Header photo credit: Folasade Tolulope Ogunsola

Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

Generative AI was used to help draft this blog post: The authors used Claude AI to help arrange/align ideas and revise grammar. This version was then reviewed and edited by the ACRC communications team, before being approved by the authors.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

By Oluwaseun Muraina and Rasheed Shittu, ACRC Lagos action research project co-leads

When a key character in Game of Thrones tells Queen Cersei that “knowledge is power”, her immediate response is to order his death, with the retort that “power is power”.

We can draw a lesson from this. Knowledge alone does not determine outcomes – authority, institutions, enforcement and the ability to shape decisions do. The tension between knowledge and power is not confined to fictional kingdoms. It plays out daily in African cities, particularly in informal settlements, where communities possess deep knowledge of their realities but often lack formal authority to influence their preferred realities over land, infrastructure and services.

When the ACRC Lagos water and sanitation (WASH) team visited Mukuru in Nairobi, for a learning exchange, we carried a simple question: how do informal settlements secure dignified water and sanitation access in cities that often overlook them? What can Lagos learn from Nairobi in the struggle for equitable water and sanitation?

What we observed in Mukuru was not just community innovation, but well-organised influence. Alongside the improved water and sanitation provision, we witnessed how communities convert knowledge into structured bargaining power. In Mukuru’s informal settlements, the presence of community data, organised committees, transparent billing systems, and strategic engagement with city authorities has transformed lived experience into negotiating strength.

What we returned with was a series of more difficult questions: Is knowledge really power? How does a community move from understanding its deprivation to shaping the systems that govern it? And how does information translate into institutional authority?

Using data as a tool for community advocacy

Our visit began with Akiba Mashinani Trust (AMT), which hosted the delegation and is a central protagonist of the Mukuru Special Planning Area (SPA) story. AMT revealed a critical insight: communities that are not counted are easily ignored. Through systematic profiling, mapping and documentation, AMT and Mukuru residents have strengthened their engagement with county authorities, in some cases contributing to more structured responses to displacement and upgrading.

Building public trust, one sewer line at a time

Mukuru’s simplified sewer systems, facilitated by the state-owned Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company, serve hundreds of households through cost-effective design. Pre-paid water dispensers operate through token-based billing, reducing disputes and increasing transparency. These are technical solutions, but their deeper value lies in governance. Clear billing systems, defined management structures and accountable committees build trust. Trust strengthens legitimacy. Legitimacy strengthens negotiating authority.

What this means for Lagos

For Lagos, particularly in Okerube, where ACRC’s WASH project is ongoing, this lesson is critical. infrastructure must be accompanied by systems that institutionalise community governance. Without this, even the best technical model remains fragile.

The Lagos WASH team returned with clear actions to follow up on:

> Strengthening community data collection for advocacy.

> Deepening engagement with government and political office holders.

> Adapting proven solutions from Mukuru to improve service access, transparency and sustainability in Lagos informal settlements.

The broader insight is this: information without influence is vulnerable. Knowledge without organisation is limited. Power is the structured capacity to shape outcomes – built through committees, data systems, alliances, transparent management and sustained engagement with institutions.

In Mukuru, we witnessed how mobilised communities are combining all of these to deliver results – one water point, one dataset, and one negotiation at a time. The approach to WASH provision there demonstrates that when communities combine technical knowledge with collective organisation and strategic political engagement, they can move from surviving the city to shaping it.

Ultimately, power is the ability of ordinary citizens to influence how the city works. This is what we want to build.

Read more:

• Nairobi to Naija: Inclusive service delivery in African cities is not a pipe dream
• From Mukuru to Okerube: Reflections from the Nairobi–Lagos WASH exchange

Listen:

• Podcast: Building community-driven WASH solutions in Lagos

Photo credits: Akiba Mashinani Trust

Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

Grammarly was used for grammar checks and to assist with rephrasing selected sections of the first draft for clarity. This version was then reviewed and edited by the ACRC communications team, before being approved by the author.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

Meeting local council members and visiting Okerube

The first day included a visit to the Executive Chairman of Igando/Ikotun Local Council Development Area (LCDA), a transect walk through the Okerube settlement and a meeting aimed at aligning government commitment with community priorities.

