Retailers losing out to desperate vendors

The cries of street vendors have become the soundtrack to Zimbabwe's ailing economy as increasing numbers of the unemployed try to eke out a living, leaving shopkeepers - and the taxman - poorer.

Redundant workers and former students have spawned a new phenomenon of "shop-front stores" in major cities, where they peddle items as diverse as medicines, vegetables, pirated CDs and clothes - often on the doorstep of legitimate shops selling similar items.

For 39-year-old Sherry Njere, a mother of three with an unemployed husband, street vending is a matter of survival.