Nairobi — "The impact of a volatile climate is not just measured by the washed-out homes and businesses. It also registers in the rise in sexual and gender-based violence."
When the rains finally came to Nairobi at the beginning of March, many residents were grateful: The dry season had been long, and the city desperately needed a reprieve. But then the nightly showers turned torrential, and residents across the city's informal settlements began to worry.
In Baba Dogo, a small slum along the Mathare River, locals watched on the evening of 6 March as the waters began to surge, rising up the banks and washing over the footbridges that they relied on each day. As the night wore on, the floodwater flowed over the deep ravine and into the neighbourhood's lowest - and poorest - homes.
As water pooled around her ankles, Florence Owilo joined her housemates in scrambling to the rooftop of their low cinderblock building, passing small children between them up to the corrugated metal sheets, hoping they'd be safe from the floodwaters.
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Other residents were on their roofs, or sheltering in apartments on higher ground. Consolata Owoko, 17, and her 12 family members - all of whom shared a small ground-level unit - made their way to an upstairs neighbour's balcony, crowding together and watching the flash flood carry debris downstream.
"We watched until 3am," she said. "The water swept up cars, shacks, refrigerators - and people." By morning, the water had subsided, leaving behind heaps of refuse, and at least four bodies. Community members didn't recognise the victims, and surmised they'd been swept down to the slums from further upstream.
This year's floods are not the first to disrupt life and kill residents in Nairobi's most vulnerable areas. It is an increasingly common occurrence, and a sign of the climate instability that has continued to worsen year on year, both in East Africa and around the world.
Even as parts of rural northeastern Kenya are suffering extreme drought, urban communities in Nairobi in the south of the country are being flooded regularly - a combination of torrential rain showers and the poor infrastructural maintenance in the rapidly growing city.
But the impact of a volatile climate is not just measured by the washed-out homes and businesses. It also registers in the rise in sexual and gender-based violence (GBV) among survivors in affected communities.
Precarity and GBV
Upstream from Baba Dogo, in the Mathare informal settlement, this cycle has played out before. A particularly devastating flood occurred in April 2024 when days of heavy rainfall caused the Mathare River - which snakes through the centre of the community - to break its banks. Countless homes were washed away, more than 40 people were killed, and an estimated 200,000 people - out of a settlement of roughly 500,000 - were displaced.
Researchers at the Mathare Social Justice Centre, a local non-profit, began to notice an increase in women reporting cases of sexual and gender violence following the floods.
Interviewing survivors, they found that one in five women had directly experienced or witnessed GBV, and more than half knew about cases in their communities. Gathanga Ndung'u, one of the centre's researchers, attributed the rise in cases of domestic violence to the economic stress surviving households were under.
"Most of these women are focusing on micro-enterprises - preparing fries, selling vegetables - while their partner goes to work somewhere else," Ndung'u told The New Humanitarian. "When a woman is not working, and they solely depend on a man, it becomes pressure."
GBV rates have historically been high in Kenya, but disaster - globally - compounds gender inequalities, a report by the Mathare Social Justice Centre noted.
Displacement adds to the GBV risks. Washed-out families typically move in with relatives, friends, or into shelters. Those unable to find new places to live are suddenly burdened by rent at a time when many have lost their jobs and livelihoods.
Beatrice Karore, a resident of Mathare, runs the Wanawake Mashinani Initiative, a grassroots women's empowerment organisation serving residents. Working out of a one-room cinderblock office, painted a cheery pink and covered with slogans, Karore is often the first stop for women who have been displaced from their homes or who are the victims of GBV.
"Many women were put into difficult situations," said Karore. "They moved in with other families or in shelters, where they weren't able to escape violence or assault."
Behind her desk, a stack of thin mattresses leans against the wall. For women trying to escape from unsafe living conditions, Karore's office can provide a temporary shelter. Many women looking for a safe place to go spend the night on the floor before Karore is able to connect them with better-off organisations or shelters.
But her small office's efforts only go so far in a community that has long been under-resourced.
