Quietly Chasing Kigali: Young Men and the Intolerance of Informality in Rwanda’s Capital City

Abstract

As Rwanda pursues its goals of becoming a middle-income country by 2020, it enacts increasingly intolerant policies towards informal traders—seeking to promote a clean, efficient, contemporary image of itself to the world. In its preoccupation with constructing itself as a modern urban centre, Kigali has become a city that does not cater to the majority of its people. This paper investigates the livelihood practices of young men in Kigali and argues that the city’s prescriptive, exclusivist policies are detrimental to the people that are most unable to meet its rigid norms. Arguing for a more dynamic understanding of Kigali as a post-conflict city, I contend that, since Rwanda’s “open moment” after its genocide in 1994, the city’s ambitious development goals have been rendered in a way that is both harmful and unrealistic given the country’s current constraints. The work of young men within the informal economy in Kigali is dis-incentivised and criminalised rather than supported and encouraged. They are chased away from the city’s main streets, often towards prisons and “rehabilitation” centres. Young people are not able to adequately contest this formation and vision of Kigali, nor can they publicly protest their treatment by the government. These outcomes are exacerbated by their reluctance to face the harsh consequences for doing so, resulting in the proliferation of self-censorship. This paper argues that Rwanda’s urban policies are set out of the reach of its youthful population—who, in turn, are forced to “chase” after the city’s vision of development.