Kibera soweto east
a case study in slum upgrading
BY MICHELLE MULCAHY AND MING-RU CHU
INFORMAL SETTLEMENTs iN NAiROBi
Nairobi’s 200 slums are among the most dense, insecure and
unsanitary in all of Africa, and Kibera—in Nairobi—has the
unfortunate distinction of being the worst of the worst. It is
regularly described as the worst slum on the planet. It houses
somewhere between 800,000 and 1.2 million people —nearly
one quarter of Nairobi’s population—in just 630 acres located
approximately four miles from Nairobi’s central business dis-
trict. The living conditions are harsh and profoundly unforgiv-
ing. The deprivations people face on a daily basis are fundamen-
tal: severe overcrowding, terrible sanitation, chronic disease,
malnutrition, and nighttime insecurity. These conditions have
evolved over decades of indifference and neglect by both mu-
nicipal and national governments.
Various non-governmental organizations, many with the World
Bank’s help, have sponsored slum upgrading projects over the
past several decades with varying degrees of impact and hardly
any unqualified success. Finally acknowledging the problem’s
severity and persistence, Kenya’s national government took de-
finitive action in 2002 by creating the Kenya Slum Upgrading
Program (KENSUP). This national office focuses on imple-
menting projects that are sustainable, inclusive, democratic,
accountable, and transparent and that will provide communi-
ties with improved housing and access to basic services, secure
tenure, and opportunities to generate income.
10
This article examines one of KENSUP’s pilot projects—the
Kibera Soweto Project—which is a joint effort between the
Kenyan government and UN-HABITAT that focuses on just
one of Kibera’s 12 “villages” of 70,000. It focuses on the chal-
lenges posed by existing conditions, the various elements team
members developed to address these challenges, and the initial
issues and successes. While the project’s benefits remain to be
seen, some valuable lessons have already surfaced: communi-
ties must be engaged from the program’s initiation, every effort
must be made to maintain affordability throughout a project,
and institutional development must occur well before a project
is implemented.
Project Overview
The stated objectives of the Kibera Soweto Pilot Project are to
promote and facilitate the provision of (1) secure tenure, (2) im-
proved housing, (3) income-generating activities, and (4) physi-
cal and social infrastructure. Currently, construction crews are
building a road into the village as well as off-site housing blocks
intended to shelter Soweto residents temporarily while new
housing is constructed within the village. However, there are
already questions concerning affordability, the appropriateness
of the housing and unit type, and the community participation
process. Project leaders from UN-HABITAT have worked with
village leaders to establish an institutional structure and facili-
tate the process; this places the Nairobi City Council at the core
of implementation. However, the council has not yet proven its
capacity and ability to fulfill its responsibilities.
Commercial district along train tracks to Kisumu, Kenya.
CHALLENGEs
Physical Challenges
With between 800,000 and 1.2 million people living on 630
acres of sloped government land, the intense overcrowding and
the complete lack of infrastructure present the greatest physical
challenges to upgrading. In Soweto East—the focus of the Kib-
era Soweto Pilot Project—70,000 residents live on 52.8 acres.
The approximately 2,880 structures in Soweto East are served
by only 100 toilets, 50 baths, and no vehicular infrastructure
of any kind.
These highly congested living conditions profoundly increase
health risks and diminish quality of life for Kibera’s residents.
With a large majority of households averaging five people living
in single rooms of less than 10 square meters, infectious and
skin diseases spread easily and food contamination is common.
Families burn wood, charcoal and kerosene indoors for cooking
and lighting, which contributes to a high incidence of upper
respiratory infection and irritation. Children play in roads and
dump areas for lack of adequate open spaces. Together, these
circumstances create an incredibly stressful living environment.
Environmental Challenges
Kibera is limited from expanding to the south and east by the
Ngong River and Nairobi Dam, and to the north and west by
the rail line to Kisumu. The terrain is hilly and sometimes steep,
which can complicate the building process. Residential struc-
tures encroach on the riparian areas of the river. Residential
and commercial dumping of solid waste, human waste, medical
waste, and wastewater cause perpetual degradation of the envi-
ronment and water quality. Some pit latrines are located inap-
propriately close to water sources, causing black water to seep
into these sources, while inadequately maintained latrines nega-
tively affect the general environment and community health.
