19/02/2026
The Minister in Charge of Kampala City and the Executive Director of Kampala Capital City Authority - KCCA declared today 19/Feb/2026, 8pm as the last day for all street vendors to stop doing business on the streets of Kampala. It should be noted, it is not very clear where these thousands of street vendors will be relocated.
As Gateway Research Centre,Kampala we urge the KCCA leadership to act with humanity and organise dialogue with street vendors before these evictions.
In a period when the rate of unemployment in the country is high, forcing vendors off the streets may not only worsen the standard of living for the victims, but also culminate into increased crime rates especially robbery and theft in search for a living.
In 2021, Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) re-enforced its decision to decongest the city. One of the key strategies was to do away with street vendors and hawkers within Kampala. Law enforcement officers for KCCA resorted to arrests, impounding of vendors’ merchandise, and other sorts of enforcement procedures majority of which were ‘hard measures’. The then KCCA Executive Director Ms. Dorothy Kisaka had instructed all street vendors to start operating from zoned locations mainly including major markets gazetted by the city authorities such as St. Balikuddembe (Owino), Nakasero market, Wandegeya Market, Nateete, Busega. From a survey conducted by Gateway Research Centre (2022), 85% of the traders lamented about the reduction in daily income arising from working in the zoned markets compared to street vending. The average daily income from streets was fifty thousand shillings (UGX 50,000) which is approximately USD 13.5 per day compared to only seven thousand shillings (UGX 7,000) which is less than USD 2 per day earned by working in a zoned market. This implies the average daily income earned per vendor in a zoned market is below that of street vendors by 86%.
The policy brief in the link below provides potential practical recommendations to address the challenges of street vendors in Uganda. https://www.gatewayresearchcentre.org/policy-briefs/street-vendors-in-kampala-city-uganda-a-question-of-urban-economic-policy-reforms
