1. The largest slum in Africa
The task of articulating the conditions and history of Kibera is a challenging and, at times, emotional one. It is difficult for a visitor, tenant, or non-profit worker not to be heartbroken and outraged after walking the alleys of Kibera; however, local politicians typically ignore it or use it as an easily-manipulated voting bloc.
At the onset of the project, the authors set out to write a clear account of the known information about Kibera, drawing upon over 30 academic, news, and political sources. The full summary constitutes Chapter 1 of the book (including the list of sources, which can be provided upon request). What follows here is a summary of the research done to-date.
So what is Kibera?
Kibera has the unfortunate distinction of being the worst slum settlement in a city known worldwide for its very bad slums. It is a collection of twelve to thirteen informal villages located southwest of Nairobi's city center, resting on ~630 km (or 2.5 sq. miles) of terrain that, in essence, no one really knows who owns.
It is a place where the people who live there face innumerable challenges, including the following, to name a few...
- Living in one-room houses made of mud, with tin roofs
- No running water (most water has to be purchased from brokers)
- Little to no access to electricity
- Widespread unemployment and low wage-earning rates (< $1 a day for the majority)
- Rampant disease, from malaria to cholera to HIV
- Lack of ownership of their property
Computing the population of Kibera accurately is difficult, for the slum has not been officially recognized by the Kenyan government throughout its entire existence. Estimates range from 235,000 on the extreme low end to 1.2 million on the high end; most researchers, basing their estimates on extrapolations from samples taken from various villages, conclude that the actual population is somewhere in the range of 700,000 to 900,000. Given the dimensions of the land area, this implies that the slum has a population density roughly thirty times that of Manhattan.