Dust pollution from unpaved roads and footpaths causes skin
and eye irritation. The accumulated effects of these problems
are direct, long-lasting, and urgent.
factors, including very low incomes, irregular employment, lack
of secure land tenure or collateral, and lack of property and in-
formational records prevent Kibera households from accessing
loans to finance construction projects, housing improvements
or home purchases.1
Challenges of Historic Ownership Patterns
Kenya’s highly controlled and constrictive land policy, devel-
oped decades ago just after attaining independence, has contrib-
uted to the continued growth of slums, particularly in Kibera.
While Kenya was under British control, the British colonial
administration claimed large tracts of land as its own which it
then transferred to the Kenyan government after independence,
making the new government one of the largest landholders in
the country. Instead of periodically selling land to developers,
thereby facilitating a housing market, politicians began to give
away parcels of this public land to private individuals in ex-
change for political support. This corrupt practice came to be
known as “land grabbing” and reached its height in the 1990s,
though it persists today.2 Migrants settled illegally on unin-
habited government land that was often later transferred into
private hands in one of these informal transactions. Once an
individual took control he could either raze the slum, which
displaced the impoverished residents, or he could claim owner-
ship of the structures and begin to collect rent. Because of their
connections to government, the absentee landlords pay no taxes
on the rent they collect and are not legally bound to provide any
services. They have no incentive to improve conditions and,

Economic Challenges
Almost three quarters of Kibera’s households earn less than Ke-
nya shillings 10,000 per month; with an average of five people
per household, this translates to approximately one dollar per
person per day—the U.N. standard of poverty. Maintaining
housing affordability remains a major challenge to any upgrad-
ing or redevelopment project. Any fees for water, sanitation,
electricity or rubbish collection may further burden households.
Taxation on regularized or legally recognized land or shelter in-
creases financial obligations even more.

Lack of housing finance is a critical issue to resolve. A series of A drainage path in Kibera

MU LC A HY & C HU 11
viewing the slums as a continuous source of income, are gener-
ally opposed to any upgrading projects.
Land Tenure Challenges
Further complicating this layered ownership is Kenya’s legal
pluralism: some land is officially registered and administered by
statutory laws; other land is subject to traditional, communal
land rights; and still other parcels are unregistered and subject
to informal tenure rules. This plurality makes asserting ten-
ure rights in Kenya complicated. The Kibera Land Committee
(KLC) is complicating the situation in Soweto East further, by
trying to register a communal title for the four original Nubian
villages that settled on the land after World War I.3
Residents have organized and carried out the physical enu-
meration of structures to record ownership and resident status,
which will allow the government to regularize titles. However,
before title regularization can occur, structure owners and ten-
ants must reach some kind of consensus that also successfully
negotiates the complex terrain that is Kenyan land law. Con-
sequently, securing land tenure is a critical issue in almost all
upgrading projects, and it is a particularly challenging and po-
litically sensitive one in Kibera.
Social Challenges
Over the course of decades, slum dwellers have developed a gen-
eral distrust of government, in part because of disappointment
over government-promised upgrading projects that never mate-
rialized. In the past, upgrading projects often displaced the orig-
inal residents, leaving many skittish about future government
action. Current and future administrations must overcome this
mistrust by promising only what they can implement. Facili-
tating a truly participatory process and carrying out residents’
identified priorities will also assuage people’s mistrust. This can
prove particularly difficult in slums where people’s schedules,
obligations, and continuous involvement in community affairs
may make participation impossible for many residents. It is of-
ten those higher up the economic ladder who have time to par-
ticipate, which can skew what gets expressed as a community’s
needs and desires.
On a daily basis, poor accessibility—created by an organic ur-
ban pattern with narrow, uneven roads and footpaths that are
prohibitive to vehicles—makes policing difficult. Coupled with
an absence of street lighting, crime is a significant issue after
dark. Several sources indicate that it is extremely unsafe to be
on the street after dark.
City Governance Challenges
The Nairobi City Council (NCC) provides a range of services,
12
and it partners with other government agencies and private-
sector organizations to provide additional services. However,
high rates of urban population growth, limited revenue sources,
and uncoordinated, ineffective partnerships have historically re-
sulted in a meager delivery of services. The performance of the
NCC, which is a key partner in all efforts aimed at resolving the
problems in informal settlements, has been poor. According to
a Cordaid report,
Commentators on the management of NCC are invariably
in agreement on this point … the NCC, was ranked the
fifth most corrupt public sector organization in a recent
survey by Transparency International. This poor perfor-
mance by the NCC has had a negative impact on the large
population of people living in Nairobi’s informal settle-
ments. Thus, any efforts to improve the lives of slum dwell-
ers must also address the poor governance and performance
of the Nairobi City Council in terms of service delivery to the
urban poor.4
PROJEcT COMpONENTs
In Kibera, the planned interventions are comprehensive and
intend to improve overall living conditions within the settle-
ment. Because the program is national and includes so many
components, policy creation and institutional capacity building
were two first steps in the process. When fully underway, plans
include numerous physical and social improvements.
