Title
The evolution of the urban discourse in Kenya and the influence of grassroots data
collection
Author
Jackson Makau, jackmakau@sdinet.org
Abstract
Investment by the Kenyan government to improve the living conditions in informal
settlements has grown continuously over the last two decades. Yet, it is only when that
an amalgamation and blending of community and city resources has occurred in a way
that enables explorations for transforming informal settlements into healthy
neighborhoods. Information has been one of the most catalytic resource contribution
made by organized communities – and is likely to remain as the most prominent indicator
of having inclusive cities in the country. This paper traces the evolution of milestones
that have created the basis of a changing paradigm.
A 1993 study, Nairobi’s Informal Settlements, by Matrix Development Consultants and
the 1995 study by Prof. Peter Ngau, Informal Settlements in Nairobi A Baseline Survey of
Slums and Squatter Settlements An Inventory of NGOs and CBOs activities, produced
data showing that 55 percent of Nairobi’s population was living on 2 percent of the city’s
total land area, in dense, squalid slum settlements. Until then urban informality and
poverty was not considered an issue for government to address.
The following year, 1996, when the residents of the slums in Nairobi organized
themselves into a movement, Muungano wa Wanavijiji, aimed at resisting forced slum
demolition occurring then at a wide scale, they rallied around the figures that Matrix and
Ngau had produced. In the preceding decades, outside disaster management and
providing scattered water points when cholera outbreaks occurred, the only other
government investment for slums was towards their clearance.
The visibility created of the scale and conditions of slums set off the first domino.
Towards the end of the millennium the Muungano movement had developed links to
other slum dweller movements through Slum Dwellers International. It adopted as a
critical part of its advocacy, the practices of community data collection. In 2000, the
historic exchange with the SDI-affiliated National Slum Dwellers Federation of India and
subsequent census of Korogocho enabled Muungano to map slums in Nairobi and later
profile 338 slum settlements in 11 cities and towns in Kenya. They further undertook
household level enumerations in 141 settlements, which represent a total of more than
half a million households. It has mapped infrastructure and housing in 87 slums. The
community data in some instances has been specific to individual settlements and other
times it has focused on wider issues at district, city and national level.
These community data processes have been supported by successive support NGO’s to
Muungano. They have also contributed to, and fed off the energy and learning from data
processes undertaken by SDI affiliated federations in other countries. The community
processes also have been undertaken in collaboration with a myriad of partners including
local authorities; universities both local and based in the global north; a number of bilateral and multi-lateral organizations; and private sector firms.
This paper traces the evolution and tidal trajectory of Kenya’s efforts to deal with urban
poverty positively in the last 20 years. It describes the process of achieving a moratorium
on slum demolition, the emergence of slum focused policy, the setting up of government
institutions to upgrade slums, and a number of precedent setting projects. It takes a more
detailed view of initiatives that were successful, as well as those that failed to deliver on
their objectives.
The paper also creates a linkage between these points in the slum development curve and
the amount of data generated by Muungano. In order to achieve this, the paper analyses
how the much community data, available at specific times, has impacted both directly
and indirectly on government investments and successive policy initiatives occurring at
those same times.
Important elements that the paper investigates include the interface between the data
collected by communities and the ways in which it was used to influence specific
government actions. Often the processes of data collection are in themselves political
actions that seek to attract or engage both local authorities and central government. Yet,
even where no government action is targeted the community data processes have altered
the slum discussion that the Kenyan government has had to address itself to.
The paper provides a national context to SDI’s paper titled, Knowing Your City:
Providing access to urban land and infrastructure through grassroots data collection. As
such it acts as a panel paper or case study. It is therefore structured as a chronology
through two decades.
However, its concluding section is a discussion on how different elements, drawn from
experiences along the way, coalesce to form Muungano’s current strategy around
community data collection. This also seeks to give a view of how SDI’s global strategy
on standardized city-level slum profiling aligns and is interpreted at a national
implementation level. It therefore looks back, but also seeks to demonstrate what
knowledge gaps exist today, and the efforts underway to fill those spaces.