Why Street Vendors Keep Returning to Lusaka’s Streets

For more than three decades, Lusaka has been trying to solve what should, at first glance, appear to be a straightforward problem: move traders off roads and pavements and into designated markets. Governments have passed regulations, councils have conducted operations, police have cleared streets and millions of kwacha have been spent constructing markets. Yet, sooner or later, vendors return.

The latest attempt is being led by Lusaka Mayor Simon Chitambala Mwewa, who has begun a five-phase exercise to move roadside traders into designated markets, starting around Simon Mwewa Lane. Traders are being registered through the Market Master's office and allocated available spaces, while those operating in authorised markets will be expected to pay council levies electronically. Mwewa says the objective is to reduce congestion, improve safety and restore order to the city.

But Mwewa is confronting a problem considerably older than his administration. Lusaka has repeatedly cleared its streets of vendors only to watch them return, sometimes within months. The reason may have less to do with whether governments are capable of removing vendors than with a more difficult question: what happens to a trader's income after they have been removed?

The answer can often be found in something as ordinary as pedestrian traffic.

A trader selling tomatoes, second-hand clothes, phone accessories or vegetables does not necessarily need a sophisticated shop. What that trader needs most is people walking past. A pavement beside a busy road, bus station or shopping area can provide hundreds or thousands of potential customers every day. A stall inside a market may provide shelter, sanitation and legal security, but if fewer customers walk past it, those advantages may mean little to someone whose household depends on what they sell that day.

This problem has been documented in Lusaka for decades. Research examining previous relocation programmes found that some traders who had secured places in designated markets eventually abandoned them because of low customer traffic and costs, returning instead to the streets. A study of vendors in Lusaka's central business district similarly found resistance to relocation was frequently linked to fears about customer numbers, trading-space availability and the costs associated with operating from formal markets.

The history goes back to the early years of multiparty democracy. In 1993, Lusaka City Council, assisted by police and security forces, attempted to remove vendors from the streets. The operation resulted in clashes, and President Frederick Chiluba intervened on behalf of the traders, criticising the council for removing people without adequate alternative trading spaces. Historical research estimates that Lusaka had roughly 7,000 street vendors in 1995, including about 3,000 operating in the city centre. Another estimate two years later put the number at about 12,000 outside the townships, although the figures came from different methods and should not be treated as directly comparable.

By 1999, authorities again mounted a major operation, clearing structures from central Lusaka. For a period, the streets were noticeably clearer. But vendors gradually returned, sometimes trading through less permanent arrangements. Researchers examining that period concluded that enforcement repeatedly produced temporary results because the economic conditions pushing people into street trade had not disappeared.

Successive governments have struggled with the same contradiction. Under Michael Sata, authorities took a more permissive approach. Contemporary reporting and later academic research document his government's decision to allow some vendors to continue operating on streets while alternative trading areas were being sought. The policy reflected, among other things, the political sensitivity surrounding a large urban constituency dependent on informal trade.

Then came another major clearing exercise during the 2018 cholera outbreak. This time, public health became an urgent part of the argument. Vendors operating without toilets, running water and proper waste disposal were seen as contributing to conditions in which disease could spread. Government told Parliament that Lusaka had had up to approximately 8,000 street vendors and acknowledged that inadequate and unsuitable market spaces had contributed to the problem. It promised alternative trading areas, including the construction of Simon Mwewa Lane Market.

That market eventually became a symbol of both the solution and the difficulty.

In April 2025, more than 500 vendors operating around Simon Mwewa Lane were relocated into the newly constructed market. Government said the facility was expected eventually to accommodate hundreds more traders. Yet within months, authorities were again dealing with traders operating outside designated spaces. Lusaka City Council even reduced rentals for some upstairs shops from K1,500 to K1,000 in an effort to encourage occupancy.

Then, in June 2025, a government statement that vendors should not be harassed created confusion about whether street trading had effectively been permitted again. Government subsequently clarified that street vending remained illegal and instructed traders who had abandoned their allocated spaces to return to the markets.

That episode exposed another reason the problem persists: inconsistent enforcement can change the economics almost overnight.

Imagine two traders selling exactly the same tomatoes. One accepts a market stall, pays the required charges and waits for customers inside. The other sets up outside, closer to commuters and passing motorists, pays little or nothing for the location and potentially reaches more customers.

Unless the rules are consistently enforced, the trader who follows them can actually be placed at a commercial disadvantage.

Once several traders move outside, customers begin following them. Other traders then have an incentive to do the same. Eventually, the market may have empty spaces while the road immediately outside it is crowded with commerce.

This creates a vicious circle: vendors say they do not want to trade inside because customers are outside, while customers remain outside because that is where the vendors are. Reporting from Lusaka as far back as 2012 documented exactly this problem around New Soweto Market, where traders complained that there was simply more business outside the formal market than inside it.

There is also a much larger economic reality behind the pavements.

Street vending is only one part of Zambia's enormous informal economy, and informal employment should not be confused with street vending itself. But the scale helps explain why informal trading is so persistent. Zambia's latest Labour Force Survey figures reported by MUVI show that 71.2 percent of employed Zambians worked informally in 2024. In Lusaka Province, the figure was 55.6 percent, while 84.3 percent of employment in wholesale and retail trade was informal.

For many households, therefore, vending is not simply a lifestyle choice that can be changed through enforcement. It is employment.

This is where an urban-management problem becomes a political one. Residents understandably want pavements they can walk on, roads that are not obstructed and trading environments with toilets, waste collection and proper drainage. Formal market traders may reasonably ask why they should pay rent and levies while someone outside competes for the same customers without carrying the same costs. Motorists want roads to function as roads. Public-health authorities have legitimate concerns about food being sold in environments without adequate sanitation.

But the person being removed from that pavement may see the same situation differently. To the council, the pavement is public infrastructure. To the vendor, it may be where school fees, rent and tonight's meal are earned.

That makes aggressive enforcement politically expensive. The benefits of cleaner and less congested streets are spread across the city, while the economic pain of relocation is concentrated immediately among the people being moved. Zambia's political history shows how easily that pressure can reach national politics, from Chiluba's intervention in the 1990s to Sata's more permissive policy two decades later.

None of this means Lusaka should accept permanent street vending everywhere. Roads, drainage systems and pavements have public purposes. Food safety and sanitation matter. Emergency vehicles need access. Formal businesses and market traders deserve predictable rules. And a rapidly growing capital cannot function if every available public space gradually becomes an informal marketplace.

But history suggests that enforcement alone cannot solve a problem created partly by economics.

Mwewa's five-phase programme may therefore succeed or fail on what happens after the streets are cleared. Are the markets close enough to where customers actually move? Are the charges affordable? Are trading spaces distributed fairly? Are the markets safe and clean? Can customers easily reach them? And, perhaps most importantly, will the rules apply consistently enough that traders who move into markets are not economically punished for complying?

Those questions matter more than how many council officers participate in the next operation.

Lusaka has demonstrated many times that it can clear a street.

The harder task is creating conditions that give traders a reason not to return.

Because clearing a pavement can happen in a morning. Keeping it clear, without simply moving poverty somewhere less visible, is the problem Lusaka has spent more than 30 years trying to solve.