Policies
Several policies and laws have directly influenced this upgrad-
ing program. The Physical Planning Act and the Physical Plan-
ners Act of 1996 mandate “competence in planning urban and
rural settlements, and in participatory approaches involving
public/private sector and civil society.”5 Several other policies,
such as the Local Government Reform Program, were created
to increase citizen participation in “matters affecting them.”6
Code ’95 revised the city’s building code in order to give build-
ers more flexibility when choosing materials and construction
methods. While this code was not explicitly written for infor-
mal settlements, it aims to “reduce building costs in the context
of low-income housing.”7
In 2004, Parliament approved a landmark National Housing
Policy, which recognizes for the first time:
• The right to housing (facilitating progressive realiza-
tion of the right to adequate housing by all)
• Provision of legal security of tenure to the poorer
 sections of society, including women and other vul-
nerable groups, especially in areas located near their
workplaces
• Participation of the inhabitants in the housing and
slum upgrading process8
This policy specifically addressed the needs of slums and the role
of slum upgrading programs. It delineated that slum upgrading
should include:
Security of land tenure, provision of basic infrastructural
facilities and services, improvement of housing structure
and socio-economic status of the target community and
prevention of unwarranted destruction of existing hous-
ing stock and displacement of residents and the need for
special policy to pay attention to the tenants.9
The policy also highlights the importance of providing “ad-
equate shelter and a healthy living environment at an afford-
able cost to all socio-economic groups in Kenya.”10 This policy
aims to improve the living conditions of many Kenyans with
minimal displacement (and compensation when necessary), to
create sustainable human settlements, and to stem the prolifera-
tion of slums. It states that programs should do so with signifi-
cant stakeholder involvement, institutional coordination, and
the “inclusive participation of the private sector, public sector,
and community based organizations, non-governmental orga-
nizations, cooperatives, communities and other development
partners in planning, development and management of housing
programs.”11 In the summer of 2007, the government was de-
veloping a new housing bill, designed to address such issues as
evictions and the private housing sector. The government is also
formulating a new National Land Policy to address evictions.12
Other recent acts established a Ministry of Gender; a parlia-
mentary select committee on Housing, Health, and Social Wel-
fare; and an inter-ministerial interagency task force on housing
with representatives from the civil sector, and statutory bodies
such as the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
Through all of these recent developments, the Kenyan govern-
ment has committed to inclusiveness, partnership, securing
tenure, gender issues, poverty reduction, reducing density and
meeting development costs.13
The KENSUP program incorporates a significant component
by addressing institutional coordination and capacity building.
Part of KENSUP’s strategy to achieve programmatic sustain-
ability is to decentralize responsibilities to various agencies. Thus
the government created several new institutional agencies for
the planning and implementation of the upgrading program.
STUDiEs
UN-HABITAT financed several preliminary studies, which Re-
search International carried out. The team completed socio-eco-
nomic and physical maps that describe the existing conditions.
It also finished a master plan, developed by the Physical Plan-
ning Department, that proposes “most appropriate land uses in
terms of commercial sites (markets, jua kali shades), residential
areas, community clusters and neighborhoods, public purpose/
utility areas, light industrial, recreational, institutional and in-
frastructural land uses.”14 The team also catalogued existing
residents in Soweto East; residents received identification cards
based on the enumerated list which will be used to determine
eligibility for the improved housing. To avoid displacement of
current residents, people who move to Kibera after enumeration
will not be given rights to the new housing units. The surveys
were paid for by UN-HABITAT and carried out by Research
International.
KENYA SLUM UpGRADiNG, LOW COsT HOUsiNG
& iNFRAsTRUcTURE TRUsT FUND (KENSUF)
UN-HABITAT established the Slum Upgrading Facility (SUF)
in 2005 with funding from the U.K., Sweden, and Norway.
