The City Council of Nairobi yesterday hosted a trade fair festival in the Central Business District to display goods and services offered by slum dwellers. The theme of the fair was to promote community development initiatives in Nairobi towards sustainable livelihood, poverty alleviation and achievement of Vision 2030.

Various youth groups displayed their art works, agricultural and farm products outside the KenCom Bus stage. "We do socio-economic empowerment of small community groups especially slums through income generating projects, training and group monitoring. However, the groups have complained of lack of a market platform hence we thought of organising this unique trade fair," said Christine Ongondo, the senior community development officer at City hall.

"I appeal to the larger business community to assist the smaller ones to come up in order to alleviate poverty through job creation," she added. The fair brought together 128 groups from 12 sectors including small manufacturers, farmers, artists and performing arts groups from all over Nairobi mostly in the form of self help groups. An artist Eric Kiche said most of them have never had a platform to showcase their work and thanked the city council for providing the opportunity. The trade fair will run till Saturday.