the policies of street trade in Nairobi since the colonial period and the changes in their meaning under entrepreneurial rule, questioning the hypothesis of the colonial continuity. I then turn to an analysis of the neoliberal features of current street trade policies. I detail the emergence of the private sector as a major actor in the governance of street trade and its instrumental role in the crafting of a consultative procedure that has helped to reframe the traders' relationship to the state around the ideal of the responsible entrepreneurial citizen and contributed to enrolment as active participants in their own relocation.
Acknowledgements
I express my appreciation to IFRA-Nairobi and to its former Director Bernard Calas, who welcomed me during my fieldwork. I am very grateful to Hélène Charton and Sam Owuor who invited me to the launching of their CORUS research programme (‘Governance, informality and identity in Nairobi and Dar as Salaam’). I thank Winnie Mitullah and Sam Owuor from the University of Nairobi (who also participated in the Jugurta programme), Lydia Muthuma, Anne Bousquet and Quentin Mercurol who helped me to find my intellectual way around Nairobi. This article owes a lot to the discussions I had with Sophie Didier and to our work on Cape Town. I also thank Claire Bénit-Gbaffou and Marie Huchzermeyer for their comments and suggestions, and Jean-Fabien Steck for sharing with me his knowledge on issues of informality in African cities. The opinions expressed in this article are entirely mine.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. ILO, Employment, Incomes, and Equality; Hart, “Entrepreneurs and migrants.”
2. I use the descriptive and neutral term street trade, rather than the expression jua kali, which has historical connotations linking it to a process of political recognition, or the term hawking, which is still heard in Kenyan political discourse but which has a pejorative and colonial connotation. Street trading designates any form of trade that takes place in public space, whether legal or illegal, sedentary or mobile, provided it is targeted by the neoliberal spatial reordering.
3. Lewinson, “Reading Modernity in Urban Space.”
4. Yankson, “Accommodating Informal Economic Units in the Urban Built Environment.”
5. Popke and Ballard, “Dislocating Modernity”; Skinner, “Falling through the policy gap.”
6. Miraftab, Governing Post-apartheid Spatiality
7. Steck et al., “Informality, Public Space and Urban Governance.”
8. Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, Population and Housing Census.
9. City Council of Nairobi, Strategic Plan 2006–2010.
10. Rajagopal, “The Violence of Commodity Aesthetics”; Simone, For the City Yet to Come; Slaughter, “Master Plans”; Linehan, “Re-ordering the Urban Archipelago”; and Fourchard “Les Rues de Lagos.”
11. Harvey, “From managerialism to entrepreneurialism”.
12. Brenner and Theodore, “Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism.’” Also see Peck, Jamie. “Geography and Public Policy” and Peck et al., “City as Policy Lab”.
13. Nadesan, Governmentality, 6. See also Barry et al., Foucault and Political Reason, and Ong, Neoliberalism as exception.
14. Nadesan, Governmentality, 15.
15. Nadesan, Governmentality, 15.
16. For such an approach, see Macharia, Social and Political Dynamics; Mitullah, Street Vending in African Cities; Alila et al., Policies, Regulations, and Organisational Capacity; Lyons, “Creating Urban Social Capital”; on the transnational networks of informal trading, see Campbell, “Economic Globalization from Below” or Gadzala, “Economic Globalization from Below.”
17. Files 0108632 RN/1/106; 010957 RN/8/4; 0119772 RN/1/1; 0119776 RN/1/5 By-law hawkers 1937–1963, stored in the National Archives in Nairobi.
18. D. Wathika, message on the 42nd anniversary independence, www.nairobicity.go.ke, May 2008, accessed February 2009. In the quotations, the emphasis is mine.
19. Macharia, “Tensions Created by the Formal and Informal Use of Urban Space.”
20. NCBDA, Street Vending in Nairobi, 21.
21. NCBDA, Street Vending in Nairobi, 21
22. NCBDA, Appropriate Governance System for Informal Trading Program, Report of the 1st Informal Traders, 6 (NCC data).
23. NCBDA, Appropriate Governance System for Informal Trading Program, Report of the 1st Informal Traders, 6 (NCC data).
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26. On the criminalisation of poverty and of the poor, see Burton, African Underclass, and Rizzo, “‘Life is War’!” (on urban transports in Tanzania).
27. Republic of Kenya, Sessional Paper No 1.
28. Republic of Kenya, Sessional paper No 2, 2005 Central Bureau of Statistics, Report of the 1998/99 Labour Force Survey.
29. Linehan, “Re-ordering the Urban Archipelago,” 29.
30. NCBDA, Appropriate governance system for informal trading program.
31. Kamunyori, “A Growing Space for Dialogue,” 9.
32. Klopp, “Pilfering the Public.”
33. Due to the tradition of centralisation, the NCC falls under the control of the Ministry of Local Government that appoints the Town Clerk.
34. Republic of Kenya, Sessional Paper No. 2.
35. Médard, “Nairobi: acteurs et enjeux d'une planification détournée.”
36. Republic of Kenya, Economic Recovery Strategy.
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38. F. Fadamula, former CEO of the NCBDA, in NCBDA, Citypower, January 2005, 2.
39. NCBDA, Street Vending in Nairobi and other urban centres in Kenya, 18.
40. NCBDA, Organized Hawking in the CBD.
41. NCBDA, Citypower, January 2005, 1.
42. See the municipal pamphlets: Nairobi City in the Sun of 1962 and A guide to Nairobi city in the sun of the 1950s.
43. Médard, “Nairobi: acteurs et enjeux d'une planification détournée.”
44. Prunier, “Les communautés indiennes.”
45. African Councillor Serikali, TaifaLeo, 30/12/1961.
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47. Lonsdale, “Etre citadin.”
