As efforts to get justice for victims continue in Kenya, economic effects of al-Shabaab attacks have hit mall traders hard

With stalls heaving under the weight of brilliant red African dresses, traditional masks, assorted artefacts, bracelets and leather goods, the Maasai market is one of the most popular stops for tourists seeking mementoes of an east African safari.

But as Kenya prepares to mark a year since the deadly Westgate mall attack in Nairobi, shoppers are few and far between and business is slack – a palpable sign of the economic impact of the biggest terror attack in the region in 15 years.

"It is the worst situation I have seen in the 13 years I have been in this trade," said Geoffrey Mwange, a 40-year-old father of two seated next to his stand of wooden carvings of the big five animals that usually draw hundreds of thousands of tourists to game parks every year. "Almost all the tourists are gone and I'm now having to take loans here and there to stay afloat and to pay the three workers at my workshop."

The attack at Westgate inflicted deep psychological wounds on east Africa's main transport and economic hub.

For decades, Kenya was the laid back exception in a region wracked by war and political instability, with its unofficial national slogan – Kenya, hakuna matata (Swahili for "no worries in Kenya") – summing up its attraction to tourists and the hundreds of diplomats and aid workers who serve the region from the capital, Nairobi.

Corruption has been blamed for the ease with which al-Shabaab has carried out its activities in Kenya. "I'm sorry to say this but maybe Kenyans are not as patriotic as some of the other neighbours such as the Ethiopians who are rarely attacked," says Alois Lentoimaga, vice chairman of the Kenyan parliament's national security committee. "Aliens find it easy to buy Kenyan documents but this is now changing."

Lentoimaga pointed to changes made in the security sector post-Westgate as evidence that Kenya was now better prepared to stop al-Shabaab. President Uhuru Kenyatta recently tapped two generals from the military to replace the heads of the intelligence agency and the immigration department.

Some 18,000 police recruits have been added to the security forces while Kenya is betting on technology to help improve its ability to monitor the activities of extremists.

The main telephone firm, Safaricom, famous for its pioneering work with M-Pesa money transfer technology, has been contracted to roll out a £103m ($170m) security and surveillance system.

Efforts to get justice for the victims continue in Kenyan courts, where four men have been charged with facilitating the attacks at the mall. Four suspected associates of the attackers – Hussein Hassan Mustafa, Mohammed Ahmed Abdi, Liban Abdullah Omar and Adan Mohammed Abdikadir – are due back in court on September 23.

The five-story Westgate mall is undergoing reconstruction although the area around it, which once buzzed with activity, with hundreds of taxis dropping and picking customers and peddlers selling everything from pet rabbits to sunglasses, is now largely quiet.

In Somalia, al-Shabaab have been on the back foot in recent times with a combined UN-funded mission of regional troops pushing them out of major population centres. The group's leader, Ahmed Godane, was killed in a US drone strike on September 1.

Still, some have warned that al-Shabaab retains the ambition to carry out further attacks and one of the biggest worries is that the Westgate siege could be easily replicated by lightly resourced extremists.

A report by New York police concluded that the mall massacre "clearly illustrates that armed assaults by terrorists are a simple, effective and easy to copy tactic" and called for a rethink of policing systems to prevent such attacks.

Security forces around the world including agents from Britain and Israel have spent time in Kenya studying the Westgate assault. Kenyan police claim that they are now better prepared to thwart the Shabaab.

"Our officers are currently on high alert to stop anything before it happens," the country's police chief, David Kimaiyo, told the Guardian. "We rely on intelligence and our aim is to stop them before they carry out their plans."

Such assurances cut little ice with small-scale traders such as Sarah Njambi, a 28-year-old mother of one who says business at the Maasai market has virtually dried out.

"I don't know where all the American and British tourists went. The government needs to do more to bring them back. We are really suffering. Now, we mainly get business from a few resident mzungus [white people] but they are not good customers because they know the prices. The green mzungus from abroad were great because they would pay much more. We need those back."