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At Nairobi’s Muthurwa market, Mary Wanjiku wakes up before dawn to arrange tomatoes and onions at her wooden stall. By evening, she has paid a string of levies—market fees, security charges, and the “compliance” charges demanded by county askaris (officers).
What remains is barely enough to feed her family. “I sell to survive, but it feels like I work for the county,” she says. Her lamentation is echoed across Kenya’s informal markets, where traders and small business owners struggle under the weight of a tax system that leans heavily on the poor while letting the wealthy breathe easily.
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