Critical Cue For Tamale Metro On Development

I have read on social media the decongestion exercise in Tamale Metro and its accompanying praises and frustrations. As an Organizational Development Professional, I will like to draw the attention of city authorities to certain key issues that could have guided their action.

Available literature shows that, despite the advances in modern retailing, millions of people throughout the world still make their living partly or wholly through selling goods on the streets. This is particularly the case in urban cities.

A vibrant array of traders selling everything from fruit and vegetables, to clothes, traditional medicine, food and even furniture is what characterizes African cities. Ongoing privatization and increasing youth unemployment in the country continue to impact on the size, nature and dynamics within the informal economy in general and street trading in particular.

In fact, the location of the various transport stations is problematic to vehicular movements in the Metropolis. This problem cannot be solved by simply decongesting street traders. It will be advisable that, the initial agreement between GPRTU and Tamale Metropolitan Assembly be re-looked at.

I understand the agreement was to move the Central transport yard to Datooyili to make way for the Taxi rank to settle so as to make way for traders and buyers at the current Taxi rank to be used as car park. The Assembly should facilitate this arrangement by ensuring that any other transport operator, be it O. A, VVIP, VIP, Royal VIP among others are part of the relocation plan to ensure fairness and equity. To succeed in this relocation plan, the assembly should make by-laws that will require land owners using domestic plots in running commercial transport activities in the Metropolis to properly go for authorization.

Once this is done, the number of vendors can fluctuate from one season to the next, one day to the next, and even during a single day. This is because some vendors only sell in the morning, afternoon or evening; and others sell only during certain seasons.

Some may move from one location to another during the day, appearing to settle at each; while others may change what they sell from one season, month or day to another. Also, a regulated and levied station for the tricycle (yellow-yellow) operators should be looked at since they have become nuisance to the Metropolis.

What then should be done to reduce street traders or pedestrian traffic in the Metropolis?

Facilities should be created for street traders to indicate the extent to which they are incorporated into urban plans. Street traders need shelter from the elements, places to store their goods, and ablution facilities. In many of the countries for which there is information, there seems to be an approach in which markets are built to house traders.

Although street traders are often desperate for facilities, too often local authorities pay scant attention to the importance of revenue generated from levies issued to traders. Transberg Hansen outlines how the local authority in Lusaka built a city market that opened in 1997 and, for the reasons outlined above, many years later remains empty.

There is much more of a tradition of markets in West Africa. In their study of markets in Dakar, Senegal and Accra Ghana, Lyons and Snoxell (2005b) point to more successful municipal efforts to provide and manage market space. A careful analysis of the impact of the satellite markets at Lamashegu, Kukuo, Guu Naayili and Kakpagyili as they were developed by successive mayors of Tamale could be the basis in assessing the need for a new market in the Metropolis. (Charmes 2000) stated that, “The informal sector as a whole is estimated to account for 60 per cent of all urban jobs and over 90 per cent of all new urban jobs. After home-working, street trading is estimated to account for the largest share of these jobs.

Going forward, the Assembly should device proper means of licensing of street traders to be used as an inclusionary or exclusionary tool. Licensing street trading gives traders the right to operate. If traders are to have a securer livelihood and invest both in their economic activities and their trading areas, security of tenure is critical.

Licensing and site allocation are key components in better management of public spaces. The critical issue, however could be, how many licenses as a proportion of the total number of traders are issued. Lyons and Snoxell suggest that in Nairobi, Kenya there were 7000 licenses and formal sites even though it was estimated that there were 500 000 street traders operating in the city (2005a:1078). Given that in many African countries demand is constrained, there is a direct trade off between the numbers of licenses and sites allocated and individual earnings of traders. There are very few examples of cities doing careful calculations of the carrying capacity of streets.

In assessing Keith Hart’s (1973) original anthropological work in Accra, Ghana, during which the term “informal sector” was first coined, made much reference to small-scale distribution (1973:71-3). He justifies a disproportionate focus on this due to “its significance in urban economic life” (1973:72).

His work drew international attention to the phenomenon, challenging the notion of the urban “unemployed and underemployed” in cities like Accra constituting “a passive exploited majority” with informal activities having little autonomous capacity to generate growth in the incomes of the urban poor (1973:61).

His detailed description and analysis of the multiple economic activities of the urban poor and the important part they played in supplying many of the essential services in Accra constituted a serious challenge to the way development economists had previously approached employment issues in the developing world.

I entirely agree with a question he pose “do we want to shift the emphasis of income opportunities in the direction of formal employment for its own sake or only to reduce participation in socially disapproved of informal activities and those in informal occupations whose marginal productivity is too low?” (1973:82).

Trends in street trading over time are integrally linked to urbanization, migration and economic development processes. Therefore, the decision to hurriedly decongest the city without recourse to the above economic implications on the livelihoods of street traders and revenue generation by the Assembly deviates from the call on the informal sector to employ.

Alhassan Mohammed Hafiz
Organizational Development Professional
0501 5525 51