Nearly three-quarters of Kenya’s urban population live in slums, amounting to over 7.5 million of its 31 million people. Kenya’s slum population is growing rapidly at nearly 6 per cent each year. The situation in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, is typical of the challenges facing poor people in Kenya’s other urban areas. Pressure on land – largely from commercial interests – means that 55 per cent of Nairobi’s total population is now crammed onto a mere 1.5 per cent of the total land area. The threat of forced eviction inhibits investment and places many people in constant fear that their homes may be demolished.
Housing for Nairobi’s 1.5 million or so slum dwellers typically consists of shanties made of mud, wattle and iron sheets. There are as many as 250 shanty units per hectare; in comparison, housing density in the UK reaches 100 units per hectare in cities, and 30 elsewhere. There is little or no access to water, electricity, basic services and infrastructure in Nairobi’s slums, with an estimated 94 per cent of slum dwellers lacking access to adequate sanitation. Most structures are let on a room-by-room basis with many households occupying just a single room – a typical household comprises 6 people – and lacking any security of tenure. These factors have serious repercussions for the health and wellbeing of slum dwellers, which is demonstrated by the child mortality rate: for every 1,000 children born in Nairobi’s slums, 151 will die before the age of five; this is significantly higher than the average of 62 for Nairobi as a whole or of 113 for rural Kenya.
Homeless International’s partner in Kenya is Pamoja Trust, a non-governmental organisation set up to provide administrative, logistical and technical support to urban poor communities as they organise to seek solutions to their problems of inadequate housing and infrastructure.
Pamoja Trust works with the Kenyan Federation - Muungano wa Wanavijiji - a network of 1,000 community savings groups made up of more than 50,000 households (at least 250,000 people) living in more than 400 slum settlements across the country. Muungano helps poor families organise into savings groups that meet regularly and give small ‘crisis’ and income generation loans from their savings. Through participating in savings groups, members develop the financial and organisational capacity, as well as the confidence, to tackle poverty in their communities.
The Federation aims to demonstrate its own community-led solutions to urban poverty and to share its experiences, successes, challenges and learning through a programme of regular community-to-community exchanges at local, national and international levels. By virtue of the size and nature of its membership within slums, the Federation has also developed a national presence that enables it to advocate for pro-poor changes to policies and initiatives that affect the urban poor.
The Pamoja Trust and Muungano wa Wanavijiji have formed a third organisation - Akiba Mashinani Trust - which manages loan finance for the Federation’s construction and income generation activities. The Alliance of these three organisations is implementing CLIFF in Kenya.
