By Christine Mungai | From Mail & Guardian Africa

Trending in Kenya last week was a new four-part documentary by Nairobi-based investigative journalism house Africa Uncensored titled Kanjo Kingdom, that reveals the harassment, extortion, corruption and outright thuggery that Nairobi city authorities wield over market vendors and petty traders every day.

About three-quarters of the city’s labour force makes a living in the informal economy; the Africa Uncensored investigation reveals that city inspectorate officers exert unofficial – but compulsory – bribes on tens of thousands of market traders.

Cumulatively the bribes add up to $960,000 every month, or close to $11.5 million every year. Most of these traders make less than $100 a month, and a street trader can be forced to hand over as much as 50% of gross turnover to the thuggish inspectorate officers, colloquially referred to as kanjo (from council, i.e. Nairobi City Council).

But the troubles of Nairobi’s street vendors are part of a bigger story, which begins with the question why African urban centres have market traders and street vendors – or more broadly, local retail – as their primary economic activity. Why are there hawkers to harass in the first place?

Africa is urbanising rapidly, and in the next 35 years, Africa will need to accommodate almost 900 million new urban dwellers, which is equivalent to what Europe, USA and Japan combined have managed over the past 265 years, data from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation shows.

Push and pull

In most continents, city growth is a by-product of two factors, usually happening side-by-side: a “push” from an increase in agricultural productivity growth, which means fewer workers are needed on farms; and a “pull” from urban industries, whereby factories requires an increasing amount of labour in cities.

Read more at Mail & Guardian Africa