48. Town Clerk of Nairobi, quoted by the Kenyan Times, 1 May 2006.
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50. NCBDA, Shoe Shining Stands in Aga Khan Walk Project.
51. NCBDA, Organized Hawking in the CBD.
52. Linehan, “Re-ordering the Urban Archipelago,” 21.
53. Republic of Kenya, Nairobi Metro 2030 strategy. A World Class African Metropolis, Building a safe, secure and prosperous metropolitan, Ministry of Nairobi Metropolitan Development.
54. Republic of Kenya, Vision 2030. A Globally Competitive and Prosperous Kenya 2008–2012. Nairobi: Ministry of State for Planning, National Development and Vision 2030, KIPPRA.
55. Kamunyori, “A Growing Space for Dialogue,” 64.
56. Republic of Kenya, Poverty Reduction Strategic Paper 2000–2003.
57. Republic of Kenya, National Development Plan 2002–2008, 46.
58. NCBDA, New Year Bulletin, 1.
59. NCBDA, Survey Report on Street Vending in Nairobi.
60. NCBDA chairman, May 2009, quoted by the Standard.
61. NCBDA chairman, 2004a, quoted by Okoth, Kenya National Street Vendors Forum.
62. NCBDA, Appropriate governance system for informal trading program, 26.
63. Republic of Kenya, Ministry of Local Government. Strategic Plan 2004–2009.
64. City Council of Nairobi, Strategic Plan 2006–2010.
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67. NCBDA, Survey Report on Street Vending in Nairobi, 43.
68. Sandy Vohra, quoted in NCBDA, Citypower, February 2006, 3.
69. NCBDA, Citypower, January 2005, 2.
70. Interview with a NCBDA project manager.
71. Kamunyori, “A Growing Space for Dialogue.”
72. Several interviewees mentioned embezzlement and corruption scandals linked to NCBDA run public toilets in the CBD.
73. Linehan, “Re-ordering the Urban Archipelago,” 32.
74. NCBDA, Survey Report on Street Vending in Nairobi.
75. NCBDA, Appropriate Governance System for Informal Trading Program.
76. F.O. Mwanza, Chief PR officer, 28/02/2008, www.citycouncilofnairobi.go.ke, accessed February 2009.
77. Hendricks, Urban Livelihoods, 153.
78. Interview with KENASVIT representative.
79. Kamunyori, “A Growing Space for Dialogue.”
80. Interview with Beth, trader.
81. Mitullah, “Struggles and Organised Responses of Informal Traders.”
82. NCBDA, Appropriate governance system for informal trading program.
83. For a similar analysis in post-apartheid Durban and Cape Town, see Ballard, “Between the Community Hall and the City Hall” and Morange, “Participation, Neoliberal Control and the Voice of Street Traders.”
84. NCBDA, Appropriate Governance System for Informal Trading in Nairobi. Proposal to USAID.
85. Quoted by Macharia, “Tensions Created by the Formal and Informal Use of Urban 790 Space”.
86. NCBDA, Appropriate governance system for informal trading program, 25.
87. NCBDA, Street Vending in Nairobi, 2005, 7.
88. NCBDA chairman, interview.
89. NCBDA chairman, interview, 4 and 9.
90. NCBDA, Appropriate governance system for informal trading program, 2004a, 41.
91. NCBDA CEO, www.ncbda-kenya.org, May 2008, accessed February 2009.
92. USAID, quoted in NCBDA 2004d.
93. NCBDA, Street Vending in Nairobi, 29.
94. P. Kisia 2001, former chairman of the NCBDA.
95. Nairobi Mayor, at the launching of the consultative workshop, quoted in NCBDA, Survey Report on Street Vending in Nairobi, 10.
96. See for example, The Daily Nation, “Council Destroys More Kiosks”, 22 May1998, “Hawkers Rebuild Kiosks”, 25 May 1998, “Tension High as Hawkers are Evicted”, 23 May 1999, and the Business Daily Africa, “False Solutions to Hawker Problem Will Fail”, 19 March 2008.
97. Mitullah, “Street Trade in Kenya.”
98. NCBDA, Survey Report on Street Vending in Nairobi, 30.
99. NCBDA, Appropriate Governance System for Informal Trading Program, 19.
100. NCBDA, Survey Report on Street Vending in Nairobi, 2.
101. NCBDA, Survey Report on Street Vending in Nairobi, 9.
102. NCBDA, Survey Report on Street Vending in Nairobi, 28.
103. NCBDA, Street Vending in Nairobi and other urban centres in Kenya, 13.
104. NCBDA, Appropriate Governance System for Informal Trading Program; NCBDA, Survey Report on Street Vending in Nairobi, 13.
105. Chairman of NCBDA, quoted in NCBDA, Appropriate Governance System for Informal Trading Program, 2004b.
106. NCBDA's chairman, www.ncbda-kenya.org, May 2008, Accessed February 2009.
107. Consultative workshop, NCBDA 2003.
108. Personal interview.
109. Interview with NISCOF member.
110. Charles Kalomba general secretary of the Kenya National Federation of Hawkers, quoted by the Standard, 15 July 2009.
111. NISCOF pamphlet.
112. Kenyan Times, 25 April 2006, quoting the Permanent secretary in the ministry of Local Government.
113. Interview with Aisha, trader.
114. Lindell, Africa's Informal Workers.