Meeting the Igando/Ikotun Chairman reinforced a need for structured collaboration between local and state governments in order to improve service delivery. He highlighted the importance of multistakeholder partnerships to address infrastructure deficits and expand access to basic services, also noting the need to grant greater autonomy to local governments to strengthen accountability and improve delivery.

During the engagement, the Chairman also formally confirmed institutional support for the WASH project in Okerube settlement, committing participation from relevant departments within the local government – specifically Budget and Planning, Agriculture, Health and Social Services, and Works and Development. The visit concluded with the Chairman expressing readiness to scale development interventions following implementation of the research project, reaffirming the institutional commitment to collaborative planning.

Following the meeting, the team visited Okerube settlement to better understand the spatial realities of the area – particularly the infrastructure conditions and flood-prone zones – as well as its socioeconomic dynamics. Unlike many highly congested informal settlements, Okerube has open spaces and defined plots, but inadequate infrastructure, weak drainage management and environmental vulnerability compound flooding in the settlement. While an active informal economy has emerged to fill service provision gaps, these enterprises are often located in high flood risk areas.

A community meeting was also convened to allow direct dialogue with Okerube residents. Although some community members were hesitant to openly discuss local challenges, other residents highlighted a number of priority needs – including improved water and sanitation, flood management, electricity supply, road and drainage infrastructure, secondary education, streetlighting and security. Flooding in particular emerged as a critical concern, with community members reporting severe flooding at least every two years and one resident describing having to carry her child on her shoulders through chest-level floodwaters to safety.

At the end of the day, the delegation had made progress in contextualising Okerube’s vulnerabilities and securing formal commitment from the LCDA to support the implementation of the WASH action research project.

ACRC Lagos in-city politics lead Damilola Agbalajobi delivered a presentation on Nigeria’s political and governance system, contextualising the planning environment for the Okerube WASH initiative and exploring the political dynamics that influence development processes in Lagos.

Funmilayo Daniel separately presented on the Women Water Committees, covering their leadership structure, operational model and how organised community groups have improved water accountability in underserved areas. Her presentation underlined how women’s groups have emerged as critical actors in improving water access in communities.

Following this, the Nairobi delegation shared practical experiences from Kenya – with Maureen Musya presenting the Mukuru Special Planning Area process and Rex Otieno covering the Homa Bay planning process, detailing the methodology and highlighting how long-term frameworks can provide stability and allow for phased investment.

Designing an integrated plan for Okerube

The third day transitioned from knowledge sharing to structured design. Collectively, delegates made progress in defining a shared vision for Okerube informal settlement and outlining the structured actions required to guide the planning process. With support from AMT, the ACRC Lagos team prepared an integrated participatory plan for Okerube informal settlement, moving beyond WASH issues to address broader and interconnected challenges – such as flooding, infrastructure deficits, land issues, social amenities and environmental risks.

For relevance and sustainability, the plan required integration at several levels:

> Integration with existing statutory and development plans

> Sectoral coordination across thematic areas

> Spatial and non-spatial linkages

> Climate and environmental considerations

> Structured input from diverse stakeholders

By the end of the day, it was clear that structured governance arrangements, early and sustained stakeholder engagement, standardised data systems and data-led decision making were key to a phased and methodical planning pathway.

Building capacity around data collection

The fourth day saw the team returning to Okerube settlement for a field-based capacity sharing initiative, which involved hands-on training on enumeration and real-time testing of tools to prepare for a full-scale data collection exercise. After preliminary deliberations to agree on a numbering structure, the session formally commenced with an orientation exercise for 17 community researchers on data collection. The pilot exercise allowed testing of research tools and refinement of questions, to sharpen numbering prior to a full rollout.

Involving community co-researchers proved instrumental in facilitating access and building trust. Their familiarity with local pathways and residents helped cooperation and minimised resistance. The pilot also worked to strengthen enumerator confidence, clarify workflow expectations and provide a shared understanding of quality control standards.

