Kenyan businessmen on Thursday protested along the streets of Nairobi and petitioned the government on the presence of Chinese hawkers in the country. According to Reuters Africa, the traders are accusing Chinese dealers of abusing tourist visas to come into the country and peddle cheap wares in what the traders term as 'unfair competition'.

A number of Chinese corporations have moved into the country, and other parts of the continent, to build factories and roads and extract its oil and minerals. The traders said the big businesses have been followed by thousands of small Chinese dealers who got tourist visas, then headed out to the streets to push anything from milk to electronics.

Earlier on, the local traders' umbrella body Kenya Worldwide Importers & Traders Association expressed concerns that unregulated entry of the Chinese traders in the small scale sector will kill their businesses. The association accused the Chinese Embassy of deliberately protecting their hawking citizens by preventing Kenyan traders from going to China to source wares.

"We suspect this is a deliberate move by the Chinese at the government level, because for the last six months, their embassy in Nairobi has either been delaying or denying us visas to travel to China where we source our merchandise from,” said Ben Mutahi, the chairman of the association.  Kenya Worldwide Importers & Traders Association brings together importers of textiles, mobile phones, cosmetics, electrical and electronic goods alongside household utilities (The Star).

This, the traders fear, will greatly hamper the fight against counterfeit items getting into the country from the East Asian nation. The Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) plans to switch off all counterfeit phones from the network by September 30th. Last month, a Chinese phone hawker came to Pesatalk offices with a backpack full of counterfeit phones. The models including copy Nokia N8, iPhone 4S and Samsung phones were selling at between KES 5,000 and KES 9,000. The original models price ranges between KES 30,000 and KES 60,000.