Child Swaddling or Back Wrapping During Street Trading

The study is premised on social responsibility and social epidemiological theories and examined the exposure of back-wrapped babies to health risk during street trading. Data were collected using structured face-to-face interviews and snowballing techniques among 228 Street trading women (with children aged ≤ 11 months), in one local government area of Ogun State, Nigeria. Data analyses involved univariate and multivariate methods. The results show that 58.3% of women interviewed wrapped their babies at their back while trading on the streets, ≥80% were not aware of any campaign against baby back-wrapping, 35% viewed baby back-wrapping as medicinal for the baby, and as traditional practice (59.2%). The multivariate analysis revealed that children wrapped while trading on the street are at higher risk of exposure to illness than those not back wrapped (OR=1.778, p=0.042). The authors suggested media campaign against back-wrapping baby while trading on the street to reduce exposure to diseases, mortalities and possibly achievement of sustainable development goal (SDG-3).

Street Trading and Condition of Sidewalk Space in the Core Area of Ado Ekiti, Nigeria

The paper assessed street trading and condition of sidewalk space in the core area of Ado Ekiti. A total of 200 copies of questionnaire were administered altogether. The copies of questionnaire were administered to the people in the core area of the city as well as street traders. Data analysis was done with descriptive analysis method with the use of frequency table and percentage table. Findings revealed that sidewalk space in the core area of Ado Ekiti is not adequate. The study further revealed that majority of the sidewalk spaces in the core are of Ado Ekiti can be considered narrow; which is a result of the low level of concentration of the engineering designs of the road during the construction phase. Most especially in areas such as Matthew Street, old garage among others, the width of the space allocated for sidewalks are often very narrow among others. It is recommended that there should be development of the rural areas as there is high rate of inequality of in the distribution of resources and facilities that facilities development. If the rural areas are developed, there will be lesser population concentration in the core areas. It is also recommended that government at all levels should ensure the creation of neighborhood market in several towns and villages as well as different neighborhood in the urban centres as this will foster the decongestion of core areas of urban centres among others.

ANALYZING SPATIAL-PHYSICAL LAYOUT OF URBAN BAZARS: A WAY TO BRING BACK THE PUBLIC SPACES INSIDE MARKETPLACES WITH A CONSIDERATION FOR SAFETY ISSUES

The acceleration of diversified retail in urban streets and bazars, reachable from homes and work have become a common phenomenon in achieving an environmental, social, economic and sustainable neighborhood. Fostering social cohesion, such settlements encompass, groceries, confectionaries, soft drinks, magazines and newspapers, tobacco products, restaurants and cafes which help to build community. Local employment is also generated by such local trade points. Despite the popularity of street trading, the system of growth of such establishments remains chaotic and they lack public spaces within the market. This study analyses the dynamics of urban streets and bazar and social life at the local public space inside the market keeping in mind the current safety situation of the pandemic in three cases of Dhaka city and proposes possible opportunities to overcome the anarchy

“The street is ours”. A comparative analysis of street trading, Covid-19 and new street geographies in Harare, Zimbabwe and Kisumu, Kenya

This collaborative and comparative paper deals with the impact of Covid-19 on the use and governance of public space and street trade in particular in two major African cities. The importance of street trading for urban food security and urban-based livelihoods is beyond dispute. Trading on the streets does, however, not occur in neutral or abstract spaces, but rather in lived-in and contested spaces, governed by what is referred to as ‘street geographies’, evoking outbreaks of violence and repression. Vendors are subjected to the politics of municipalities and the state to modernize the socio-spatial ordering of the city and the urban food economy through restructuring, regulating, and restricting street vending. Street vendors are harassed, streets are swept clean, and hygiene standards imposed. We argue here that the everyday struggle for the street has intensified since and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mobility and the use of urban space either being restricted by the city-state or being defended and opened up by street traders, is common to the situation in Harare and Kisumu. Covid-19, we pose, redefines, and creates ‘new’ street geographies. These geographies pivot on agency and creativity employed by street trade actors while navigating the lockdown measures imposed by state actors. Traders navigate the space or room for manoeuvre they create for themselves, but this space unfolds only temporarily, opens for a few only and closes for most of the street traders who become more uncertain and vulnerable than ever before, irrespective of whether they are licensed, paying rents for vending stalls to the city, or ‘illegally’ vending on the street.

Ladies Selling Breakfast

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s largest city, supports a vibrant street food culture. Most of the city’s street-engaged food traders are poor and unskilled women, and there is scant research about how they build social networks and social capital that sustain their microbusinesses. This article focusses on the intimate socialities that street-engaged food traders develop with customers, shop owners and sister-traders in order to stabilise their incomes while their informal street-trading activities are policed and potentially shut down. Recent COVID-19 lockdown and social-distancing measures disrupted the crucial interpersonal relations of street trading and left the traders with no income. This article explores traders’ strategies for achieving economic security, and outlines transformations of intimate socialities into mediated and digital relations after the lockdown.

Towards the Development of the Informal Economy: The Case of Street Trading in Ile-Ife, Nigeria

Previously, scholars in Nigeria have argued for and against the continuing existence of street trading activity in cities but no known study had examined how street trading could be developed. This chapter seeks to provide empirical evidence for its characteristics, values and challenges in order to provide insights into how street traders could be supported to make their trading activity more productive and sustainable. Findings showed that the street traders need entrepreneurship education, financial support and favourable regulatory measures to facilitate the development of their trades. The chapter concludes that street trading could be highly productive and sustainable if adequately supported.