SUF provides technical assistance to organizations implement-
ing settlement upgrading programs that “rely on domestic capi-
tal as a significant source of financing.” 15 SUF provides support
in “establishing new financing instruments and institutional col-
laborations between financial institutions, authorities and com-
munities so that banks are able to finance such projects without
distorting the banking principles on which they operate.” SUF
will also provide loans for local organizations to leverage ad-
ditional support. Part of the memorandum of understanding
between the government of Kenya and UN-HABITAT required
that Kenya create a similar fund. The fund set up in Kenya,
called the Kenya Slum Upgrading, Low Cost Housing and In-
frastructure Trust Fund (KENSUF) is:
A central depository of all mobilized financial resources
for slum upgrading. It therefore draws funds from donors,
CBOs, private sector and Government budgetary alloca-
tions. The fund has the potential for pooling resources
and institutionalization of transparent resource allocation
mechanism.16
SUF also advises the Kenyan government on streamlining its
housing incentive programs. KENSUF is to receive an ini-
tial government budgetary allocation of 20 million Ksh (US
$250,000).17
MU LC A HY & C HU 13
Secure Tenure
Kibera is located entirely on government-owned land and resi-
dents do not have secure tenure. Some have Temporary Occu-
pation Licenses or title deeds, but the government can revoke
these at any time. This insecurity has “bred a mentality of fear,
suspicion and at times open hostility in the community. This sit-
uation is made worse by the provincial administration especially
the office of the chiefs who have taken advantage of this situ-
ation and are constantly extorting bribes from the residents.”18
There are four categories of people who claim rights to land in
Kibera and whose overlapping claims must be negotiated for
the upgrading plan to be successful: the Nubians, absentee land
lords, structure owners who live in the settlement, and tenants.
The Nubians, the original settlers of Kibera, have always laid
claim to the land and are currently pursuing the issuance of title
deeds from the British government based on a 70-year-old letter
of allocation from the colonial authorities. Disputes among dif-
ferent groups within the Nubian community have led to recent
violence; the Nubian Council of elders claim only 350 acres of
land, whereas the Young Turks claim all of Kibera’s land.
Some structure owners have title deeds, but many of these were
attained fraudulently. Other structure owners retain recognized
but unofficial land allocations given by local authorities. This
group includes absentee landlords, structure owners who live in
the settlement, community-based organizations, non-govern-
mental organizations, and churches. Finally, the largest group
of claimants is tenants, who make up 93 percent of Kibera’s
residents.19
The complexity of Kenya’s land tenure system and the con-
trasting claims to land rights will likely make the issuance of
secure tenure the most challenging part of the upgrading pro-
cess. According to current KENSUP plans, the government will
maintain ownership of the land and may give long-term leases
for the new housing units to residents through the housing co-
operatives. Residents and structure owners have the option to
purchase their units individually or through cooperatives. Once
paid for, the government will issue titles for the units to indi-
viduals or transfer them from the cooperative to the owner.
In Kibera, some structure-owners own as many as 1,000 units
and are thus receiving a significant amount of tax-free rent.20
This situation suggests that KENSUP will face a major chal-
lenge from structure owners. However, officials say they antici-
pate that structure owners—who have been represented on the
Settlement Executive Committee (SEC)—will cooperate. Some
officials believe that structure owners will eventually be willing
14
to give up ownership since they have already profited signifi-
cantly. According to these officials, one option presented allows
structure owners to build the improved housing and continue
to receive rent until the cost of the housing is paid off. At the
end of this arrangement, the structure owner would suppos-
edly relinquish claims to ownership. How the government will
deal with Nubian claims to a significant portion of the land is
unclear.
Community Participation
Recently, the Kenyan government has made increasing citizen
participation a priority. Several policies directly address citizen
involvement, and sensitization and education have been a large
part of KENSUP’s focus in Kibera. SEC represents the commu-
nity, and all residents are periodically invited to public meetings
called barazas.
While Kenya’s policies and the KENSUP plan call for significant
community involvement, there is evidence that these attempts
have not been very successful. Officials claim that past upgrad-
ing projects have failed due to lack of citizen involvement and
that the KENSUP program focuses on community education
and participation. However, evidence shows the participatory
measures have been inadequate, largely due to lack of informa-
tion and feedback. Language barriers have also been cited as an
obstacle to participation, as much of the information is dissemi-
nated in English.21 Even when people are aware of public meet-
ings, many often cannot take time off work to participate. Also,
conflicts between stakeholders and organizations make consen-
sus building extremely challenging; public officials often lack
the knowledge and skills to implement participatory planning
approaches. Many suspicions arose within the community due
to the previously failed Kibera-Highrise estate, which involved
slum clearance and forced evictions.
