Street Food Vending: Reasons and Socio-Economic Influences in Ilala Municipal, Dar es Salaam, 2020.

Abstract

This paper investigated the role of street food vending to the vendors’ household in Ilala municipal, Dar es Salaam. It examined the reasons for food vending, income earned through food vending and the influence of socio-economic characteristics to the vendor’s household welfare. The cross- sectional study was conducted involving simple random sampling and purposive sampling. Data were collected from 297 street food vendors using structured questionnaires. The data were analysed by SPSS version 20 using descriptive statistics and binary logistics regression. The main findings were 50% of vendors were in food vending because it requires small capital for the establishment and 32.7% were attracted by the income gained. The mean monthly income for vendors was TZS 470975. The Household size was highly positive significant p ≤ 0.000 to household welfare and source of capital was positively significant p ≤ 0.001 and other variable premise ownership, education and marital status were positively significant p ≤ 0.005. Generally, Street food vending is the means for vendor’s household wellbeing. The income generated from the business is used to cover household welfare. The study recommends the government to improve street food vending operation environment; by proper identification of location for conducting food vending and creating proper infrastructures in strategic areas, which could be cheaply rented.