How ‘City Hole’ mafia make Sh90 million from hawkers monthly

City council askaris collect the clothes of a hawker who was allegedly shot on the head and died by a policeman while busy selling his clothes near khoja mosque, Nairobi.Mr. peter maina was hawker and a part time preacher in Nairobi. Photo by: epimack chami
It is 5pm on a weekday in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. The jam-packed pavements lining most major streets in the city indicates that it is time for business. Tens of thousands of men and women haggle and push their products onto the rush-hour crowd; and millions of shillings change hands across the country. But not for long. In an instant, the legion of hawkers break into a run.
A city inspectorate van has been spotted around the corner. No one wants to be caught. Fortunately, no one gets arrested and the van moves on to unsettle another part of town. Like clockwork, the hawkers settle back into their routine.
It is easy to think that hawkers are simply opportunists, willing to make a quick shilling from any place they can find while outfoxing a determined inspectorate.
That is just part of this story, where we uncover how City Hall collects bribes amounting to Sh96 million every month from hawkers.
Hawkers are part of a Kenyan population that, at best, are not acknowledged; and at worst, are victims of repeated acts of violence by people and institutions who see them as a nuisance. Days before US President Barack Obama visited Kenya, the National Youth Service was dispatched to Nairobi’s streets to ‘clear’ them of ‘undesirable’ elements. These included street families and informal traders who ended up in the back of county vans.
Over the years, attempts to set aside designated areas for informal traders have been little more than window-dressing. Political leaders have done nothing to help, often telling them what they want to hear when faced by their frustrations.
“Our political class does not fix the problem because they like poor people. Poor people translate into more votes which are easily bought,” says Kariithi Murimi, an economist and governance expert.

Members of the public order a county askari to un-cuff a parking boy he had arrested along Wabera street in Nairobi Photo: Govedi Asutsa/Standard
In truth, it is a lot more dangerous to walk a mile in a hawker’s shoes. A majority of the hawkers that Africa Uncensored spoke to recalled how Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero duped them into believing they would get safe trading places.
Early this year, a dramatic footage of the attempted arrest of a disabled hawker emerged online. Although the circumstances around the arrest were unclear, the inspectorate officers were clearly aggressive, violent even in their cruel and cold-hearted handling of the woman. Why would any public officer treat a citizen this way? The answer is simple: money.
Over the past one year, a group of brave Kenyans secretly recorded on camera one of the city’s most widespread extortion networks. At its heart are officers from the city county’s inspectorate and the police.
The footage paints a worrying picture of the depth and organisation of the bribery and extortion syndicate in City Hall, oiled by the hard-earned money of hundreds of thousands of informal traders and what happens to those who refuse to co-operate.
The testimonies of hawkers and other informal traders provide an understanding of the bribe structure. If you are a street level hawker or a trader in a public market, the bribe you will pay on a weekly basis ranges between Sh50 and Sh500 a week. If a hawker cannot pay this bribe, then their goods get confiscated, and often, end up in the back of one of the county’s notorious vans.
Should a hawker fail to raise enough money on time, the price shoots up to between Sh4,000 and Sh6,000. From the evidence gathered, all kinds of informal traders in Nairobi are subject to this extortion racket.
Interestingly, the bribe prices don’t seem like a lot of money and there are no accurate statistics on the number of traders in Nairobi markets or on the streets, but think about it this way:
According to various studies, Nairobi’s population on any given working day swells to 4.5 million; slightly more than half of them will be in the workforce. For every four of these people, three will work in the informal sector.
Based on the assessment of our researchers, we have been able to collate conservative approximations of the numbers of informal traders in 22 locations across the city. Additionally, we have established the average amount of bribes paid per hawker, and the average amount extorted per month. The largest numbers are in Eastleigh, Gikomba and Muthurwa markets.
The amount does not include bribes procured when informal traders are arrested, when their goods are confiscated, or bribes demanded and given at police stations.
With billions to be made, officers from the county government view informal traders as little more than a feeding trough for the money-hungry officials. Over a year and a half when the secret footage was being recorded by our anonymous whistleblowers, it became clear that Nairobi was divided into zones within which only specific inspectorate officers could operate.