Collective organising among informal vendors in Kampala

By: Ilda Lourenço-Lindell and Jenny Appelblad

The research project entitled ‘Collective Organisation among Informal Workers in African Cities’ (see www.nai.uu.se/research/areas), led by Ilda Lourenço-Lindell at the Nordic Africa Institute, sets out to investigate the economic and political challenges that are facing urban informal workers today, particularly their collectively organised responses to those challenges. The project adopts a multi-local approach in order to explore variations in trends and political dynamics between different urban settings in Africa. The project includes sub-studies in Maputo, Accra and Kampala. This article presents some of the findings of the Kampala study, conducted in the later half of 2004. It reports on the impact of the privatisation of the management of city markets on vendors’ associations.

In Uganda, as in other countries, the informal economy has expanded greatly in recent years. Uganda has a total workforce of close to 11 million. About 2.5 million of these are found within the formal economy, while the remaining majority are earning their living within the informal economy. In Kampala this is particularly evident in a rapid growth of city markets and of the number of street vendors. According to the latest population census, trading is one of the most common income activities in Kampala. The attitude of the city authorities towards vending activities in the city has been one of intolerance and harassment. Vendors have long been organised and in the mid-1980s there existed vendors’ associations in 52 markets across Kampala.

In the 1990s the Ugandan government embarked on national reforms of decentralisation and privatisation. The local government also began to privatise services, including the management of city markets. At first, existing vendors’ associations were promised they would be given priority to be the managers of their respective markets. But after a short while, the government abolished the ‘local artisan arrangement’, which had made it possible for the vendors’ associations to run the management of the markets. Instead it was decided that all contractors bidding for management contracts had to be Value Added Tax compliant, i.e. private companies or cooperative societies.  Thus today, the majority of the markets within Kampala District are managed by private companies or cooperative societies. This privatisation of the management of markets in Kampala has had consequences for market vendors and their associations. In this respect, one can discern different trends and developments that the privatisation process has given rise to.

In some of the studied markets, the vendors formed cooperative credit societies, in order to be able to bid for the management contracts. This change has taken two different directions. In some markets, the vendors’ association has ceased to exist, out-competed by a cooperative society coming into existence - for example in Nakawa Market, the second largest in the city. In other markets, the vendors’ association and the cooperative co-exist and adopt different roles – as is the case of Bugoloobi Market. There, the cooperative is the highest management body, collects funds and provides basic infrastructure, whereas the association provides social services and solves disputes between the traders.

In a number of markets, private companies have been awarded the management contracts. This means that these markets are being managed by ‘outsiders’, who are not traders in the markets. The relations between such private companies and vendors’ associations vary significantly between markets. In some cases, the vendors’ association is allowed by the private company to continue to exist in the market, as the association is seen as an easy way of getting the practical administration work done (allocation of stalls, conflict solving etc). One example of this is St. Balikuddembe Market, the largest market in the country.

In other cases, however, the private company tries to break up the vendors’ association and hinder vendors from organising through the use of violence and force. This is what happened at the Parkyard Market, where efforts by the vendors to form an association in 2003 met with harassement by the management company.

The above changes in the management of markets have implications for the representation and influence of vendors. Cooperative societies are less inclusive than associations, in the sense that they are limited to a small number of members, i.e. those able to buy shares. In the cooperatives, the rights to vote and to be voted for as regards leadership positions are limited to the members holding shares. In addition, the cooperatives appear to have lost the rights-perspective that many of the vendors’ associations had. These features of cooperatives have sometimes given rise to conflicts in the markets. It appears that these copperatives are less able to represent the interests of the majority of vendors in the public arena, than the associations were.

Where private companies had taken over the management of markets, the market fees had been raised, without visible improvements in infrastructure services provided and in some cases vendors were being harassed by the companies’ fee-collectors. Particularly where the vendors’ association was suppressed, vendors had no longer a channel for communication with the city council. Vendors perceive the council to be more interested in the revenue generated by the private company and to turn deaf ears to their protests.

In sum, organised vendors seem to be facing serious challenges in the context of privatisation of market management. Large numbers of vendors are unable to become members of cooperative societies, while others see their associations being repressed or losing influence, for example in relation to the city council. This loss in representation appears to make them more vulnerable to the profit-making companies and the revenue-minded city council. Recent developments however might bring changes to this state of affairs. Among these is the emergence of an umbrella body of organisations of informal workers and of a close relationship between informal workers’ groups and trade unions.

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The authors wish to thank the Centre for Basic Research in Kampala, local research colleagues, interviewed representatives of trade unions, leaders of associations and vendors in the markets.