Kenya Railways is planning to develop commuter services within and around Nairobi. However, Kibera slum residents have dangerously encroached on the railway line. Photo/ANTHONY KAMAU
Thousands of Kenya’s urban dwellers, rich and poor, live in fear that their homes or real estate investments could soon be demolished as the country struggles to keep up with the rapid development of cities.
And now, a new study by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) warns that hundreds of millions of citizens in the developing world are yet to suffer a bigger burden of poverty characterised by poor housing and environmental-related diseases such as cholera, if their leaders do not embrace and plan upfront for rapid urbanisation.
Many Kenyans, both wealthy and poor, have already suffered this fate.
In Nairobi’s luxury housing estate Spring Valley, Mike Maina Kamau, woke up on July 14 to a devastating reality.
With authority from the government, bulldozers were pulling down his posh $13 million, eight bed-roomed house.
Yet his is not an isolated case. Incidents like this have been ongoing for years.
Many other structures have been demolished including petrol stations, shops, residential houses, small kiosks and informal housing — all in the name of expanding the city.
One of the most notable was in October 2008 when the one of the country’s largest supermarkets along Thika Road was pulled down at night.
The entire stock of the Nakumatt supermarket, was destroyed.
The need to expand roads in Nairobi, especially around the city, due to unending traffic jams during rush hour, is the heart of the problem.
This forced city planners to go back to their mapping archives to unearth old road plans for expansion.
But soon many developers and owners discovered that despite having acquired their properties through what was perceived as legal procedures from the previous government, many where in fact fraudulent transactions by corrupt government employees and they had no legal right to the land.
Their buildings were demolished to make space for expansion.
The new study warned that such incidents are likely to continue affecting many other urban dwellers in poor countries particularly in Africa and Asia.
“If governments in the developing world do not embrace and plan for rapid urbanisation, then they risk harming the future prospects of hundreds of millions of their citizens,” says the study released on August 6.
The study urges governments, especially in poor countries, to heed lessons learned from Brazil’s failure to plan.
The findings show that due to rapid urban growth in Brazil, poverty has been enhanced and new environmental problems have emerged.
The findings are typical of what is already happening in Nairobi.
Apart from the demolition of buildings in the capital city, the Dandora municipal dump site is one of the largest in Africa according to the United Nations Environmental Programme. It is also the only dump site for Nairobi.
It was created in the 1970s, as a temporary measure.
But as the city expanded, the dump site remained and currently all garbage for Nairobi is dumped here.
The site, situated within the city environs, is home to various types of waste – including chemical waste.
“We are already experiencing population surge, competing with the limited space in many of the slums in Nairobi,” said Josiah Omotto, the director of Umande Trust, one of the community-based organisations championing for the right of slum dwellers to access water and sanitation services.
According to government records 80 per cent of Brazilians live in urban areas.
This figure has grown from 36 per cent in 1950, making it one of the fastest urbanising countries in Europe and North America.
Considerable cost
But the research pointed out that this transition came at a considerable and preventable cost to the population, because Brazil failed to address social inequalities and plan for urban growth.
Latest projections show that Africa’s urban population will grow by 953 million in the first half of this century while Asian urban areas will grow by more than two billion.
In general, the proportion of developing countries that have adopted policies to curb urban growth rose from 46 per cent in 1976 to 74 per cent in 2007 according to UNFPA.
Yet the researchers look at this as a recipe for increased poverty and environmental degradation.
According to Dr Catherine Kiobutungi, a research scientist at the African Population and Health Research Centre, poor living conditions in slums have heightened the spread of non-communicable diseases among Nairobi’s residents.
Government records indicate that 60 per cent of the residents in Nairobi live in slums.
The lead researchers for the Brazil study — Dr. George Martine and Dr Gordon McGranahan of IIED, said that the critical first step is for policy makers to recognise the rights of poor people to live in cities and share in the benefits of urban life.
“The next step is to plan ahead for their land and housing needs within a constantly updated vision of sustainable land use,” said the researchers in a statement.
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