Reflecting and mapping a way forward

As the Lagos and Nairobi teams met one last time for a structured debrief on day five, it was clear that the visit had successfully secured institutional commitment from the Igando/Ikoton LCDA, strengthened collaboration across city teams, and built a shared understanding of an integrated, community-centred and evidence-based planning framework. Strong emphasis was laid on the centrality of co-production between community members, government actors and technical partners.

The exchange visit closed with mutual commitment to advancing the integrated planning process for Okerube settlement, with a collaborative framework linking SHEF, the University of Lagos and the local government. Conscious of the comprehensive nature of planning processes, the team charted a two-phase approach, aligned with statutory planning frameworks and institutional mandates. The first phase will focus on generating evidence and building capacity for comprehensive household numbering, mapping and enumeration, and the second on collective interpretation of the evidence and consolidating the integrated people’s plan.

Continued learning and collaboration

The five-day visit illuminated a complex governance landscape in Lagos state, along with clear physical and environmental vulnerabilities in Okerube, the need for strategic planning and alignment with government priorities, and the centrality of community and evidence in collaborative planning. Beyond securing institutional commitment from the LCDA, the learning exchanges have led to commitment from regional and national governments to advance WASH reforms in Okerube, with SHEF being invited to submit a 145 million Naira (approximately USD 105,700) proposal towards upgrading of WASH infrastructure in Okerube.

As the teams in Nairobi and Lagos continue to grapple with ways of catalysing inclusive urban transformation, the exchange has helped mark a clear path ahead for the ACRC initiative in Okerube: forming multistakeholder consortia, settlement-wide enumeration and mapping, validating findings, and preparing an integrated people’s plan to submit through local government structures.

SDI affiliate SHEF will anchor the process locally, while AMT provides technical advisory support, guiding the strategic approach and ensuring methodological rigour. The team will also explore cross-project collaboration with other ACRC initiatives, such as flood modelling, property tax and waste management.

Read more:

• Nairobi to Naija: Inclusive service delivery in African cities is not a pipe dream
• Is knowledge power? Reflections on water, sanitation and survival in informal settlements

Listen:

• Podcast: Building community-driven WASH solutions in Lagos

Photo credits: Rex Otieno

Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

By Temilade Sesan, ACRC Lagos city manager

One of the less visible but highly impactful aspects of the ACRC programme is the opportunity for cross-learning that it presents for urban development researchers, practitioners and policymakers working in different city contexts.

This was precisely the case for an ACRC Lagos delegation that went to Nairobi on a learning visit in December 2025. The delegation comprised researchers helping to launch a community-led water and sanitation (WASH) project in Okerube, an informal settlement in Lagos; community members leading mobilisation and data collection efforts on the ground; and officials from relevant local, state and federal government departments. 

The Lagos team set out to gain inspiration from an established WASH intervention in Mukuru – a sprawling informal settlement in Nairobi in which, as of 2017, only 1% of the population of roughly 400,000 people had access to private WASH facilities.

Following years of advocacy and dialogue by a broad-based reform coalition co-chaired by local NGOs and the Nairobi County City Government, Mukuru moved from being a target of demolition to being declared a Special Planning Area by the latter.

Crucially, this declaration has paved the way for reform actors, including the county government, to expand access to WASH infrastructure in the community, resulting in a rise in plot-level sewer connections to an impressive 20% as of 2025. These features make the Mukuru case highly interesting and instructive for us in Lagos.

Lessons for governance

Lagos, a “megacity” of about 22 million people, has a severe public water deficit, with existing waterworks serving less than 10% of the population. This falls far short of the urban average of 57% coverage (and even the rural average of 22%) reported for sub-Saharan Africa. It certainly lags behind coverage in Nairobi, where 71% of the city’s 5 million residents are connected to the public water system, which is run by the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (henceforth Nairobi Water).