KENSUP officials are aware of these issues and have addressed
them in a new communication plan. KENSUP commissioned
a consultant to analyze the current communication structure
between institutions within KENSUP and stakeholders and to
develop an action plan to address failures. The study found that
even members of various institutions within the KENSUP pro-
gram do not fully understand the project and its implementa-
tion. The plan stresses improving the transparency and account-
ability of KENSUP, which “has largely been lacking in the slum
upgrading process” and which will “allow community members
to understand and monitor their activities and expenditure while
allowing them to present their problems, needs, concerns and
options for solutions.”22 Only time will tell if these attempts
will overcome historical suspicions, widespread misinformation
(which leads to program opposition), ambiguities within the
program, and lack of participatory planning experience.
Housing Development and Improvement
A major component of Kibera’s upgrading is to replace all exist-
ing housing with permanent structures. Because of the settle-
ment’s extreme density, building vertically is the only way to
accommodate the existing residents, avoid massive displace-
ment, and still have land for open space and social uses such as
schools and hospitals. The high-rise buildings will not exceed
five stories in order to meet the city’s elevator code while main-
taining affordability. This housing plan follows a specific mode
of development defined by KENSUP as the “high-density re-
development approach,” in which the whole settlement is reor-
ganized, planned and serviced for new development with high-
rise blocks of flats to accommodate the existing high density.
The reorganized and planned site may be allocated under se-
cure tenure arrangements to individual developers, community
groups such as cooperative societies, corporate institutions, and
government institutions, that may develop for sale, for rental or
own occupancy.23
KENSUP has not yet decided how these housing units will be
developed, but is considering several options: “allocation to de-
velopers for rental or sale; community assistance to mobilize
financial resources to develop for ownership or rental; or Gov-
ernment development for sale or rental, estate management and
maintenance of various facilities.”24 Moreover, residents and
structure owners will have the following options in the newly
developed housing:
• To construct (according to KENSUP designs) and own,
either individually or through cooperatives, residential
blocks
• To rent out some of the flats within these blocks at KEN-
SUP-determined rates
• To rent residential flats/rooms25
While the housing units have yet to be designed in detail, a so-
called decanting site is nearly complete and may be indicative
of the housing type that will be constructed. The decanting site
is a housing development located adjacent to Kibera on land
donated by the nearby Langata Prison. The Nairobi City Coun-
cil, UN-HABITAT, the University of Nairobi and the residents
of Kibera collaborated to design the structures. The residents
were shown the initial plans at community meetings and were
able to comment and make changes to the schematics; however,
residents did not have any input prior to the presentation of the
plan. The site contains 17 blocks, each with varying numbers
of units. Each unit measures 6 meters by 7 meters and con-
tains three rooms, a kitchen, toilet, bathroom, and porch. The
kitchen, toilet and bathroom are fully serviced and includes a
faucet for washing clothes. The units are set up to allow a family
to occupy one room and rent the others while sharing the rest
of the facilities.
The site consists of 600 to 650 units and will initially be used
as temporary housing for people whose new units are under
construction. Residents will eventually be re-housed in the same
area as their current homes, because the enumeration mapped
residents’ locations. However, residents displaced by the roads
will live permanently at the decanting site.26 The site will also
have buildings for shops, businesses, and a nursery school. The
construction contract requires the contractor to hire local labor
on the site, thereby providing job opportunities for residents.
There are significant issues with the decanting site’s form. First,
commercial structures were belatedly added to the program be-
cause initial plans neglected to include shops. There will be 10
storefronts in the decanting site, though people may choose to
turn one of their rooms into a commercial use. There is also a
threat that the newly improved areas will provide room for fur-
ther slum proliferation. Bylaws are being developed to deter this
situation, but there are no assurances of enforcement.27
One of the most threatening challenges of the program may be
the cost of the units on the decanting site. As planned, the units
would have cost 500,000 Ksh (US $6,000), which is generally
affordable for the residents, but delays have doubled to cost to
1,000,000 Ksh (US $12,000).28 This price is unaffordable to the
residents and likely unsustainable for the government to subsi-
dize. Furthermore, both the decanting site and the program’s
officials indicate that the housing within Kibera will be high-
rise. While this is an efficient way to deal with Kibera’s immense
population density, it will significantly alter the lifestyle of the
residents.
The transition from residents’ current single-story, often tradi-
tionally constructed buildings, to high-rise structures will be a
significant issue. Studies of similar transitions have shown that
social interaction significantly decreases when traditional and
organic neighborhoods are transferred into areas redeveloped
“through ‘comprehensive development,’”29 particularly in a
community largely dependent upon social networks for em-
ployment and financing.
