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Gikomba on steroids Part 2

Last week I began the first of a two part series on how Gikomba market is the exemplification of Kenya’s entrepreneurial spirit. The only time the word “poverty” should be used in the same sentence as Gikomba is that there is a significant poverty of infrastructure conversely met by a wealth of gumption and fortitude within the trading community there.  After going through the furnishings section of the market, we made our way past hundreds of second hand clothing stalls to the fish market. The vehicle we were travelling in inched its way down to the fish market, with both sides of the muddy road teeming with second hand clothing stalls. Other traders, who were not fortunate to have the “formal” wood and iron sheet stalls, displayed their wares on plastic sheets by the roadside leaving only enough space for one vehicle and thousands of pedestrians to navigate their way.

 

We smelt the fish market before we saw it. Mary (not her real name) our fish trader came up to guide us to where to park. The piquant aroma of deep fried fish imbued the air as we walked to Mary’s corner. She tells us that the fish market was built in 1964 by the Nairobi City Council with only 24 stalls. Today it houses over a thousand fish traders who have occupied every single inch of space inside and outside the market. We see tilapia, nile perch and cat fish in both cooked and uncooked forms piled high on rickety wooden display frames. Fish is openly fried in deep metal karais on charcoal stoves with one trader loudly cautioning us “chunga mafuta, hapa hakuna insurance.” Once we sat down inside a stall that Mary has sub-let, she brings us up to speed on the current issues in the fish market. “I have been in the business for 17 years. It’s a good business, but in the last four years our market has been flooded by Chinese fish.” She has brought two samples of Kenyan tilapia and the Chinese variant. “You see this one?” she thrusts the darker, smaller version at our faces. “This is the Chinese tilapia. It goes for Kshs 150/- while the Kenyan one goes for Kshs 450/-. But you know what, cheap is expensive!”

 

Mary uttered a snort of derision and continued. “Tell me how my fish cannot stay more than two days without spoiling, yet the Chinese fish in the market right now comes here in boxes marked with an expiry date of 2020. What kind of  chemicals do they put in fish that makes them expire in two years?” She however recognizes that the government ban on imported fish which had been issued a few days earlier, will go a long way in restoring the Kenyan fishing industry value chain that was starting to be destroyed. Mary is rabidly nationalistic and says with the right infrastructural support, the local fish industry can cater to local demand. We attacked our lunch with much relish, washing it down with nothing but hope as it was very apparent that bathroom facilities would be an interesting experience that we were not ready to deal with.

 

From the fish market we moved to “Kachonga” an area in Shauri Moyo that is close to Gikomba. Here over six hundred wood carvers from Kenya and a few from Congo sit in iron sheet covered and wood framed stalls sculpting wood figurines for the tourist market. The same script prevails here: a poverty of infrastructure but an abundance of business zeal. We hopped, skipped and jumped around the muddy puddles, where again the traders covered their raw wood materials with plastic paper. Their cheery disposition belied their infrastructural woes but just like the Gikomba traders, the sculptors have self-organized into a trading community complete with a permanent structure of a showroom where orders can be placed. Across the markets we walked in, we saw nothing but innovation, strength of character and a doggone determination to do business under very difficult circumstances.

 

These markets are cash economies, with the whole working capital cycle represented there. Raw material suppliers, value addition conversion into manufactured goods and then the ultimate customers all in one region. It is an area ripe for trade finance innovation from the financial sector that has traditionally looked at more formally structured businesses that operate within concrete walls and tiled roofs. But all that would need to be backstopped by infrastructural support from the county government that would enable the traders to house their wares securely, operate in a sanitary environment and permit delivery of goods and services (including fire engines for the now ubiquitous Gikomba fires) via an all-weather road network. Creating such a conducive environment ultimately yields the added benefits of an attractive wider taxation bracket.

 

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

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Gikomba on Steroids

Lying due east of Nairobi’s central business district is the vibrant Gikomba market, fondly referred to by Nairobi’s urban youth as G-Mall. On Google maps it is an amorphously shaped region with a distinct southern boundary buttressed by the Nairobi River that weaves sluggishly past what is described as East Africa’s largest open air market. Google also provides interesting insights about this marketplace. Peak shopping times are from 11 am to 3 pm and people spend between 45 minutes to two hours there. An old friend and unrelenting champion for Kenyan small and medium sized entrepreneurs invited me to join her for a visit to Gikomba last week. The last time I had visited Gikomba was when I was a student at University of Nairobi, and we would go there to shop for second hand clothes.

 

Not much has changed in the last 20 years. Gikomba is a kaleidoscope of smells, textures, indoor and outdoor retail experiences and thousands of people jostling for space. Traders have self-organized themselves into the raw material section for wood, upholstery for furniture, finished furnishings, fish and vegetables, clothing, hardware, you name it, they’ve got it. Sort of like a Nakumatt on raw but incredible steroids. Our first pit stop was at the timber section. To get there we had to weave through a narrow alleyway in between buildings, dodging men carrying plywood sheets on their shoulders as they hissed to clear the pathway ahead of them.

 

There were lots of young men who seemingly idled to the side, but who I later came to discover are a key cog in the selling protocol of the timber section. These young men are brokers who “bring” customers to the timber traders and are rewarded Kshs 3/- per foot of timber that is sold to the converted customers. I asked one of the traders where they were sourcing wood from in light of the logging ban. He shrugged his shoulders and said Malawi, Congo and South Sudan. Business, just like nature, abhors a vacuum.

 

It had rained the night before, so we gingerly made our way through the muddy paths in between the timber sheds as bits of flying wood chips from lathing and planing machines filled the air and our faces. Every inch of space is covered by exposed towers of timber or upholstery sponge stocks. I’m told that the exposure to rain makes the sponges get wet and moldy and, since they are eventually covered by upholstery, buyers of furniture would never know that their couches contain potentially harmful agents. When family members are perpetually sick it is difficult to pinpoint that the problematic source actually stems from the furniture.

 

Eventually we got to a group of timber selling sheds that are on a sliver of land between commercial buildings and the Nairobi River. There is space wide enough for a single motor vehicle to slither through as the mud roads are slick with the previous night’s precipitation. Njuguna is the seasoned trader who blandly answers our questions about the area, as my colleague purchases wood. He points to the building under construction directly opposite us. “That is the result of the last fire that happened in Gikomba. The shops downstairs caught fire and the people in the flats above died from the toxic fumes that resulted as the stocks burnt. Those people were not burnt to death. They died from smoke inhalation.” It is easy to see why fire engines could never and will never get through to stave off fire emergencies. There are simply no paved roads. He points to the next building where the third and fourth floor are blackened with soot and covered with mabati sheets. The lower floors are still occupied. “That is where we buy electricity for our machines.”

 

Njuguna has a machine “ ya kupiga randa” which in plain English is for smoothening the timber planks using an electric plane. He pays Kshs 500/- daily to the building owner who has installed a genuine electricity meter in Njuguna’s shed to measure the daily usage. This scene is replicated down the entire street. Building owners who double up as electricity distributors because business, just like nature, abhors a vacuum.

 

The pulsating business environment that is Gikomba market is a cash economy that turns over hundreds of millions of shillings daily. Business thrives in spite of lack of infrastructural support such as roads, public toilets or permanent sheds to cover traders and their wares as well as. You cannot refer to SMEs in Kenya without picturing a Gikomba trader whose resilience and determination to thrive under incredibly difficult circumstances is unfathomable. Next week I will cover our tour of the fish market and “Kachonga” the home of Nairobi’s wood sculptors.

 

[email protected]

Twitter: @carolmusyoka