Sem Billy David
After a strategic assessment of the trading environment in Windhoek, I have observed a troubling reality: many of the open markets we know today were not initially created by the City of Windhoek, but were instead identified and developed by vendors themselves before the city later stepped in. This raises an important question about planning, fairness, and responsibility.
If street trading is a recognized part of the urban economy, why are there still so few properly built, properly serviced, and legally compliant markets for the people who depend on this trade to survive? The number of available trading spaces remains far below the capacity of traders who need them. This leaves many vendors with no choice but to trade in unsafe, undocumented, or contested spaces, while the city continues to point people to places that are neither equipped nor designed to support dignified trading.
There is no justification for the naive boasting about 20 open market places. The traders’ capacity is greatly low by comparing the availability. What conditions are these existing open markets, and where are those markets?
The real question is not whether vendors should trade legally. They should. The question is whether the city has done enough to make legality practical. What use is it to direct vendors to a place that has no proper stalls, no shelter, no sanitation, no storage, no water, and no meaningful infrastructure? A market is not simply an empty space. It must be built to serve the purpose of trading. Without that, the city is not regulating trade — it is only relocating poverty from one corner to another.
This becomes even more difficult to ignore when we compare Windhoek with other cities that have chosen a smarter path. In places such as Cape Town, Kigali, Accra, and Durban, city planners increasingly recognize that informal traders are not a nuisance to be chased away, but part of the urban economy that must be organized, supported, and integrated into city development. In many of these cities, vendors are being provided with designated trading zones, improved stalls, sanitation facilities, and structured engagement with local authorities. The goal is not to erase street trading, but to make it safe, fair, and productive.
Take Kigali, for example, where urban management has increasingly focused on order, but also on creating formalized trading points that allow small traders to operate within a cleaner and more predictable system. Or Cape Town, where informal trading policies have had to balance city order with the livelihoods of thousands of traders who contribute to local economic activity. In Accra, too, market planning has had to confront the reality that vendors are not a temporary inconvenience; they are a vital part of how cities move goods, create income, and sustain households.
Even in Shanghai, which was once known for taking a harsh approach to street vendors, the city later learned that simply removing traders does not solve urban inequality. It discovered that vending can support employment, entrepreneurship, and local spending when managed with consultation and proper infrastructure. That lesson matters for Windhoek. A city that wants modernity must not confuse cleanliness with cruelty, or order with exclusion.
Here at home, the history of many markets tells the same story. Wernhil Open Market, like several other trading spaces, was first shaped by the initiative of vendors long before the city embraced it. This should teach us something important: vendors often see opportunity before institutions do. Instead of fighting them, the city should learn from them and plan ahead. It should identify market spaces before conflict starts, not after vendors have already been forced into them.
That is why the continued displacement of vendors around places like China Town, shopping malls, schools, and sports fields cannot be defended as good planning. If the city wants vendors to trade lawfully, then it must make lawful trading possible. It must work with property developers, town planners, and communities to create enough open markets near areas where people already gather and where trade naturally happens. Around malls, schools, transport routes, and sports grounds, the city should be building structured trading spaces — not simply chasing people away and hoping the problem disappears.
A fair city does not only make rules; it also makes room. A responsible city does not only enforce bylaws; it also provides alternatives. And a serious city does not leave its people to improvise survival while demanding compliance from them.
The city of Windhoek must therefore rethink its approach. It must stop treating vendors as a problem to be removed and start treating them as citizens to be planned for. It must build enough markets, equip them properly, and ensure they meet the practical needs of traders. If the city can plan for roads, offices, and formal business centers, then it can also plan for the small traders who feed families, create livelihoods, and keep the local economy alive.
In the end, this is not merely a question of infrastructure. It is a question of fairness, dignity, and economic justice. The city cannot speak the language of inclusion while practicing exclusion. It cannot celebrate entrepreneurship while making informal trade impossible. And it cannot claim to support local development while pushing away the very people who give life to the urban economy.
Windhoek needs a new mindset — one that sees vendors not as trespassers, but as partners in development. It is time to build markets first, plan with vendors, and govern with fairness.
Sem Billy David is a youth leader and entrepreneur