Most frightening, however, is the level of displacement cur-
rently not addressed but implied in program documents. The
MU LC A HY & C HU 15
proposed master plan for Kibera has established the maximum Site identification and design for all infrastructure is complete,
population at 441,261 and estimates the settlement’s popula- and construction of water and sanitation facilities has begun.
tion at 500,000. However, according to other measurements, Currently, deteriorating water standpipes and 110 toilets and
the population of Kibera could be as high as 1.2 million. This 50 bathrooms serve the entire 70,000 residents of Soweto Vil-
discrepancy implies potentially massive displacement. lage. The WATSAN initiative is facilitating the construction of
ablution blocks, which are communal water and sanitation fa-
Kibera Integrated Water, Sanitation and Waste
Management (WATSAN) Project
Another component of KENSUP is the Kibera Integrated Wa-
ter, Sanitation and Waste Management Project (WATSAN), an
initiative of UN-HABITAT’s Water for African Cities program,
led by UN-HABITAT and implemented by a local non-gov-
ernmental organization, Maji na Ufanisi.30 A central goal of
WATSAN is to address community inclusion, education, and
economic development in Soweto East. Consequently, the pro-
gram supports “small-scale community based initiatives in wa-
ter, sanitation and waste management.”31 This program recog-
nizes the fact that past attempts to improve water and sanitation
in Kibera have failed because they did not integrate water, solid
waste, sanitation, and drainage, which “need to be addressed
simultaneously in settlements like Kibera if there is to be a per-
ceivable improvement in the living environment.”32

The WATSAN program is guided by several principles:

• Support the community to improve accessibility to water

sanitation and credit facilities in Soweto East

• Support the community to improve the drainage system

in Soweto East
• Initiate small-scale door-to-door waste collection and re-
cycling initiatives
• To enable the Soweto East community gain basic knowl-
edge on computers and Internet accessibility
• To popularize within the community a non-motorized
transport system (improved bicycle transporter) for the
improvement of livelihoods within the urban poor
• Establish and strengthen governance frameworks to reg-
ulate distribution and accessibility to water and sanita-
tion33
These principles have translated into several projects with a large
community involvement component. Kiberan artisans have cre-
ated prototypes for the non-motorized transportation, and tests
of the system are ongoing. Also, the upper floor of the local
UN-HABITAT offices has been cleared to accommodate an in-
formation and communication technology center.34
A resident working on an ablution block sponsored through
WATSAN.
cilities. These sanitation facilities are “all-in-one complexes with
VIP [ventilated improved pit] latrines, shower cubicles and wa-
ter booths.”35 Community members are building the structures,
which are strategically placed to provide access to all residents.
Upon completion, residents will also be in charge of mainte-
nance of these structures. There is no mention about how resi-
dents will pay for these new services.
Transportation
The government and UN-HABITAT (through WATSAN) will
build roads to provide access to Kibera, making transportation,
emergency service, and construction easier. The first road seg-
ment to be built is at the entrance of the village and is planned
to be 12.5 meters wide. The road will also include a drainage
ditch between the road and a walkway. This area is currently a
commercial corridor so businesses moved during construction
will be rebuilt alongside the new walkway. The road for this
initial segment has already been cleared of residents, who have
moved elsewhere within the settlement. A primary 15-meter
wide distributor road will be the spine for 9-meter access roads,

16
which will provide space for walkways and service delivery. The
plan also proposes development of communal parking areas.36
The density and organic form of the village will make road
construction very difficult, as homes and businesses will need
to be permanently moved to create space for the roads. Peo-
ple displaced by the road will likely be permanent residents of
the decanting site.37 The current conditions of roads will also
complicate the construction process. Moreover, the plan makes
no mention of public transportation; yet it does provide park-
ing areas despite the fact that most Kibera residents use public
transportation or walk.
Electricity
Many residents are pirating electricity from a power line that
passes through the lower half of the settlement. However, most
structures are not connected to any electricity. The current plan
proposes redesigning power line distribution to follow the way-
leaves delineated in the master plan. There is no mention of how
residents will pay for electricity.38
Housing Finance Programs
Residents will pay for their homes incrementally through hous-
ing cooperatives, which are a means to provide both secure
tenure and a sense of belonging. Housing cooperatives ensure
residents’ full participation and ownership and increase the sus-
tainability of the upgrading process. Moreover, they provide ac-
cess to finance, which is not available to those without secure
tenure from the commercial market. Soweto East is divided into
four zones, and each will have a cooperative. The residents of
the zone elect the managing board; the only qualification to
join the coop is to have been enumerated in that zone in the
original survey.