Nowhere safe to go
"Another challenge at the moment is there's been a problem with the safe houses," said Ndung'u. "Most of them reach their capacity, and funding becomes a problem so they cannot take many people."
With nowhere to go, and very few outlets from which to receive assistance, many residents are stuck in limbo after the latest flooding.
Just down the road, the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Lavender House Clinic has provided medical care and legal services to GBV and sexual assault victims for nearly two decades. But it has only four beds for women survivors, and can only support individuals for 24-48 hours while they try to connect them to other shelter networks.
Since the dismantling of USAID at the beginning of last year, support systems have been stretched thin, said George Wambugu, MSF's medical team leader. USAID-funded programmes upheld critical networks that once connected hospitals, police, and community groups to help women fight back against GBV.
MSF offers medical and psychosocial care for survivors, and helps those who wish to bring a legal case against the perpetrators. But Kenya's prosecution services are weak. Despite every police station having a gender office, its officers "aren't equipped to handle gender-based cases," Ndung'u told The New Humanitarian.
When reporting, survivors are often subjected to victim-blaming and demeaning questions. Officers sometimes ask what the women were wearing, or what they did to provoke their attackers, he said, explaining how this discourages survivors from reporting - as do the more urgent necessities of finding safe shelter or work.
Government evictions and demolitions
Successive Kenyan governments have failed to tackle the humanitarian impact of disaster-prone and poorly serviced informal settlements.
After the 2024 floods, President William Ruto visited Mathare and pledged that displaced families would each receive 10,000 Kenyan shillings ($77). But hardly any residents were able to access the resettlement money.
Scrambling to find shelter and look for work were people's immediate priorities. "The money didn't go to those who were affected," said Ndung'u. "It went to those who were connected."
This year, no relocation money has been offered, although Public Service and Special Programmes Minister Geoffrey Ruku did make assurances that hospital bills and burial expenses would be covered for those injured or killed in the flooding.
Much of the reason Mathare, Baba Dogo, and other informal settlements have been hit so hard by repeated flooding is that the ever-growing communities have been encroaching on riparian land.
Hemmed into the slum areas by roads, rivers, and much nicer neighbourhoods, new arrivals to the city's cheapest and least-regulated areas have built their homes closer and closer to the river.
In 2024, the government's response was to send in the bulldozers. All houses, shacks, and structures within 30 metres of the river had to be removed, by order of the Kenyan government.
Heavy machinery was used to demolish the homes, often with little warning. Residents unable to relocate in time often lost their possessions in the clearing, along with their sources of income.
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"While the floods wreaked havoc, leaving a trail of destruction and losses, government evictions and demolitions stole more people's homes and businesses," noted the Mathare centre's report.
"Demolitions were executed quickly, without enough notice for people to vacate. What little residents had been able to salvage after the floods, the government then destroyed," it added.
A new plan?
Last year, Ruto announced a Nairobi River Basin Regeneration Programme, a comprehensive effort to clear informal construction, clean up waste, and improve the sewer systems in the city to prevent flooding.
The plan proposes the construction of 50,000 affordable social housing units in the next decade, though community leaders are already expressing concerns over corruption and preferential access.
On the ground in Baba Dogo, Owilo and her neighbours are still waiting for any kind of help. On an afternoon in March, she watched with her son as youth groups worked to clear debris from the earlier flooding. Clean water was scarce, and the only working tap had been commandeered by a gang of young men who were charging for its use.
Trash, clothing, and other refuse still covered the banks of the Mathare River, even hanging from the branches of the trees where the floodwaters surged. Among the debris were mattresses and a small sofa from her ground-floor apartment soaked by the flood. They had to be discarded and were now mouldering in the sun.
"Everything was flooded," Owilo said, gesturing at the waist-high water marks on the wall of her home. "Mattress, clothes, food - now we have nothing. And no one [from the government] has come by to help."
As the seasonal long rains continue through to the end of May, the only real certainty is more rain, and the very real threat of more flooding.
Edited by Obi Anyadike.
Paul Stremple, Independent journalist and photographer reporting on climate, culture and conflict across East Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya
