I enjoy my evening tipple after a long day. Chasing customers for payments, navigating my way through snaking traffic, and managing the headache of a tight cash flow is the typical day for a small business owner. You need a way to decompress, or you will snap.
But lately, I have noticed a worrying trend that signals the economy is in dire straits. When partaking of my drink at my local pub, conversations with other patrons are increasingly becoming punctuated by hawkers. This has always been the case, but what is different now is the number.
A few years ago, a typical evening would see one or three hawkers pass by, but today it is at least four every hour, hawking everything from shoes, phone covers, eggs and smokies, jackets, fruits, and even Bibles.
It gets more concerning. On my way to the house, the streets are flooded by human traffic because all the pedestrian walkways have been taken over by hawkers. Every piece of real estate has been colonized and transformed into a makeshift kiosk.
This was never the case 10 years ago. Going to Nairobi’s CBD in the evening is even worse.
There are also more boda bodas at every stage and junction within all urban areas.
Government propagandists, especially a rancid one whose hobby is abusing people on X every Sunday, will say that this is a positive sign that the Government’s Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA) is working and that concerns are coming from entitled middle-class Kenyans.
These comments do not deserve an answer because they are triple-A-rated asinine, but to answer, we must.
First, the obvious question is whether there is enough business for the hawkers and boda boda riders. Anecdotal evidence suggests there is not. The Daily Nation published a story on August 17, 2025, titled “Debt, despair and rust: Thousands of boda bodas rot in police yards as riders suffer” where it stated that previously riders would earn up to KES 1,000 daily, but today, they are on less than KES 500.
That is slashing your income by half.
Second, this is not sustainable. Today you can get KES 1,000 in profit, but tomorrow nothing. Planning becomes a nightmare.
How do you make long-term plans if you are unable to know with a level of certainty how much you will earn? You cannot.
Ephraim Njenga has aptly put it that:
“Street hawking is a symptom of high unemployment. The only way to sustainably address the challenge is to create employment, including by creating decent trading spaces.”
But even this is a challenge because formal markets are bursting at the seams. These jobs cannot absorb the million Kenyans entering the job market every year.
What we need is manufacturing, especially agro-processing. This is sustainable because it is low-hanging fruit.
The average Kenyan farmer is 61. There will be a demand for experienced farmers to fill in these gaps as farmers retire or leave the profession due to other natural attrition causes.
Kenya imports a lot of food. Depending on who you ask, the food import bill is between $2 and $4 billion annually. What would happen if we were to reduce this bill by 10% annually? It would be a huge boost to farmers and all players along the value chain.
But are we ready to do the hard work? If the State House can proudly give tokenism in the form of boda bodas and car wash equipment and brand it as empowerment, you have your answer.
Related Content: Boda Bodas Who Ride On Pavements To Be Jailed For 6 Months
Written by John Gachiri, Communication Expert
