Nairobi

The menstruation taboo is holding girls back

If girls living in slums are to get ahead in life, it is essential that they be able to attend school just as much as their male counterparts. Yet according to the NGO TearFund, "ten percent of school-age girls in Africa do not attend school during menstruation or drop out completely at puberty because of the absence of clean and private sanitation facilities in schools." As a consequence, solving the taboo issue of the menses has become an important focus of many NGOs and social businesses operating in the Nairobi slums. Read more.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Fri, 07/06/2012 - 01:00

Nairobi is drowning in its own waste

Ridding Nairobi of the mountains of trash that threaten to engulf the city has been a hot topic for the last couple of decades. The issues to contend with range from what to do with the heaps of bags that are suffocating the city and its rivers, and how to close down the Dandora dump site that should have been decommissioned decades ago, to how we can create an environment that encourages recycling and provides jobs for low-income people. The reality, however, is that although the topic remains hot and the issues ever more pressing, nobody ever seems to actually do anything about it. Learn more.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Fri, 06/29/2012 - 01:00

Mapping Kibera

Before October 2009, Kibera, second-largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa, was a blank spot — one that had been photographed and filmed thousands of times but that no one had ever attempted to document properly. That's when Map Kibera's Mikel Maron and Erica Hagen, alongside a group of 13 enthusiastic youth, sought to put Kibera on the map, providing a source of public, open, and shared information that would, they hoped, be used to enhance living standards in the settlement. Read more.

Submitted by Nairobi — Tue, 05/22/2012 - 01:00

Floods, emergency aid and community resilience in Mathare

Just before dawn on May 13, the Nairobi River broke through a dam upstream from the city and flooded parts of Mathare, carrying with it a number of shacks where people were asleep. One woman was reported killed, while by Monday the unofficial number of displaced people had reached 600. This comes after a Kenya Red Cross warning that since March 2012, 50 have died and tens of thousands have been displaced in Kenya as a result of flooding. What can slum dwellers do to protect themselves from the onslaught of rain during flood season? Read more.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Wed, 05/16/2012 - 01:00

Community mapping: Muungano Support Trust and Pamoja Trust

Most informal settlements in Nairobi lack running water, sewage systems, or any semblance of state-provided infrastructure. That's due in part to the government's refusal to acknowledge those settlements' existence — and, thus, that of the many hundreds of thousands of people who live in them. Muungano Trust and Pamoja Trust joined together to map and enumerate the residents of Nairobi slums, helping them to unite and demand recognition of their basic rights. Read more.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Tue, 05/08/2012 - 01:00

Using World Bank Group instruments to leverage private investment in power

Increasing access to energy in Africa is vital for further development, especially given its population growth and escalating urbanization. By 2030, it is expected that nearly half of Africans will be living in urban areas, with the urban population exceeding rural population by 100 million by 2035. At current electrification rates, in 2030, 654 million Africans will have no access to power. Kenya's government is looking at options for significantly increasing private participation in Kenya's power sector, and is using the World Bank Group to leverage investments. Learn more.

Submitted by Nairobi — Wed, 04/25/2012 - 01:00

Report from Nairobi: Beyond "flying toilets"

You wake up, as you do every morning, knowing you'll soon be squeezed into an overcrowded matatus and headed for work — and that the nearest toilet is a ten-minute walk from your tin shack. There you'll stand in line for another ten minutes, then pay to use an overflowing and odorous latrine. For many in Nairobi's slums, the "flying toilet" — a thin plastic bag used in your one-room dwelling, then flung as far away as possible in the dead of night — is the only viable alternative to this vile scenario. But the health implications are obvious; hence the determination of a group of MIT researchers and a Swedish NGO to come up with a better solution. Read more.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Wed, 03/28/2012 - 01:00

Unique Computer Training Program in Kibera

Kibera Community Youth Programme (KCYP), a community-based organization in Kibera, entered into a partnership with Nairobits Digital Design School, a college that offers sponsorships to the needy, to establish a unique computer training course. The idea was to devise a course that would help bridge the digital divide between the youth of Kibera and the rest of the world. In fact, there are many computer courses going on currently within Kibera. However, this one is quite different. Learn more.

Submitted by Nairobi — Tue, 03/13/2012 - 01:00

Can technology bring safety to women in a Nairobi slum?

The hours of darkness are a dangerous time for a woman to be out in an unlit Nairobi slum. A group of researchers from Stanford University have recently been trying to address this issue in a pilot project they are running in Mathare called "Makmende" — the name of a superhero and Internet phenomenon. The project attempts to harness the power of 3G GPS mobile phones by establishing a central hub from which an escorted group's progress is monitored and the information is relayed back to users, as the group proceeds along a predefined route. Learn more.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Tue, 02/21/2012 - 00:00

Sack farms in Mathare

With food insecurity a simple fact of life for many in Nairobi's Mathare slum, Mathare residents are learning to supplement insecure food sources with hands-on alternatives. One popular approach to sustainable urban agriculture in Nairobi's impoverished neighborhoods is the Farm in a Sack concept: filling a burlap sack with a core of rocks surrounded by soil, then growing crops out of little holes in the side. This "vertical" method increases dramatically the amount of produce that can be grown: instead of the 15 sukuma wiki plants produced per square meter by ordinary means, the "Farm in a Sack" method can enable a family to grow up to 60. Read more.