ALEX ATWEMEREIREHO: The Urban Paradox: Modernizing Kampala Without Leaving the Poor Behind!

2026-02-28 - 11:28

A city reveals its soul not in its skylines, but in how it treats those who sweep its streets at dawn, hawk tomatoes under the midday sun, and sleep uncertain of tomorrow. Kampala is being cleaned. The pavements are clearer. Traffic flows more predictably. Many applaud. Yet beneath the restored order lies a harder question that refuses to be swept away: at what moral, legal, and social cost has this order been achieved? Recent enforcement operations by the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) against street vendors and informal traders have reopened an old Ugandan tension between legality and livelihood, between regulation and survival. Yes, a capital city must be orderly. Yes, traders who rent stalls in gazetted markets and faithfully pay dues deserve fairness against unfair competition. But a Republic that prides itself on constitutionalism cannot enforce order in a manner that appears to crush the humanity of the working poor. When enforcement becomes synonymous with humiliation, confiscation without redress, and sudden displacement without preparation, the State risks winning the pavement while losing the people. The 1995 Constitution is unambiguous about the value it places on human dignity and socio-economic justice. Article 1 vests sovereignty in the people. Article 20 affirms that fundamental rights are inherent and not granted by the State. Article 21 guarantees equality before the law. Article 29 protects freedom of movement and association. Critically, Objective XIV of the National Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy commits the State to ensuring that “all Ugandans enjoy rights and opportunities and access to education, health services, clean and safe water, work, decent shelter, adequate clothing, food security and pension and retirement benefits.” Work is not a privilege to be dispensed at will; it is a constitutional aspiration anchored in human dignity. The informal economy is not a marginal footnote in Uganda’s story. According to data from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), over 80% of Uganda’s workforce operates in the informal sector. In urban areas, informal trade-street vending, small-scale hawking, boda-boda services forms the economic bloodstream of thousands of households. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has repeatedly emphasized, including in its Recommendation No. 204 (2015) concerning the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy, that governments must pursue formalization through “integrated policy frameworks” that respect livelihoods rather than criminalize poverty. To clear the streets without a credible transition plan is to treat a symptom while ignoring the disease. Congestion in Kampala’s central business district is not merely the result of undisciplined vendors. It is the visible expression of deeper structural distortions: rural underdevelopment, youth unemployment, low industrial absorption capacity, and wage stagnation. Uganda’s population is one of the youngest in the world, with over 70% below the age of 30. Each year, hundreds of thousands enter the labour market. The formal sector cannot absorb them all. They improvise. They innovate. They survive. Philosopher John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (1971), argued that social and economic inequalities are only justifiable if they are arranged to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. When enforcement disproportionately burdens those already at the margins – women selling vegetables, young men hawking belts, single mothers vending fruit, we must ask whether our public policies pass Rawls’ moral test. At the same time, fairness demands that we acknowledge another injustice: traders who rent stalls in organized markets, pay trading licenses, remit taxes, and comply with regulations often find themselves undercut by vendors who operate without overhead costs. This breeds resentment and erodes respect for law. Article 152 of the Constitution empowers the State to levy taxes for public purposes. A functioning city requires revenue. Order must not be optional. The solution, therefore, is not anarchy disguised as compassion. Nor is it force disguised as efficiency. It is intelligent reform. The Kampala Capital City Authority Act, 2010, vests KCCA with powers to regulate trade, maintain public order, and manage markets. These powers are lawful. But legality is not the same as legitimacy. Legitimacy flows from preparation, consultation, proportionality, and alternatives. The principle of proportionality deeply embedded in constitutional jurisprudence requires that state action impair rights no more than necessary to achieve a legitimate objective. Were the affected vendors adequately notified? Were alternative vending zones fully operational, affordable, and accessible? Were microcredit facilities, retraining programmes, or transitional stipends established before enforcement? Without these safeguards, clearance operations risk appearing less like urban management and more like social cleansing. History warns us of the consequences of societies that habitually ignore the working poor. Aristotle observed in Politics that extreme inequality breeds instability. In modern times, economist Thomas Piketty in Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) demonstrated how widening disparities corrode democratic legitimacy. When large segments of a population perceive that the system is indifferent to their survival, social trust fractures. Petty crime rises. Informal resistance festers. Political extremism finds fertile ground. Even from a Christian moral standpoint so frequently invoked in Uganda’s public life; the treatment of the vulnerable is not peripheral. In the Gospel according to Matthew 25:40, Christ identifies Himself with “the least of these.” A society that publicly professes faith while privately normalizing indifference to the poor risks moral contradiction. Compassion need not undermine discipline. But discipline without compassion hardens the civic heart. If Kampala is to be clean and just, reform must be comprehensive. First, formalization must be incentivized, not imposed overnight. The city can designate structured, affordable micro-markets near high-traffic zones, with subsidized rent for the first six to twelve months. Digital payment systems can simplify daily dues, reducing leakage and corruption. Transparent allocation of stalls through verifiable registries would prevent elite capture. Second, a temporary urban livelihood transition fund should be considered. Even a modest monthly stipend for six months, tied to registration and skills training, would cushion the shock. Funding could come from a blend of city revenue, central government support, and development partners focused on urban resilience. Third, labour standards must be part of the conversation. Congestion is linked to economic desperation. If employers in formal enterprises paid more reliable and liveable wages, as envisaged under Article 40 of the Constitution (which guarantees economic rights of workers) and the Employment Act, 2006, fewer citizens would be forced into precarious informal survivalism. Human working hours, enforceable contracts, and social security expansion through the National Social Security Fund would reduce the compulsion to hustle in the streets after dark. Fourth, rural transformation cannot remain rhetorical. If agriculture were more profitable through value addition, agro-processing zones, and reliable rural infrastructure; the migratory pressure on Kampala would gradually ease. Urban congestion is, in part, the bill we pay for rural neglect. Balanced governance requires candour. Street vending in its unregulated form can obstruct emergency services, increase sanitation risks, and undermine licensed traders. The State cannot abdicate responsibility. But neither can it abdicate empathy. The German philosopher Hannah Arendt warned that when bureaucratic systems treat human beings as abstract problems rather than concrete persons, cruelty can become routine. Uganda must guard against such normalization. Enforcement officers are agents of the law, not its owners. Confiscation without due process, physical roughness, or destruction of merchandise without documented inventory and appeal mechanisms offends Article 44, which protects freedom from cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The deeper sickness is not the presence of vendors on the street. It is the absence of inclusive economic planning. President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has consistently emphasized wealth creation and patriotism. Wealth creation, however, must begin with wealth protection for the most vulnerable. Patriotism must include the woman selling mangoes at sunrise. A clean city is admirable. A just city is sustainable. The cost of sweeping the poor out of sight is rarely immediate. It accumulates silently in resentment, in hunger, in children withdrawn from school, in youth who lose faith in lawful enterprise. Sooner or later, the invoice arrives. Uganda stands at a moral crossroads. We can pursue order that is efficient but brittle, or order that is just and enduring. The former commands compliance. The latter commands loyalty. A Republic confident in its laws need not fear its poor. It should empower them, regulate them fairly, and transition them thoughtfully. Kampala can be both clean and compassionate. It can protect market traders who pay dues while integrating street vendors into structured, lawful commerce. It can enforce standards without erasing dignity. If we fail to reconcile legality with humanity, we will discover too late that the true disorder was never on the pavement. It was in our priorities. The writer is a lawyer, researcher, governance analyst and an LLM Student in Natural Resources Law at Kampala International University. alexatweme@gmail.com