Joyce Mulama
19 March 2006
Nairobi — Reports about the housing situation in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, often focus on the lack of proper places to stay - particularly in the massive slum of Kibera, where tens of thousands live in appalling conditions.
However, there are also areas of the city where too many residential properties are being built - or at least, being built too quickly.
Development here is outstripping the provision of water, electricity and sewerage systems. And the result, greater numbers of people relying on limited infrastructure, is seen as a recipe for disaster.
Nairobi's town clerk, John Gakuo, sounded the alarm over this situation towards the end of last year when he stopped construction of additional high-rise apartments in the upmarket suburbs of Kileleshwa, Kilimani and Westlands.
Prior to the arrival of developers, these three areas in the west of Nairobi were characterised by spacious compounds with bungalows, and were sparsely populated. Now, apartment blocks have become their hallmark.
Gakuo pointed out that the service infrastructure in the estates were not designed to accommodate the far higher number of inhabitants brought about by the replacement of bungalows with apartment blocks.
New suburbs such as Syokimau, Mlolongo and Ruai on the outskirts of Nairobi are even worse off.
In these areas, developers are erecting buildings before authorities have laid on certain basic infrastructure. Besides an absence of piped water and electricity, there are no access roads; developers simply create their own - while finding ways of tapping water and electricity from miles away.
"The development on the ground is way ahead of planning; it is way ahead of any infrastructural provision," Erastus Abonyo, vice chairperson of the Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK), told IPS.
However, he blames government for this state of affairs, rather than the developers: "The problem is not the developers. It is that the institutions charged with the responsibility of managing local development and planning are not doing so."
Abonyo says the Nairobi City Council (NCC) even lacks a service master plan outlining how infrastructure shortages should be addressed.
But John Koyier Barreh, an official at the City Planning Department of the NCC, disagrees.
Planning initiatives are in place, he told IPS, citing the Nairobi Metropolitan Growth Strategy, prepared for the council in 1973.
While this plan stipulates how infrastructure should be provided to Nairobi and its environs, it has only been implemented on a piece-meal basis due to lack of funds, says Barreh.
"The plan never got a government budgetary allocation to support its total implementation," he notes.
"You cannot blame the NCC, whose budget is about four billion Kenya shillings (about 56 million dollars) per year, to fix infrastructure like roads in the city. This is the responsibility of the central government."
Barreh says authorities also secured funds for the NCC from the World Bank, which has added its voice to the chorus of concern over infrastructure shortages - noting that population growth in Nairobi has severely strained available services.
But, he adds, this money was not sufficient for the Nairobi Metropolitan Growth Strategy to be realised in full.
A third plan for infrastructure development in the city is now in the works.
However, some believe the key to providing sufficient water, sewerage and the like does not lie in plans - but rather in establishing a national, independent body for the construction industry to ensure that no building is erected before the necessary infrastructure is in place.
An official committee set up in 1998 to investigate Nairobi's housing situation recommended that such a body be created - and the AAK has since been pushing government to move ahead with establishing it.
To date, its efforts have drawn a blank.
"We have continued to hold several meetings with the NCC and other local authorities as well as with the central government, advising it on the urgency of a building body. Up to now, no word yet - but we are still waiting," said Abonyo.
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