African Shopkeeper Zen
Proud of his shop!
How can you make an African shopkeeper happy? How can you also make him legal, and hopefully move him or her from the informal to the formal economy of his country? In Kenya you can do this quickly and easily by building a kiosk.
For years under the Moi administration, small shops operated in every unimproved stretch of street that had decent foot traffic. Over time, these shops created their own traffic, their own economies of scale that, on occasion, the government would take exception to.
Then the shops would be razed, destroying livelihoods, commerce, dreams of the very poor African shopkeeper, the very people who were working the hardest to escape poverty. This cycle kept the illegal squatters from improving their shops too much, creating the very eyesores that brought the government bulldozers.
As part of the whole new Nairobi, the city council is changing its ways. It is now building strong, permanent shops for shopkeepers, replacing tin with metal, scrap wood with concrete, dreams with reality.
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