‘These KMA People are also our Customers’: Coconut Sellers Making Space in Downtown Kumasi

Abstract

AbstractStreet vendors are some of the most put-upon actors in urban Africa and elsewhere, vulnerable to harassment by government, commercial businesses, and residents. We look at a group of vendors occupying a sidewalk next to the offices of the Kumasi Metropolitan Authority (KMA) in Ghana’s second city. We demonstrate how the sidewalk functions as a family-like space for the coconut sellers. They not only work there, but also use the sidewalk as a space to sleep and bathe. The coconut sellers are migrants from the central region of Ghana and spoke of their relationship to one another, as they lived and worked on the sidewalk, as that of a ‘family’. We build on recent scholarship that focuses on sidewalks as places where economic activities are shaped by social relationships. We also show how the location of the sidewalk – near local government offices, next to an urban park – made the coconut sellers less vulnerable to harassment and being moved along.