Effects of Locating Street Vendors to Formal Markets on Their Socio-Economic Living Conditions in Kigali City

Gisanabagabo Sebuhuzu & Masengesho Esther Josiane
Adventist University of Central Africa (AUCA), Rwanda
Email: gisanabagabo@yahoo.fr

Abstract: Street vending activity is considered as an important source of informal employment resulting from lack of limited lucrative employment, hence leading many people to move from their villages to cities searching for employment where they expect to get better pay. In Rwanda, the street vending activity is considered as illegal under the motive of keeping clean Kigali City and the secondary cities. To attend to living conditions of people involved in the street vending activities, Government of Rwanda has initiated a project of locating them in formal markets. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the contribution of this initiative of locating street traders in formal markets on their living conditions. It employed a descriptive study design on a sample of 372 street traders drawn from around 4,647 street vendors relocated in formal market in Kigali City. With the F-statistic of 27.617 and p-value of 0.000, findings confirm that locating street vendors at a well-known market and safer place has a significant effect on the improvement of their living conditions at all levels of significance. However, the amount of Frw 50,000 given to street vendors as starting up assistance is perceived as small to sustain their business. Similarly, the backward movement of some to street vending activity is to be strictly discouraged because not only hamper the initiative but also can reduce the potential multiplicative effect of the amount that government gives as support to located street vendors.