Out go the markets, in come arcades, our new shopping
Shopping malls are spreading fast and furious all over Kampala changing the shopping experience
Kampala’s newest authority, KCCA, in a bid to turn Kampala into a modern city, moved to decongest the streets of the capital city by sweeping vendors off. The markets in the city are involved in wrangle after wrangle, with fires and evictions threatening their stay. You thus cannot fail to notice the part that completes the puzzle - the increased mushrooming of storied structure after storied structure, making up an army of plazas and arcades threatening to dominate Kampala’s miniscule skyline.
The paradigm shift seems to be in its advanced stages. With markets already filled up, and having only space for expansion out of the city as they seem unfit for the city centre, and with the costs of putting up one’s own shop in the centre making it a near impossibility, the easiest option for many a trader has been to follow the trail left by many other traders and head into the endless arcades in the city centre.
The arcades have spread beyond just the usual main streets in Kampala, all the way into the slummy parts of the town, which hitherto were a home to pick pockets, street hawkers and vendors. Arcades have come to form a core part of commerce in Uganda, the de-facto address for business.
Elias Musisi, a shoe trader in Mukwano Arcade, says arcades are a representation of modern commerce in the capital city. “Long ago, we used to have only dirty shops in the lower parts of the city, like here. The arcades were only up there. But now because people are getting modern, we have to go into arcades so the city looks organised.” Gone are the days when arcade simply meant Pioneer Mall, or any of the fancy-clothing-displaying arcades around Kampala Road. The dirtier parts of the city, down along Nakivubo Road where whole-sale business people trade, are also filled with arcades now.
Inside the arcades, you will find a world that’s been customised to the life inside there, with specific arcades setting a niche for themselves as they deal in particular products, and, a strong business minded sense of survival inside their corridors.
Commodity zoning
The arcades have come to take a sort of character trait, some form of identity. And hence, you are likely to find specific arcades filled with shop upon shop selling either the same or related products. It falls into some form of zoning that already existed in Kampala’s trading districts. The arcades along Nkrumah and Nasser roads are filled with stationery and secretarial bureaus. The arcades just above Kisekka market, although most are only partly occupied, are rented by traders largely selling sound and motor equipment like radios, loud speakers, motor-car parts and other such accessories. You will not find a boutique here. Instead, you will find boutiques in the upper sections of the city, in arcades right around Luwum street, down past Kikuubo where a conurbation of clothes and show selling arcades make a massive presence. The arcades just along Nakivubo Road and just above the New Taxi Park are filled with construction materials and accessories. However, there is still a possibility of finding the lone saloon sandwiched by shops selling sub-woofers.
This in itself makes you wonder why on earth the traders choose a place where the very traders with whom they are competing for the same clients are trading from, and then choose to head straight there. But the traders’ explanations seem to say that the presence of competition is a blessing in disguise.
When you have a place like this, says Stephen, a fabrics trader at Magoba Shopping Centre just below the Old Taxi Park, where there are many other people who are selling similar products as yours, people will easily come and buy from you because most people know fabrics to be sold here. If, however, you make a shop in Kikuubo, you will be alone. No one will know you sell those things there, he adds.
Survival inside the arcades
It is very expensive to rent a shop inside an arcade. The prices discovered on a mini-study, range from Shs500,000 all the way up to Shs1.5m and more in some cases, depending on the position of the rented shop. That could partly explain why many rooms in arcades are empty.
But traders devised ways of managing to beat the high rental costs – they share out the rent. “Some traders are rich, so they can manage to rent up a whole shop by themselves,” says Deo Gero Tebesigwa, a motor parts trader along Nakivubo road at Kisekka market. “But in most cases, one, even if they manage to pay the full rent for the shop, will get two or three sides of the shop and fill them with his merchandise. After that, he will rent out the rest to another trader who will instead pay their rent to the trader who is renting the shop,” he adds. “Sometimes, a group of traders will move into the shop at a go and share the rent money equally,” Tebesigwa adds.
This is the reason why you will find in one shop, a combination of cell-phone, TV screen, shoes and bags businesses, each with a different attendant.
Life inside Kampala’s arcades is the very sight of survival. Every single breathing space is not seen as mere breathing space by a shrewd business minded individual, the way a lay man would. Such spaces are seen as potential business premises, and so they become. Spots like the triangular arch under a stair case will thus be found housing a charcoal stove with a steaming saucepan on top, with a sweating woman whose head is wrapped in a piece of cloth, standing by the side, mingling stick in hand, preparing lunch for her clients, like it is on the ground floor of Mutasa Kafeero plaza . If it is not a kitchen, it could as well be a phone repairing or CD-Writing stall.
A lady at one such business packs fruits for traders. She says she pays Shs150,000 as rent for her triangular arch.
Is it economically viable?
But does one get a return on such an investment, considering that she sells each small polythene bag wrapped dish of fruits at Shs1,000?
It is a question that hits anyone upon walking into an arcade. In a random visit to any arcade, you will not see all of them selling at that moment. You are more likely to find music playing from a speaker-selling-shop, and past soccer games being aired on TV screens in a TV-screen-selling shop, with the shop attendants simply seated about, conversing, or catching up with the latest pieces of celebrity gossip in the tabloid press. So, how viable is business in the arcades there? The fruits seller replies, “Yeah, we make money. We would not stay here if we don’t make money. There are bad days when you yourself see that business is bad. But for my case, I am likely to have a sell if it is sunny or a hot day,” she adds.
The shops at Nabukeera plaza, below Kikuubo lane, would seem to be some of the busiest, with people moving up and down en masse, in and out of the plaza. Leila Nakimuli, who sells shoes and women’s clothes, says the key to success is building a strong community of clientele. “When people start choosing trusting you and only come to you, you cannot make a loss,” she says. “Most of us sell in wholesale, so our prices are a bit lower. So both traders and usual customers come to us,” she says. She adds that their trade, just like all else, is determined by seasons. Ends of the month, and festive seasons like Christmas offer a chance to make profit, and also clear stock.
The future
Ms Nakimuli’s comments also cast a light on the type of traders who end up in the arcades. It is not simple traders with 10 pairs of jeans to sell. No. Most are in fact, importers, who deal in bulk and manage to break even by offering the lowest prices possible.
Apart from the businesses, which are squeezed into small partitions in the arcades, some are simply along the corridors, laying their merchandise on the floor, just like vendors were doing along the streets before KCCA got tough. It almost seems like some vendors ran off the streets and onto the corridors in the arcades.
That in its self is an image that symbolises the modernisation stride in the city, a sort of evolution stride that seeks to take the city from the depths of a third world city, into something more modern, and in the process, shedding off small traders as an unmerited species and moving with large-scale traders.
It is a curse we cannot do without, says Deo Gero Tebesigwa, himself a small scale trader. “The city has to develop. Very soon, even places like Kisekka market will have to go away and you will see arcades taking over this place. Not all of us will like it, but it has to happen,” he adds.
