AS Tanzania grapples with the sobering reality of over 50,000 university graduates joining the job market annually, most of whom face bleak employment prospects, stories like Grace’s offer a powerful counter-narrative to despair.

A sociology graduate from the University of Dodoma, Grace didn’t wait for a government job or an NGO gig, she stepped boldly into the hustle and bustle of Kariakoo and became what many now call a winga girl.

Who is a winga? In local lingo, it’s someone with no shop, no capital, no products, but plenty of grit, people skills, and market knowledge. 

A winga helps clients who are lost in the busy Kariakoo maze to find exactly what they’re looking for, faster, cheaper, and often of better quality than they would on their own. 

And Grace did that for seven years, breaking even and learning the market inside out.

Today, she owns two shops—in Kariakoo and Goba—employs six young Tanzanians, and runs a thriving business that started with just 100,000/-. 

She’s also a content creator on TikTok and Instagram, using social media not for vanity but for visibility, branding, and digital marketing, growing her client base and teaching others.

In a recent entrepreneurship webinar hosted by me, Grace took centre stage. Her message—‘Don’t wait, Start with what you have’.

Her story challenged conventional employment mindsets and spotlighted the economic power of the informal sector—a sector that government policy too often overlooks, or worse, criminalizes.

Grace’s plea to policymakers was bold yet rooted in reality: protect local informal entrepreneurs like ‘wingas’ and ‘machingas’ from unfair competition—especially from foreign traders like Chinese nationals who enjoy factory access and mass production economies. How can a Tanzanian youth, who buys one item at a time, compete with that?

As we reflect on Labour Day this year, Grace reminds us that employment is not always a job. Sometimes, it’s a dream, a hustle, and a vision in motion. She may not take May 1st off, she works more than 8 hours a day, but she is precisely the worker Tanzania should be celebrating.

Let’s build policies, platforms, and protections for the Grace generation. Not just for their survival—but for Tanzania’s prosperity.