Cities of systems

This takes us to the core of ACRC’s “city of systems” approach, which recognises that urban development systems – for water, energy, health, education, and so on – are interdependent and must therefore be considered in relation to one another. Our engagement with state agencies is premised on the assumption that they do, in fact, run these systems in service of the public good, and that interaction with evidence-informed advocacy and action can help them to do better. This scenario appears to have played out more or less as expected in the Mukuru WASH case.

Mukuru, like many other informal settlements in Nairobi, has been historically excluded from the formal water and sewerage connections managed by Nairobi Water. Upon the declaration of the community as an SPA, however, Akiba Mashinani Trust (AMT), a key coalition member, began working with Nairobi Water to build a Simplified Sewer System that enables temporary but durable connections from individual plots to main sewer lines.

Combined with access to finance facilitated by AMT and other coalition members, this has made it possible for many more landlords to construct shared toilets for residents. In addition, Nairobi Water installed public taps with smart metering technology that provide residents with water at a fraction of the cost charged by private vendors – a big win from an equity standpoint.

The crucial point to note is that these state-supported improvements to WASH in Mukuru were possible precisely because there was already a state-run system in place; advocacy and action by reform actors provided the impetus for the state to do better by bringing in populations that were previously excluded from this system. This was an important insight for the Lagos delegation: the idea of the city taking responsibility for WASH service provision in one of its most disadvantaged neighbourhoods – and in the process, strengthening both its systems and its social contract with citizens.

The Lagos delegation came away with a realisation of how the dearth of functional networked systems makes our attempts to apply a city of systems lens in our work decidedly more challenging. Fortunately, we also emerged with ideas for how to make incremental progress toward the change we seek in our context.

Moving forward

It is important to note that there are sectors – such as transportation, waste management and health – in which the Lagos state government has taken steps to build out existing public infrastructure. While the reach of the state is often narrow compared to that of private actors, especially those in the informal economy, these sectors are obvious candidates for the task of coalition-enabled systems strengthening.

We outline below some transferable lessons from the Mukuru WASH case in this regard, in line with the four components of the ACRC theory of change.

1. Elite commitment: Progress is accelerated when organs of the state join up to promote the wellbeing and welfare of citizens. Nairobi Water investing in short- and medium-term WASH infrastructure in Mukuru, while the housing ministry works to resettle residents and rebuild the neighbourhood with long-term sewerage connections, is an example of this.

2. Enhanced state capacity: State agencies stand a better chance of enhancing their technical capacity to deliver infrastructure and services if they begin with a commitment to manage small-scale systems effectively for the public good.

3. Mobilised citizens: Communities must continue organising for improved service delivery grounded in secure land tenure. The experience of Mukuru indicates that, while it is not yet Uhuru, sustained advocacy at the grassroots can ultimately lead to the ceding of ground to residents of informal settlements.

4. Reform coalitions: Professional elites, especially those in academia, civil society and the media, must take up the charge of mobilising various forms of capital – whether financial, social, political or cultural – and channelling these toward improved service delivery across the city, including in historically disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

Back in Lagos, we continue to work from the understanding that the city’s political settlement is one in which power is highly consolidated among a few key actors. The difference is that we are more inspired than ever to work with reform actors, including those within the government, to transform the might of the state into meaningful action for all citizens.

Read more:

• From Mukuru to Okerube: Reflections from the Nairobi–Lagos WASH exchange
• Is knowledge power? Reflections on water, sanitation and survival in informal settlements

Listen:

• Podcast: Building community-driven WASH solutions in Lagos

Photo credits: Akiba Mashinani Trust, Temilade Sesan

Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

A crosscutting urban planning challenge

Rivers do not distinguish between formal and informal settlements; they traverse the entire urban fabric. Interference with natural river courses, whether through informal encroachment or formal developments, disrupts hydrological systems and often triggers severe flooding. The consequences are evident across the city: flooded apartment blocks in formal neighbourhoods, just as much as inundated iron sheet “mabati” structures in informal settlements.

Framing flooding as a problem facing informal settlements alone overlooks the systemic nature of the issue. It shifts attention away from broader urban planning failures and delays the kind of integrated, citywide solutions required to build resilience.

