KENYA-HABITAT: Government Ignores Plight of Shanty Communities

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

KIBERA, Nairobi, May 3 1996 (IPS) - Scruffy bare-foot children play on a narrow dirt road in this sprawling shanty town, splashing water from open sewers onto unsuspecting passers-by.

Elsewhere, a bevy of girls hawk bread just two metres away from the effluent that flows from just about every home into the busy road. In addition to the heaps of strewn garbage, the sewage produces a stink that attracts flies which hover around the stalls selling roasted fish, chips and ugali (boiled maize).

“If you come here during the rainy season,” says Patrick Wanyoiki, “you’ll hate yourself. The stench of this place will hit you right in the nose.”

Wanyoiki, a native of Thika, a small industrial town 25 kms east of here, emigrated to this crowded slum about three-years- ago to look for a job. He couldn’t land one, so became a self- employed knife sharpener.

The work takes him to butcheries and homes and earns him the equivalent of 65 dollars. That is a small fortune in Kibera, the largest low-income urban settlement in Nairobi, where the average household income is about 46 dollars a month, according to a recent report by the Nairobi-based U.N. Centre for Human Settlement, also know as Habitat.

The homes here are mostly made of mud and wattle with corrugated iron roofs. Most compounds are crammed to capacity. The monthly rent for a one bed-room dwelling ranges from five to 11 dollars.

However, the major problem facing the people in Kibera is land ownership. The area, covering 225 hectares, belongs to the state and temporary occupation licences are obtained through the municipal authorities. Yet the settlement is considered illegal and there are no municipal services here.

“We only pray to God that one day we shall have our own land where we can build our own houses,” says Salim Ali, a watchman from Kibera.

Ali’s plight, and that of millions of others around the world, will be discussed during the Habitat II Conference in Istanbul, Turkey, in June.

“One of our priorities will be to persuade governments to issue title deeds to the homeless,” says Wally N’dow, the Secretary-General of Habitat II. “We will also persuade private capital and non-governmental organisations to help improve the conditions of the homeless.”

The conditions are appalling in Africa, where the United Nations says the urban population is growing four-times faster than that of the rest of the developing world.

“From 84 million urban residents in 1970, Africa’s urban population increased to 201 million in 1990. By 2025, the urban population is projected to grow four-fold to 904,” Elizabeth Dowdeswell, the executive director of the Nairobi-based U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) said when she launched a report, ‘World Resources 1996-97: A Guide to the Global Environment’ here recently.

The report, which focuses on the plight of the poor in shanty towns, lists Lagos, Nigeria, and Cairo, Egypt, among the world’s twenty-five largest cities in 1995.

The population of Nairobi, too, continues to expand rapidly. It is expected to grow to some three million by the turn of the century, up from about 1.2 million in 1989.

“Nairobi’s severe housing problem is particularly evident in the highly overcrowded informal settlements which accommodate about 55 percent of the city’s population,” James Mutero, a consultant in housing economics, wrote in a local magazine.

He noted: “The households in these areas have poor access to services such as safe water, sanitation and solid waste disposal, and are thus exposed to the dangers of ill-health and disease. At the same time, frequent demolition of temporary dwellings destroys the lives and homes of the city’s poor.”

To resolve the crisis, Mutero suggests that Kenya needs about 25,000 new homes a year. “To achieve this, we would need a housing construction rate that is five-times the current formal rate in the city.”

Despite the problems facing the people of Kibera, Beatrice Njeri, a student, thinks it makes no sense to run away from the slum. “This is where I belong,” she told IPS. “My parents live here. And so do I.”

What she would like to see, instead, is the government providing services to the community instead of ignoring the shanty town.