French funds to give Kisumu facelift

The deputy director of AFD, Olivier Belefosse, said that the city’s slums would also be upgraded under the Kisumu Urban Project.

The ministry of housing estimates that slums take up 150 acres of Kisumu municipality. A third of the city’s population, an estimated 200,000 people, reside in these informal settlements.

According to the town’s principal water service provider, it faces a major challenge connecting these unplanned settlements to the main water distribution network. As a result, slum dwellers pay more for their water than other Kisumu residents.

Mr Belefosse said that the city’s waste management system would also be improved and its capacity enhanced with this funding. The city will get a new waste water plant.

At present, waste water from Kisumu is handled by the Kisat treatment plant and Nyalenda lagoon, both of which are only partly functional.

Kisumu Town Clerk, Benjamin Orwa, said that the town’s social facilities are overstretched and the project would augment the council’s efforts to provide adequate services.

Local ownership
Mr Orwa said it would help narrow the gap between residents’ expectations and the service they received from the council. A team of officials from AFD led by its deputy director visited Kisumu this week to observe preparations for the project.

The team held talks with the local authority on other possible areas of cooperation, such as administration and the welfare of children and people living with disability.

Mr Belefosse said that an agreement would be signed in September between his organisation, the finance ministry and the Kisumu Municipal Council, paving way for the project’s implementation. A seminar is planned in the same month to sensitise residents of Kisumu on the planned investment.

According to Kisumu Mayor Sam Okello, this is one of the terms of reference from the AFD and is intended to inculcate local ownership of the project.

“Projects have to be people-based. There is no point in constructing markets that people will not use,” he said.

Mr Okello said that the project includes a component to improve the revenue collection system and general management at the Kisumu Municipal Council.

Twelve other social amenity improvement projects including schools, dispensaries and markets are already ongoing in Kisumu under the Kenya Slum Upgrading Project (KENSUP), a joint initiative of the government and UN-Habitat.

The KENSUP project kicked off early in 2004 to improve the social and physical infrastructure in informal settlements within Kisumu, Nairobi, Mavoko and Mombasa.

Another Sh4 billion water project jointly funded by AFD and the government is already ongoing in Kisumu. Its goal is to eliminate water shortage in the city that sits on the shores of the world’s second largest fresh water lake.