The myth of blame

Similarly, blaming informal settlements alone for flooding overlooks a much more complex and uncomfortable truth. Encroachment on riparian land is not confined to low-income communities; it is a citywide phenomenon. Across Nairobi, both formal and informal developments have gradually extended into river corridors, constricting waterways and undermining their natural ability to absorb and regulate floodwaters.

At the same time, systemic failures in waste management have turned rivers into channels for plastic and debris, further choking flow, and intensifying flood risks. What emerges is not a localised problem, but a shared urban challenge shaped by decisions made across the entire city.

In this light, informal settlements are not the root cause of flooding; they are simply on the frontline, bearing the brunt of a crisis that has been collectively produced.

Reclaiming riparian corridors: A shared responsibility

If flooding is a systems issue, then the response must be equally systemic. At the heart of this response lies the reclamation and restoration of riparian land. But reclaiming river corridors is not simply an exercise in enforcement or the removal of structures; it is about reimagining and restoring the river’s role within the city.

A healthy riparian corridor acts as a natural buffer that absorbs and slows floodwaters. It is a critical drainage channel that safely conveys stormwater, a thriving ecological habitat that supports biodiversity, and a shared public space that connects communities to nature.

When restored, these corridors can help reshape how the city functions. They reduce the intensity of floods, ease pressure on drainage systems, and create safer, more resilient neighbourhoods across the urban landscape. In doing so, they shift the narrative from crisis management to long-term resilience, benefitting not just those living along the river, but the whole city.

Mitigating flood impacts in the city

While river degradation has often been framed as a challenge concentrated in Nairobi’s informal settlements, it is increasingly clear that it is a systemic, basin-wide issue affecting both upstream and downstream areas. In neighbourhoods such as Kilimani, rapid densification, commercial expansion and encroachment into riparian reserves have disrupted natural drainage systems. The replacement of permeable surfaces with impervious infrastructure has accelerated stormwater runoff, increased peak river flows and intensified flood risks across Nairobi.

In response to these interconnected challenges, Akiba Mashinani Trust (AMT), in collaboration with the Nairobi Rivers Commission (NRC), civil society organisations, and academic institutions, has co-created a River Regeneration Advisory Plan along a 9km stretch of the Ngong River, from Mombasa Road to Outer Ring Road. This process integrates detailed site analysis, participatory planning and co-design with local communities and technical input, to guide implementation and policy uptake.

Critically, this work demonstrates how river regeneration can function as nature-based infrastructure for flood mitigation. By restoring riparian buffers, reintroducing indigenous vegetation and rehabilitating degraded riverbanks, the initiative enhances infiltration, stabilises soils and slows surface runoff before it enters the river system. These interventions help to attenuate peak flows, reduce downstream flooding and improve the overall hydraulic performance of the river corridor.

The approach has already moved from planning to implementation. On 10 October 2025, residents of Mukuru Kwa Reuben participated in a large-scale tree planting festival, establishing one of the pilot community-designed river parks. The planting of 100 indigenous trees and 300 grasses marked the first step in creating a continuous green corridor along the river. Beyond ecological restoration, the green corridor acts as an urban sponge, absorbing and temporarily storing stormwater, reducing the burden on grey drainage infrastructure, and lowering the intensity of flood events during heavy rainfall.

Importantly, AMT’s work along the Ngong River basin signals the scalability of this model. By linking upstream land-use practices with downstream flood impacts and embedding community-led stewardship within technical river restoration, the initiative offers a replicable pathway for integrating climate resilience, flood risk reduction and inclusive urban development. As these interventions expand across the basin, they hold significant potential to reduce citywide flood vulnerability while restoring the ecological integrity of Nairobi’s river Systems.

To sustain and expand these gains, AMT, supported by the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC), is advancing the next phase of river regeneration along the Ngong River. Building directly on the initial 9km stretch, the regeneration work extends both within the initial stretch and upstream. This includes the implementation of a co-designed children’s play park and the continuation of the co-design process along an additional 3.4km upstream section.

