The Social Impact of Large-Scale Construction Projects in Africa

Emerging lessons from rebuilding Mbare Retail Market in Harare, Zimbabwe

Writes Charles Dhewa

Introduction

Across Africa, it has become common practice for large-scale infrastructure projects to be decided and implemented by government departments, engineers, and architectural designers without fully involving social scientists. Such projects include road construction, dam construction, residential housing, and urban shopping malls. By not taking social science into account, the social consequences of these projects and related policies are poorly understood leading to either these projects being underutilized or completely rejected by intended users and ordinary citizens.

The prevailing view is that money can compensate for any adverse impacts. For instance, there is minimal concern for the social impacts of displacing people’s markets as long as comparable sheds could be located elsewhere. This process does not consider the value people attach to their communities, territorial markets and neighbourhoods as well as long-standing social networks that form the basis of support both for daily living and during periods of extreme shocks and hardship.

The value of conducting Social Impact Assessments

Following a fire incident that burnt down the iconic Mbare retail market in Harare on 8 October 2024, affecting more than 5000 traders and their families, the President of Zimbabwe, His Excellence E.D Mnangagwa promptly declared the fire incident a National Disaster. This was in recognition of this market’s value to affected traders and the whole nation. Through the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works, the government, in collaboration with Harare City Council, started mobilizing resources to reconstruct the market. The government identified a renowned construction company, Masimba Holdings, to begin constructing a temporary market across the road where the 5000 affected traders would be relocated to allow for the rebuilding of their market. An announcement was made by the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works that the new retail market to be built will be a 3-storey building for 10,000 traders – double the original number of traders.

Sensing that the social impact of this noble development might have been overlooked, Knowledge Transfer Africa/eMKambo conducted a quick social impact assessment of building a new market for 5000 traders in an ecosystem dominated by other markets, residential areas, a long-distance bus station, and several other developments.

Basically, social impacts refer to the consequences to human populations of any public or private actions that alter how people live, work, play, relate to one another, organize to meet their needs, and generally cope as members of society. The term also includes cultural impacts involving changes to the norms, values, and beliefs that guide and rationalize people’s cognition of themselves and their society. Through dialogue with market leaders, affected traders, consumers, Mbare residents, transporters, food caterers, vendors, and other stakeholders, the social impact assessment sought to understand and estimate, in advance, the social consequences that are likely to follow from rebuilding Mbare retail market that has existed for more than 50 years.

The new market structure should not destroy the old market’s historical flair

The social impact assessment gathered the following sentiments, views, perspectives, aspirations, fears, and dreams of all the people who participated in the dialogue sessions and interviews:

• The new market structure should preserve the Africanness that is associated with Mbare market as a whole. It should not destroy the historical flair that has seen many tourists want to visit the market to appreciate Zimbabwe’s food system, culture, and tradition in one place.

• The market structure should match the community. Mbare is a high-density low-income community and that is visible in the nature of residential accommodation. Every African knows that no matter how much money you acquire, you do not go to your rural area and destroy/rebuild your parents’ traditional round grass thatched kitchen because it possesses some critical African identity elements that cannot be bought with money. Likewise, you don’t build a 21-bedroom mansion for your parents in rural areas because it will be out of place. Just as a five-star hotel will be out of place in a poor residential area, a three-story market will not only stigmatize adjacent market structures and residential houses but also push the value of the community beyond low-income to middle-class. A perfect example is the new Zebra Shopping Mall that was recently constructed near the burnt-down retail market. The Zebra Mall is now full of middle-class traders who sell imported clothes, electronic gardens, and other items from China, Tanzania, and other countries. Traders who used to trade local products and indigenous food in that space before the mall was built have been pushed into the street because they cannot afford rentals that range between USD400 and USD700 per market stall per month. By promoting imported products, the Zebra Shopping Mall is exacerbating Zimbabwe’s de-industrialization at the expense of local production of cotton and other raw materials.

• There should be a standard market structure that resonates with each ecosystem. The rate at which shopping malls and other imported middle-class building designs are invading low-income communities like Mbare indicates the extent to which these communities will end up without markets that serve the majority. When the original Mbare retail market is displaced by a high-investment middle-class market that calls for high rental charges so that investors recoup their construction costs. It means smallholder farmers, vendors and low-income consumers will be driven into destitution because they will not participate in that market.

