As African cities invest billions in new road infrastructure, the projects are touted as engines of growth and modernization. But research from six cities shows that those who pay the highest price are often the most vulnerable: market and street vendors who lose their livelihoods, sometimes with just a day's notice. This is what cultural geographers Lena Fält and Ilda Lindell write in a guest analysis for Utvecklingsmagasinet.
For many low-income earners in Africa's growing cities, employment opportunities are limited and market and street vending is an important source of income. Road intersections and roadsides are therefore popular places for small-scale trading of everything from clothing and food to electronics.
At the same time, Investment in road infrastructure has increased sharply in African cities over the past decade. Improved roads are often highlighted as important for economic growth, modernization and development: Better road connections make it easier for people to move around and create conditions for trade and tourism. But the local effects of these investments are not only positive. Our research results from Accra, Maputo, Niamey, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Lusaka show that major road investments in these cities have displaced large groups of market and street vendors, who have thus been deprived of their livelihood.
We already know that authorities often perceive street trading as an obstacle to good urban development. Spring new research shows that new road infrastructure has in several cases been used as a tool to remove buildings and groups that are not considered to fit into visions of the modern city, with far-reaching consequences for the affected street vendors.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with market and street vendors in the studied cities, we can show that these groups often have little to oppose new road projects, but that in some cases they have resisted and managed to delay implementation and negotiate compensation for groups that have been forced to relocate.
There are also examples where vendors have benefited from new road projects, often in ways unforeseen by the authorities.
Forced displacements often occur with little or no warning
It is well known that Road projects often create expectations of a better future among ordinary citizensThis was confirmed in many of the interviews we conducted with street vendors in various locations in Accra, Ghana, and Maputo, Mozambique between 2022 and 2024. Many of the vendors we interviewed expressed positive views on the new infrastructure and believed that it would benefit their small-scale trade in the long term.
At the same time, the results from the two cities show that it is common for vendors to be evicted and thus lose their source of income when land is cleared for various types of road projects. Notably in Accra, large groups of street vendors have been evicted in recent years, and many testify that this has happened without prior information from local authorities.
With just one day's notice, many vendors were forced to move their kiosks and stalls from places where they had been trading for years when the widening of La Beach Road, a road linking the capital with the neighboring city of Tema, began in 2022. A food vendor who had been working along the road for six years told in an interview how he developed his business until the road work began:
– First I had a table [to sell goods], then I got a small wooden kiosk. I had the kiosk for two and a half years before they came and tore up the road. My kiosk was small, so my friends helped me carry it home while I carried the goods myself. I have no other place to put the kiosk, and since all the goods I sell have a best-before date, many have been ruined. I can't sell them.
Finding a new place to operate is difficult, and those who could not move their belongings soon saw them demolished. The displacement of vendors meant both material losses and a significant decline in the income opportunities of many people.
More dangerous environments with fewer customers
Vendors who were able to stay in the area despite the road project testified in interviews about a deteriorated work environment where noise, dust, reduced visibility, and difficulties and fears of crossing the road negatively affected their income and everyday life. A woman who made a living selling porridge along the roadside told how the conditions for her work changed with the road project:
– The place where I used to have my business was very good. It was lively there, and a lot of people passed by. But now it's not good. It's not lively anymore. It's not easy to get up here. People don't want to climb. Sometimes they stand down there and order, because they can't get all the way up here.
Another food vendor told how the increased speed on the widened road created fear among the street vendors:
– The road has become very wide. This means that the speed increases and this has led to accidents. In addition, the U-turn has disappeared, which has also caused the speed to increase. A few people have been hit, and a couple have died. We who work here are scared.
The abrupt halt to the project shortly after it began has in turn turned what were supposed to be temporary challenges into semi-permanent ones, leaving the future highly uncertain for both the road upgrade and those who make a living nearby.
Protests led to compensation, but not for everyone
A few years earlier, the Nwakakana market in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, was set to suffer a similar fate when Africa’s largest suspension bridge was built. Authorities announced that both the nearby market and informal settlements would be demolished to make way for the bridge and modernize the area. But in this case, vendors resisted the demolitions.
Through loud protests and complex political maneuvering, the vendors at Nwakakana Market managed to delay the demolition of the market and the massive bridge construction by a full year. By organizing collectively, removing disloyal leaders, and negotiating with political actors at both the state and municipal levels, the vendors managed to significantly delay the construction. Furthermore, for the first time in the city’s history, the vendors succeeded in pushing through compensation for them, as well as residents, to leave the site.
Some of the vendors were also offered space at a newly built, simpler market that the municipality built in connection with the demolition of the old market. However, many of the vendors said in interviews that the compensation was too low and that vendors without their own kiosk or table, usually women, were left without any compensation at all. For many, the eviction thus meant a clearly worse working situation, with increased poverty as a result. An older woman who had previously worked at the demolished market stated:
– I see no benefit to the bridge. For me, it has only brought me closer to death.
At the same time, the resistance was symbolically important as it brought the project's far-reaching negative consequences for local vendors to the highest political level.
It is clear that many street and market vendors in the cities we have studied have been very negatively affected by the implementation of major road projects. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that new road infrastructure can also have a positive impact on these groups.
More voices need to be heard in the street space
At the Nkrumah Circle intersection in central Accra, which was upgraded in 2016, street vendors have benefited from the new road infrastructure in several ways. This despite local authorities trying in various ways to get them off the site. The previously unlit stretch of road received street lighting when the intersection was upgraded, meaning vendors can now work in the evenings and nights. The new elevated roads also offer welcome protection from the sun and rain, which some vendors are taking advantage of. In Maputo, vendors at some markets are finding that new road infrastructure has led to customers from more distant places flocking to the area.
The opportunities for street and market vendors to make a living in connection with the construction of new transport infrastructure are influenced by the vendors' own agency, but are largely determined by how local and national authorities view these groups and what rights they are given to live, work and reside in the city. More attention should therefore be paid to how large-scale road infrastructure appears to be exclusionary for large groups and is prioritized over other, more basic, infrastructure that would benefit the majority of the city's residents. Ultimately, the question that policymakers should ask themselves is: for who Is this really how we develop the city and its infrastructure?
The project “The emergence of 'world-class' transport infrastructure: urban visions and infrastructural spaces in African cities” has been funded by Formas (Dnr 2019-01908), within the national research program for “Sustainable Community Building”.
This is a guest analysis. The author is responsible for analysis and opinions in the text.
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