Crucially, this expansion reinforces the basin-wide approach to flood mitigation by connecting localised interventions into a continuous, functioning river corridor. Through community-led, nature-based solutions across the river system, the initiative not only deepens ecological restoration but also significantly strengthens Nairobi’s capacity to manage stormwater, reduce flood risk and embed long-term urban resilience within everyday public spaces.

A citywide call to action

Flooding should not be seen through the narrow lens of “problem areas”. It is a shared urban challenge that demands collective responsibility from planners, policymakers, developers, and residents alike.

Reframing the conversation is the first step. When we recognise flooding as a citywide issue, we open the door to solutions that are more equitable, more sustainable and ultimately more effective. Because a resilient city is not built by protecting some areas and neglecting others, it is built by restoring the systems that sustain us all.

Photo credits: Akiba Mashinani Trust, Georgina Kasamani, Peris Sale

Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

Generative AI was used to help draft this blog post: The author asked ChatGPT to improve a draft version of the post for clarity. This version was then reviewed and edited by the ACRC communications team, before being approved by the author.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

Header photo credit: Nairobi co-research team.

Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

What the evidence shows

Research conducted by LVCT Health, the University of Nairobi and ACRC points to a viable path forward. Key findings include:

> School feeding improves learner concentration, enrolment consistency and overall wellbeing.

> Parents in informal settlements have indicated a willingness to contribute a modest amount of money for the school feeding programmne – up to KSh 20 per meal.

> At that contribution level, the programme could generate approximately KSh 1.2 billion annually – a potentially self-sustaining model that could be integrated with the Dishi na County programme.

> Broader benefits extend to parents, who regain time previously spent on meal preparation as well as savings from the school meals.

Recommended actions

Based on workshop discussions and study findings, the following steps are proposed:

> Extend the Dishi na County programme to cover APBET schools in informal settlements.

> Set meal contributions at a level that families can realistically afford – KSh 20 or below.

> Invest in shared infrastructure, including access to clean water, appropriate cooking energy and adequate food storage.

> Ensure that no child is excluded from meals due to a missed payment.

Looking ahead

The validation workshop demonstrated the value of bringing lived experience and research evidence into the same room. The conversation was grounded, practical and solution-oriented. With strong community willingness and a growing evidence base, there is a real opportunity to build a fair and sustainable school feeding system that works for all of Nairobi’s learners – regardless of which school they attend.

Photo credits: Rosebella Apollo

Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

With many thanks to the following contributors for their invaluable support and collaboration to the water and sanitation project:

• The Mukuru community, for their active participation and support throughout the project
• The AMT team, for their dedication and commitment
• The NCWSC technical and social teams, for overseeing and supporting the implementation
• NCCG, for providing overall coordination and leadership
• The Know Your City TV (KYCTV) team, led by SDI Kenya, for filming and producing the video

Video credits

Produced by: Know Your City TV Kenya and SDI Kenya
Videographers: Jarvis Kasndi and Rholinx Otieno
Additional footage: Peris Saleh
Editor: Jarvis Kasndi
Scriptwriting and voiceover: Sarah Ouma

Header photo credit: Know Your City TV Kenya

Note: This article presents the views of the author featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

Read the online articles:

> Community-driven relocation programme delivers new homes in Harare – The Herald Online

> Harare emerges as climate-resilient testing ground – NewsDay Zimbabwe 

> No Bins, No Waste, No Waiting: Inside Tafara’s Community-Led Climate Solutions – The Southern Environment

Photo credits: Chris Jordan

Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

Mwaura’s story

In early 2017, during the first months of my fieldwork in the neighbourhood of Ituura, where Nairobi’s expanding sprawl meets the tea-growing highlands of central Kenya, I spent practically all my time with Mwaura. Then nineteen years old, Mwaura was the son of my hosts and an unlikely university student from one of the neighbourhood’s poorer families. Sharing a love of football, we spent hours playing an old edition of the FIFA video game series on his second-hand laptop. On weekends, we went to the local “Motel” to watch Premier League football, especially Mwaura’s beloved Manchester United, a team whose then turgid, workman-like style he was always capable of looking past.

