Assessing the economic impact of banning second hand clothes on sellers in Kimironko market, Kigali city council; a case study of Kimironko market

Abstract

This study attempted to examine assessing the economic impact of banning second hand clothes on sellers in kimironko market-kigali city council. the second hand business has been the preferred market for those that want to purchase apparels over the years due to the affordability. The objective of the study was to examine the economic impact of banning of SHC on seller in kimironko market in Kigali city council in Rwanda and further the study aims at addressing the following specific issues; to find out how the banning of SHC has affected the level of income of the sellers in kimironko market, to examine how sellers have coped up with the change of business and to assess the economic challenges faced by sellers of SHC in Kimironko market. This study was qualitative in nature which employed qualitative methods of data collection. This study focused on two methods of sampling Purposive or Expert Choice Sampling and snowball sampling and the sample size used was 80 respondents and 2 government officials. A key informant interview and questionnaire were the tool employed to collected data this study used the t test statistic to analyze the data and analyze the data obtained from the key informant interview qualitatively. According to Willian sealy gusset (1995) the t test is type of inferential statistics used to determine whether there is a significance difference between the means from two groups. He added that, if the two means come from the same sample then a Paired t-test (correlated t-test) will be employed in the study. Therefore, this study compared the mean level of income of traders (sellers) before and after the ban of second hand clothes to find out if there is significant difference and perhaps the degree of difference too. The income level of sellers is the dependent variable which has two levels (income level before and after) and the dependent variable is the number of sales. The overall results has concluded that the Sellers of SHC in the Kimironko market have been affected by the ban of this trade. This was observed form the results obtained in the analysis carried out. The sellers face a significant reduction in the level of income and therefore difficulties in accessing their needs.