Residents will save money and deposit it into the cooperative’s
communal fund. The cooperative will augment these funds
with outside donations and will lease or buy housing units for
its members from the government. The Kenya Slum Upgrad-
ing Fund (KENSUF) is responsible for mobilizing capital from
donors to provide additional money for the cooperatives. The
cooperative receives the deeds to the units, and these are trans-
ferred to individual residents as they save enough money to
pay off their units. The cooperative will subsidize the poorest
residents and manage the housing units. Kibera may depend
greatly on the success of the KENSUF to mobilize funds.
Moreover, 93 percent of residents in Kibera are tenants; thus
the owners of the structures must either be convinced to give up
their structures or be compensated, which would be prohibitive-
ly costly. To complicate matters further, 90 percent of structure
owners are politicians or government administrators. In similar
instances, politicians have cooperated because the large number
of residents in slums wield considerable voting power. But in
other cases, politicians have used their influence to agitate the
community against the upgrading program. In Mathare Valley
4A, an upgrading project facilitated by the Catholic Archdio-
cese, politician-structure owners incited destructive riots among
the community members and convinced residents to resist the
upgrading program. In Kibera, these structure owners have
bought print and news advertisements to put out false informa-
tion and propaganda against the upgrading program, and they
have tried to corrupt the SEC.39
In addition to these new savings programs, informal and tra-
ditional means of financing already exist in Kibera. According
to the socio-economic survey, residents’ sources of credit over-
whelmingly are friends and family. There are also merry-go-
rounds, which are informal pooled resource funds.
Establishment of Markets, Kiosks, and Shopping Centers
KENSUP’s plan for Kibera designates specified areas as com-
mercial nodes in order to regulate Kibera’s significant retail
activity and to support these businesses as income-generating
activities. Current business structure owners will be relocated
to improved sites in the newly designated commercial areas.
However, for employees in business, the KENSUP plan will
“provide legal counseling, provide information on optional em-
ployment or link with small scale credit providers to finance
start up businesses.”40
Provision of Facilities and Open Space
One of the KENSUP goals is to address slum upgrading ho-
listically, including health issues such as HIV/AIDS and com-
munity development facilities such as schools. The proposed
master plan recommends expanding existing nearby schools
to include two new primary schools and two new secondary
schools, as well as several nursery schools. The plan recognizes
existing neighborhood schools, which include several privately
owned primary and nursery schools. The plan also proposes a
health facility in the village of Kisumu Ndogo. Finally, desig-
nated open spaces have been identified for development and
protection, and higher density development will provide open
space between buildings. The plan stresses that proper refuse
disposal must be maintained to “avoid turning open spaces into
dumping grounds.”41
Relocation Plan
Although Kenya’s new policies addressing housing and land is-
sues stress minimization of displacement, the upgrading pro-
MU LCAHY & CH U 17
gram in Kibera will necessarily involve displacement. While the
ultimate number of displacements is unknown, those residents
within a 60-meter railway reserve will definitely be relocated,
as the Kenyan Railways Corporation is in the process of con-
cessioning the Kenya-Uganda Railway; law requires this right-
of-way to be cleared to “improve safety.”42 These people will
temporarily be placed in the decanting site, but will eventually
be relocated permanently. This is the entirety of the relocation
plan to date.
PROJECT RESULTS AND LESSONS
The Kibera Soweto Pilot project is ongoing, but based on cur-
rent progress, one can draw several lessons.
1. Community organization and participation is a critical
component in upgrading and must be engaged from the
time a project is conceived. Any project must be sensitive
to the community in which it is implemented.
2. The nature of tenure must be considered carefully; there-
fore, the existing land management system must be criti-
cally evaluated and any necessary adaptations or outstand-
ing issues resolved before upgrading.
3. There must be understanding about the conditions of
slums within the entire city or region so that interventions
in one do not adversely affect another.
4. Poverty alleviation must be an integral component of slum
upgrading; this may take many different forms but housing
and service affordability is a crucial factor.
Slum upgrading projects are not solutions; they are one im-
portant element within a larger, more comprehensive housing
18
policy. Unintended consequences of isolated slum upgrading
projects can actually precipitate the creation of new slums.