For me and Mwaura, our lives of leisure obscured his family’s hardships. Mwaura’s father, Paul Kimani, a fifty-two-year-old long-haul lorry driver, made only sporadic appearances at the family home. The inconsistency of his earnings kept the family in a near-constant state of economic uncertainty. Mwaura’s mother, Catherine, was often forced to cobble together money for Mwaura’s university fees through borrowing from wealthier friends and relatives.

Nonetheless, these months were a time of optimism, the family’s hopes pinned on Mwaura’s fortunes after graduation, the aspirations for him to find “kazi”, formal paid work of the sort that would pay a consistent salary and help them “make it” (kuomoka) to the “stability” of something like middle-class status. With Mwaura stuck on the homestead due to strike action in Kenya’s university sector through early 2017, it was through him that I came to know the neighbourhood, its characters, and pressing dilemmas.

Selling ancestral land

On one of our trips to the Motel to watch a football match, talking during half-time, Mwaura pointed out to me a middle-aged man from Ituura who was making soup for the other guests. Mwaura was appalled by this man’s situation because he was known to have sold a large portion of his inherited land.

“He sold his land for like 7 million shillings in February!”, Mwaura exclaimed. “And now you’re a cook? You’ve finished that 7 million already!? How!?” I was taken aback at Mwaura’s tone of condemnation. At the time, I assumed he was echoing his father’s sentiments. Like other senior men from Ituura, Kimani regularly insisted that selling ancestral land was wrong, tantamount to parental neglect, a failure to pass inherited wealth forward to the next generation. But, as Mwaura’s words pointed out, this very same land was becoming extremely valuable in the shadow of an expanding Nairobi. I asked Mwaura why someone would have sold such a valuable asset. “Some people you can’t understand,” he explained. “They sell their land because they’re poor.” I asked what he had spent the money on. “These ones with short skirts,” he said bluntly, a reference to the women who sometimes accompanied older men to the Motel and were seen to be part-time sex workers.

The speed of expenditure had been shocking. “He was not seen for like four months, and he came back with just 50,000 … Imagine! He was taking taxis around everywhere,” he told me, emphasising the lavish expenditure land sale had afforded this man. “If you’ve got money, how can you walk?” he asked rhetorically. I asked him who had bought the land. According to Mwaura, the buyer could only be identified as “some outsider”.

In 2017, Mwaura’s judgement of this neighbourhood man echoed wider debate taking place across Kiambu about the existential dangers of selling inherited, “ancestral” land. For its smallholder families, the vestiges of a peasantry now working for wages, land is inherited on a patrilineal basis but has been divided over successive generations into smaller and smaller chunks. With shrinking plots, it was becoming increasingly attractive for senior men to sell their family land, sometimes unilaterally, to generate “chunks” of money to cover household debts, to launch small-scale businesses such as chicken rearing, but also, to access heightened lifestyles of conspicuous consumption.

Local commentaries on such acts spoke of the dangers of alienating such family heirlooms, the effects of ancestral “curses” (kĩrumi singular, irumi plural) left by long-dead grandfathers who decreed that ancestral land should never pass out of family ownership. The speed at which land money was spent was often taken to be the kĩrumi at work, destroying the lives of land sellers, turning foolhardy excessive consumption into poverty and destitution. With not an ounce of sympathy, local newspapers condemned the so-called “poor millionaires” of Kiambu County who sold their lands but spent the proceeds on alcohol and women, only to be left with nothing in the end.

High-rise buildings in upper Kiambu

What Mwaura could have not known then was in a few years he too would be put in the same unfortunate position as the soup-seller’s son. With his own grudging consent, Kimani would sell a large part of his family’s land for millions of shillings, passing on none of the proceeds. In 2022, Mwaura continued to live on his family’s shrunken plot of land, hoping that his father would someday come through with his part of the sale money, while becoming increasingly bitter towards his hypocrisy.