• If the new market is built without a thorough understanding of the existing social fabric, it will destroy the resilience embedded in indigenous retail markets. When modernization excludes or undermines the poor, it ceases to be developmental. The policy appetite to formalize the informal sector is noted but it should not kill the Africanness of Mbare which is what attracts tourists and urban dwellers keen to connect with their routes. Modern fast-food outlets that thought they would make a killing by locating at Mbare are struggling to survive against people-centred food catering systems like Njere inopasadza where you can see long queues of people buying food which they consider relevant while there is no queue at the fast-food outlet. Formal banks have failed to break through the Mbare informal market indigenous financial system which embeds finance, insurance, and social welfare into a single package that ensures no one is left behind or allowed to become destitute.

• By announcing that the new 3-storey building would accommodate 10,000 traders, the government did not realize that doubling the number of traders will lead to over-trading. That means the market will become unprofitable as a business ecosystem because more people will trade the same commodities or products, knocking down prices. Business will become so unviable that most traders won’t even be able to pay for trading space. A related issue is that the market will become difficult to navigate for both traders and customers. If navigating the market was already difficult with 5000 traders, imagine what would happen if 10,000 traders were crammed in the same space? Making it a 3-story building will not solve the congestion challenge because everybody wants to trade on the ground floor where they canvass for the first customers. In most cases, traders bring their assistants which means an additional estimated 3000 people will be in the retail market, not mentioning approximately another 5000 made up of customers and push-cart traders. It follows the new market will become completely jammed such that the air in there will become unbreathable.

Mitigation measures

In the context of social impact assessment, mitigation includes avoiding the impact by not taking or modifying an action; minimizing, rectifying, or reducing the impacts through the design or operation of the project or policy; or compensating for the impact by providing substitute facilities, resources, or opportunities. Ideally, mitigation measures are built into the selected alternative, but it is appropriate to identify mitigation measures even if they are not immediately adopted or if they would be the responsibility of another person or government unit.

While acknowledging the government’s commitment to improving their livelihoods through better infrastructure, the affected traders who participated in the social impact assessment indicated that it is not too late to do things the right way especially if the traders and other stakeholders are given a platform to add value to some of the decisions done in their favour without being consulted. Had the traders and stakeholders been consulted, the government would not have assumed that a market could have 10,000 traders and function properly and viably. Some of the proposed mitigation measures include:

• A sophisticated, over-designed and over-engineered 3-storey market is certainly not ideal for Mbare. What is needed is a very simple large shed covering the whole retail market to shield traders from the rain and sun. Given the economic challenges in the country and the whole world, value for money can be earned from simple structures than complex buildings that gobble millions of dollars while taking years to complete building when traders want to do decent business now. Rather than throwing millions of dollars at a 3-storey market, building a simple shed can enable some of the money to be re-purposed towards refurbishing other markets like the wholesale market, two farmers markets, fixing drainage around the whole of Mbare market and putting decent sheds at the long-distance bus station so that passengers are not soaked in rain or exposed to the sun while waiting to board buses.
• Mbare traders are not really fussy about world class infrastructure. Giving them a world-class market is like giving a Ferrari to a child who only wants a motor cycle to do business.
• Since it is clear that the temporary market structure is too small to accommodate all the affected traders, when completed the temporary market can take half of the affected traders while the other half remains in the former retail market. Find space to set up another temporary market will take more time and other resources.
• Construction of a big market shed covering the entire burnt retail market should not take more than a month and, with some creative engineering designs, the shed can actually be built while half the group of traders are in there. Some can even participate in the rebuilding process. The wholesale market was built while traders were in the market. There is no need to move heavy duty construction equipment to the site but simple equipment informed by human-centred design. In industrial sites of Zimbabwe are found big sheds covering a space bigger than the retail market. Why can’t best practices be borrowed from there and quickly applied in the spirit of providing quick, relevant solutions?
• Attention should not just be on hardware at the expense of software social issues like governance which make the business tick. Markets are about people, culture, relationships and trust not rules imposed from the top. How do we collectively maintain existing market relationships and networks as we put in place new infrastructure? It is counter-productive to replace the existing ecosystem with new buildings and new governance systems or ways of transacting or doing business. There are legitimate reasons why certain value chains are positioned at a certain corner in the retail market. Understanding the social dynamics within Mbare market is very important if any intervention is to be fully accepted by users.

Conclusion

The fact that in most African countries, social impact assessments are often not conducted explains why social consequences of major projects are rampant. Rather than arguing with local authorities and policy makers, traders simply resort to their own alternatives, leaving large buildings abandoned as white elephants. While government planners and decision makers tend to prioritize economic considerations, equally critical are social considerations including direct effects, indirect effects as well as aesthetic, historic, cultural and health factors, among many others including intended and unintended consequences of noble courses of action or interventions.