Proressor Marie Huchzermeyer of Postgraduate Housing Pro-
gramme at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannes-
burg, South Africa, writes
Targeting resource allocation for service delivery and
home-ownership exclusively at slum dwellers…unleashes
intense competition for this improvement, soon displac-
ing the original beneficiaries through cash offers from the
better-off. These offers seem attractive, but are seldom suf-
ficient to secure a better living elsewhere. By default, such
intervention creates customers for structure owners and
water sellers in other areas—expanding or newly emerg-
ing slums. Slum intervention must entail realistic means
to prevent this from happening or means for the slum
dwellers to exit their slum by moving into more adequate
forms of affordable housing rather than moving to new
slums.”43
Addressing only the needs of slum dwellers and the poorest of
the poor in isolation will not alleviate the housing shortfall or
stem the growth of new slums. A variety of housing must be
provided so that low- to middle-income earners have housing in
which to filter up, thereby freeing lower income housing.
Security of tenure is also a vital component of a sustainable
slum upgrading program and can be achieved in a number of
ways. It is imperative to consider local land laws and customs in
order to determine an appropriate method to achieve security.
Finally, income-generating opportunities must also be an ele-
ment of an upgrading program. Improved economic prospects
not only increase the quality of residents’ lives, but also decrease
the temptation for newly secure tenants to sell their rights to
wealthier families.
Authors’ Note Endnotes
This case study was prepared as part of City Planning 619: 1
“Kibera Social and Economic Mapping: Household Survey and Report,”
International Design and Development, Case Studies in Slum Research International.
Upgrading offered by Dr. Michael Larice. In May of 2007 2
Winnie Mitullah, “The Case of Nairobi, Kenya,” 2003.
3
Cordaid and the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies,
12 students enrolled in an intense, tri-weekly lecture course “Process Mapping: Disclosing Actors and Citizen Participation in
covering the history of informal settlements, their physical and Nairobi” [report online] (accessed 29 August 2007); available from http://
www.ihs.nl/downloads/IHS-Cordaid%20publications/ PM_Nairobi_
social conditions, causes and forces behind their rapid growth, Kenya.pdf; Internet; 6.
and case studies of upgrading projects from Asian, African and 4
Ibid., 6.
5
Ibid., 7.
Latin American countries. Nine students traveled with Dr. 6
Ibid., 27.
Larice to Kenya and Tanzania during the month of June to 7
Ibid.
research upgrading projects in cities and towns throughout the
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
region. The case studies produced from this research are being 10
COHRE “Update, March 2006” <http://www.cohre.org/store/attachments/
compiled into a website that will be available for viewing later II_update-Kenya.pdf>.
11
Process Mapping, 8-9.
this year. 12
Ibid.
13
“Slum Upgrading Facility,” UN-HABITAT
14
“Abridged Version of the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme (KENSUP)
We would like to thank the Provost’s Fund for Innovation in Strategy, 2005-2020,” Kenya Ministry of Housing, March 2007, 4.
International Offerings, the Hewlett Foundation, Dean Gary 15
“Briefing Note,” UN-HABITAT.
16
Process Mapping, 27.
Hack and the School of Design for help in sponsoring this 17
Ibid.
course. It was a profound experience for all of us. 18
“Grappling with the Burden of Expanding Slums in Nairobi,” IRIN, 4 June
2004; available at www.warmafrica.com/index/geo/8/cat/1/a/a/artid/541;
Internet; Accessed on 8/15/07.
19
Process Mapping, 12.
20
Ibid. 6.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid., 7.
23
Ministry of Housing, 12.
24
Joshua Kaiganaine, Interview, UN-HABITAT, June 2007.
25
Kaiganaine.
26
Kaiganaine.
27
Fulong Wu, Jiang Xu, and Anthony Gar-On Yeh, Urban Redevelopment in
Post-Reform China, (New York: Rougledge. 2007), 258.
28
(Water and Development)
29
“Water and Sanitation Programme,” UN-HABITAT, 2005; available at
http://www.unhabitat.org/categories.asp? Catid=270; Internet; accessed
at 8/29/08.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
34
Francis Omondi Omboughr, interview by author, June 2007, Kibera,
Nairobi.
35
Kaiganaine.
36
Ministry of Housing, 8-10.
37
Kaiganaine.
38
Ministry of Housing, 13.
39
Ibid., 9 – 10.
40
Ibid., 11.
41
Marie Huchzermeyer, “Slum Upgrading Initiatives in Kenya within the
Basic Services and Wider Housing Market: a Housing Rights Concern,”
COHRE Africa Program, 2006, 9.

MU LC A HY & C HU 19