Informality, crisis and resilience: street vendors and the politics of survival in post-pandemic Dar es Salaam

In this paper, we examine how Dar es Salaam’s informal economy adapted to the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic under the guidance-based state policies. Using an ethnographic approach, we traced the trajectories of street vendors operating at Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) hubs from the initial shock of reduced mobility and customer loss to the gradual development of adaptive practices. Vendors diversified income streams, leveraged community networks and mobilised faith-based coping strategies to sustain livelihoods, revealing both creativity and precarity within informality. Findings highlight the paradox of symbolic state support under President Magufuli, where populist rhetoric fostered perceptions of protection despite limited material interventions. By bringing urban informality theory into dialogue with crisis urbanism and resilience scholarship, this paper contributes to debates on how pandemics unsettle density-driven planning paradigms and underscores the need for inclusive, context-specific policies in African cities. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . This article is available Open Access thanks to the LUP Authors Fund.