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Abstract
D
uring the last four decades, Kenya has experienced rapid urbanization. The country’s urban economies, however, have not been able to keep pace. This, coupled with inadequate housing and urban planning, has contributed immensely to the proliferation of slums and informal settlements in Kenya’s urban areas. In Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city, an estimated 60% of the population lives in informal settlements.To reverse this trend, the government of Kenya, in collaboration with UN-HABITAT and other stakeholders, initiated the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme (KENSUP) in 2003. The program is aimed at improving the livelihoods of people living and working in slums and informal settlements, estimated to be 5.3 million individuals.
KENSUP is currently in its implementation phase. The core strategies of the program are urban planning, shelter improvement (housing), and security of tenure. Implementation activities began in Nairobi’s Kibera informal settlement, specifically, the Soweto East village of Kibera, which is a program pilot area. Kibera, located approximately 5 kilometers (3 miles) southwest of Nairobi’s city center, is thought to be the largest slum in Africa.
Characteristically, the settlement is densely populated, environmentally degraded, and without basic infrastructure; residents live in squalid conditions.
This article provides an overview of Kenya’s urbanization, its previous policy on slums, the current initiative to upgrade informal settlements (i.e., KENSUP), and KENSUP’s achievements, opportunities, and challenges. It critically examines the role of urban planning in addressing the challenges associated with urban slums.
Key Words:Urbanization in Kenya, Slums and Informal Settlements, Slum Upgrading, Urban Planning, Housing, Tenure
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1. Overview of urbanization in Kenya
The rate of urbanization in Kenya is among the highest in the world. While the estimated annual growth rate of the urban population in Kenya was 7.05% from 1995 through 2000, the average growth rate was 4.37% for African cities and 2.57% for the world during the same period.
Kenya is urbanizing rapidly; its expected average growth rate was 3.9% per year from 2005 through 2010.The population has experienced remarkable shifts in urbanization levels, increasing from 8% at independence to 19% in 1989 and 19.4% in 1999.
Urbanization was estimated to have increased more than 25% in 2007 and is projected to account for about 32% of the total population by 2012. This growth is largely due to a high level of rural-urban migration fuelled by rural poverty and a dwindling of per capita ownership of farming and grazing land.
The urbanization process in the country has also been uneven; it has been dominated by one city, Nairobi, which has a population of about 3.1 million.
2. Previous policy on slums
Slums and informal settlements are a characteristic feature in the urban areas of Kenya. These settlements are the result of a combination of factors, including a lack of or inadequate urban planning, insufficient
affordable housing, an increasing urban population that is propelled by rural-urban migration, increasing urban poverty, and inequality. The settlements are characterized by overcrowding, a lack of social and physical infrastructure, poor sanitation, poor housing, insecure tenure, and environmental degradation.
Even though this issue was apparent, for a long time the government had no clear-cut policy on how to address the ever increasing challenge. Over the years, therefore, numerous strategies have been used to address slums. Policies have steadily evolved from repressive approaches aiming to eradicate slums and control “undesirable dwellers” (migrants and other social
“undesirables") to an assimilating view of urban populations. Such policies and strategies have ranged from forced eviction, resettlement, and site and service schemes to, most recently, slum upgrading that is coupled with tenure regularization. The upgrading and regularization were required by the National Housing Policy of 2004 and the National Land Policy of 2009.
2.1 Housing policy
In 2004, the government of Kenya adopted Sessional Paper No. 4, the National Housing Policy, which was intended to address housing challenges, among them that demand surpasses supply, particularly in urban areas. The current estimated urban housing needs of 150,000 units annually
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stands in contrast to the production of only 20,000 to 30,000 units. This shortfall in housing, coupled with a population explosion, rapid urbanization, a lack of adequate planning, widespread poverty, and escalating costs to provide housing, has fomented the proliferation of informal settlements.
This policy acknowledged the existence of slums and recommended strategies for addressing them that include enabling the poor to access housing and basic services and infrastructure necessary for a healthy living environment, especially in urban areas;
encouraging integrated, participatory approaches to slum upgrading, including income-generating activities that effectively combat poverty; promoting and funding of research on the development of low-cost building materials and construction techniques; harmonizing existing laws that govern urban development and electric power to facilitate more cost-effective housing development; facilitating increased investment by the formal and informal private sector in the production of housing for low-and middle-income urban dwellers; low-and creating the Housing Development Fund to be financed through budgetary allocations and financial support from development partners and other sources.
2.2 National Land Policy
The National Land Policy recognized the existence of informal settlements and acknowledged that they present a challenge
for land planning and development. The policy specified that the government will take an inventory of genuine squatters and people who live in informal settlements;
determine whether land occupied by squatters is suitable for human settlement;
establish appropriate mechanisms for the removal of squatters from unsuitable land and for their resettlement; facilitate planning of land found to be suitable for human settlement; ensure that land subject to informal settlement is developed in an ordered and sustainable manner; facilitate negotiation between private owners and squatters in cases of squatter settlements on private land; facilitate the regularization of existing squatter settlements found on public and community land for purposes of upgrading or development; establish a legal framework and procedures for transferring unused land and land belonging to absentee land owners to squatters and people living in informal settlements;
develop, in consultation with affected communities, a slum upgrading and resettlement program under specified flexible tenure systems; put in place measures to prevent further slum development; facilitate informal commercial activities in a planned manner; regulate the disposal of land allocated to squatters and informal settlers; and establish an appropriate legal framework for eviction based on internationally accepted guidelines.
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