The shadow of Nairobi

The trajectory of Mwaura, my friend and closest interlocutor, across the years between 2017 and 2022 captures a central topic in this book: the fate of Kiambu smallholders as their meagre plots of land skyrocketed in value in the shadow of an expanding Nairobi. In a region already profoundly shaped by colonial histories of land expropriation, Peasants to Paupers explores the terrain of peri-urban Kiambu as the city extends into its poorer northern hinterlands.

Drawing upon my fieldwork with Mwaura’s family, his neighbours, and friends in Ituura over these years, this book illuminates the way an urban frontier encounters a stratified post-agrarian landscape, creating new categories of “winners and losers” amidst the beginnings of a construction boom.

While some smallholder families were building rental housing on their land and becoming landlords, for others the commodification of land created a crisis of kinship as male heads of households sold ancestral land at the expense of their children. Within this urbanising terrain, this book observes the hollowing-out of a moral economy of patrilineal kinship. Despite the insistence of senior men that their land was “ancestral” and therefore inalienable, land sales took place, uprooting families, depriving children of their inheritances, and accelerating a region-wide process of downward mobility as younger generations contemplated their fate as a new class of landless and land-poor paupers.

Masculine breakdown

Peasants to Paupers traces the effects of this process by exploring a wider loss of confidence among young men in the moral horizon of patrilineal kinship and its emphasis on working towards the future by returning wages to the homestead. Faith in this vision is being eroded on the one hand by the grim economic terms of the peri-urban informal economy, with low-paying jobs that operate on a piecemeal basis.

But confidence in a normative vision of masculine responsibility is also undercut by land sales themselves – experienced within patrilineal families as acts of moral transgression that render young men like Mwaura doubly hopeless, contemplating his father’s betrayal of kinship’s future-orientation and the principles of passing on wealth.

Such overt practices of private accumulation served to compound a sense of patrilineal kinship’s breakdown when they came at the cost of others. It was not only senior men who were seeking to escape poverty through land sale. Amidst rural destitution, young men were seeking desperate and piecemeal attempts to cope with hopelessness about their futures through drinking alcohol. Meanwhile, young women were cultivating extra-marital relationships with wealthy “sponsors” precisely because their male peers were “wasting themselves”. Knowledge of such relationships further entrenched male distrust of women’s intentions, undermining the ideal of the harmonious patrilineal household, and fomenting a gendered self-perception of male abjection.

Against the backdrop of an eroding belief in the achievement of patrilineal household, Peasants to Paupers explores how Kiambu’s young and poor cope with their downward mobility. It charts their challenging journeys as they ward off hopelessness, struggling not to become “wasted” like their alcoholic peers. It draws out the moral debates taking place on the economic margins about whether work can materially provision a reasonable middle-class future. These debates reveal the limits of a bootstrap mentality of labour’s virtue under conditions of wage-limited precarity. While some manage to maintain their hopes for a better tomorrow, for others the grim realisation that they will never meet their aspirations prompts a deep hopelessness and a “giving up” on the future.

In highlighting these themes, this book argues that Nairobi’s expansion is driven not only by the outward push of an urban frontier but by the vulnerability written into the city’s rural hinterlands by the region’s colonial and post-colonial history. The urban frontier’s “expansion” can just as easily be seen as a “retreat” for Kenya’s peri-urban post-peasantry, no longer able to maintain the moral economy of patrilineal kinship and keep the family tethered to land. In such a changing landscape, this book argues for the study of kinship’s moral economy as a critical field, especially as scholars of an urbanising Africa begin to explore the way expanding cities shape their once-rural hinterlands.

Across the globe, enormous numbers of people’s lives are defined by their access to land, which is in turn mediated by kinship. In such settings, kin relations themselves become central mechanisms in the creation of new class distinctions, shaping economic fates across generations. This book closes by calling for a return to studying the imbrications of class, kinship, and landed property.

> Read the full, open access version of Peasants to Paupers by Peter Lockwood

Photo credits: Peter Lockwood

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