We ni mfunny sana. Unaniattack personally badala ya kuattack idea yangu ya kijinga kama unaona ni ya kijinga. Nimesoma article zaidi ya tatu kwa internet ambazo zinasupport my position. However I know GDP za counties bado hazijakuwa measured. I think it's about time zikuwe measured ndio tujue ukweli. Article ya 60% ndio hii hapa na barua pepe ya mwandishi iko Hapo mwisho, mwandikie kisha muulize ametoa wapi hiyo 60%. Article yenyewe ni ndefu lakini soma ndio uelewe. Ukitaka ingine niambie nikupe.
The trouble with Nairobi
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Kenya's capital Nairobi. FILE | NAIROBI
MUTHOKI MUMO
Thursday, February 21 2013 at 09:07
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Jane Weru, a lawyer who litigates on behalf of the urban poor, describes Nairobi as one would an especially confident young woman.
“Nairobi is edgy,” she begins. “It’s a bit brash. It’s not shy. It’s young and it is a city on the go.”
If Nairobi is a young woman, then she is coming of age... and the suitors have noticed, because the narrative of the city’s transformative growth is one that currently permeates briefs circulated by investment analysts.
It is a narrative that is woven into the strategies of multinationals expanding into new markets, and one that carefully laces the speeches of C-suite executives trooping to Kenya to woo the government and its people.
However, Nairobi does have a dark side. It is a city of stark inequalities with serious infrastructural challenges that may yet stall its rise to the top.
“Nairobi is also a paradox,” says Ms Weru. “Abject poverty co-exists with near First World luxury. The city’s expansion may just push these extremes farther apart.”
The importance of Nairobi to the national and regional economy and its failings are by no means unique phenomena.
Financial services firm Citi last year commissioned the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to carry out a survey of 120 cities globally, assessing their competitiveness as investment destinations.
The resultant report noted that middle-tier cities in emerging markets — once considered too risky — may now steal the show from European cities that are stuck in economic doldrums and facing the challenge of infrastructure fatigue.
“Already, global business is beginning to plan strategy from a city, rather than a country, perspective,” EIU said.
In China, for instance, megacities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai compete with each other for investors.
In this new economic order, where the city rises in status above the country, African, Asian, and Latin American cities are leap-frogging the smog and coal industrialisation of the old world to carve themselves new niches.
They are choosing to invest billions to excel in narrow fields such as financial services, technology, or business process outsourcing (BPO).
Real estate
Over the past two months, Microsoft, IBM, and Google top brass have made their way to Nairobi. In public forums and university lectures, they extolled the virtues of the city, justifying their need to suddenly turn to Kenya for profits.
“Nairobi has emerged as a serious tech hub and may become Africa’s leader,” noted Google chairman Eric Schimdt in a blog post following his visit.
One of the factors behind the city’s rise is basic geography. In 1890s, when Nairobi was set up as a railway depot, its central location was a major selling point. This advantage has not waned over time.
Within the regional context, Nairobi is prime real estate. It is connected to a coastal harbour and is within a four-hour flying distance of most African destinations.
Technology has been adopted wholeheartedly, increasing efficiency in communication. For any multinational looking to extend its tentacles across the continent, the city is a entry point.
“When travelling across the continent, I sometimes find it easier to come to Nairobi, then catch an onward flight,” says Kenya Private Sector Alliance (Kepsa) chairman Patrick Obath. “We are connected to almost all African destinations. Convenience cannot be over-emphasised for business.”
Beyond the geographical specifications, companies have also been attracted by the numbers.
The capital boasts economic growth rates above four per cent, more than most European cities can dream of currently.
In its recent analysis of the growth potential of African cities, the MasterCard Foundation ranked Nairobi sixth in the continent based on such indicators as middle-class-fuelled consumption, population growth, and contribution to gross domestic product (GDP).
Nairobi already contributes about 60 per cent of Kenya’s GDP. The cherry on top is the availability of a ready and growing workforce. Over the past decade, adults have outnumbered children in Kenya.
By 2050, the World Bank estimates, the current youthful population will see Kenya’s workforce exceed the number of dependants by two to one, providing enormous opportunity for wealth creation.
Much of this workforce will be concentrated in urban areas. Between 1999 and 2009, Kenya’s urban population went from 3.7 million to 12.4 million, with Nairobi accounting for about 3.1 million urban dwellers.
The World Bank reports that Kenya’s cities and towns are gaining 750,000 inhabitants each year and data show that migration flow is mostly to and from Nairobi.
However, it is impossible to escape the fact that the city’s outlook is not completely rosy. Millions of rural migrants coming to Nairobi will end up in slums.
Informal settlements
Currently, it is estimated that about 60 per cent of the city’s inhabitants live in informal settlements. Nairobi’s quick rise may only serve to perpetuate the inequities of a city that has been fragmented since its inception.
In a 2010 article titled Grey Nairobi: Sketches of Urban Socialites, Belgian anthropologist Danielle de Lame argues that Nairobi’s inequalities are deeply rooted in its history.
The city was created, first and foremost, to meet the economic needs of colonial development. Residential areas were developed to fit the segregationist philosophy of the government.
White-only and Indian-only estates came up with utilities and services of corresponding quality.
When the Africans migrated to Nairobi, the “city was clearly not meant for them” and they were relegated to informal settlements. They could not own Crown land.
More than 100 years later, the old racial boundaries are slowly dissipating, with the nouveau-riche invading the old white-only neighbourhoods or setting up their own exclusive settlements through rampant property development.
However, many of the old informal settlements still exist. Nairobi is still a fragmented city, only now the yawning gap is between the haves and the have-nots.
Inhabitants in each of these segments of the city have massively different experiences and rarely interact.
“Each person concocts and gulps down the cocktail of his own wanderings — a personal Nairobi,” writes de Lame.
This economic fragmentation and social inequity has profound implications for the growth of Nairobi.
The fact that century-old land issues have not been resolved point to an acute inability to plan the city properly.
Poor city planning has been associated with mediocre public service utilities in health, transport, and education.
The city’s infrastructure is heavily weighed down. Social and economic inequity may also coincide with insecurity and instability.
The confluence of these factors conspires to lower the living standards of Nairobi. Although the economy may be expanding, the city’s social challenges make it difficult to attract, develop, and keep the best talent, a significant handicap in the fierce competition for investors.
“In human capital, we have a serious problem. Our educational institutions are not producing the kind of rigorous professionals we need to go toe-to-toe with the best international talent. In areas where our training does exceed global standards, the professionals are all too easily poached to move on to other cities,” says Mr Obath.
Living standards
According to the EIU, living standards are more than just about money and good schools. In order to attract and keep the world’s most talented individuals, Nairobi needs to provide cultural stimulation to rival London, Hong Kong, and Paris.
Nairobi also loses points on governance. Companies coming into the city often point to corruption as one of the beasts they hope to slay.
An online database that tracks corruption in Kenya, ipaidabribe.com, is currently ranking Nairobi as the most corrupt urban centre in Kenya.
In its 2012 Ease of Doing Business Report, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) claims that it is easier to start up a business in the border town of Malaba than in Nairobi due to local authority bureaucracy.
Partly for scoring low in liveability and governance indices, EIU cautions that Nairobi and other growing African cities may fail to overtake the old political powerhouses of Europe and the economic giants that have over the past three decades sprouted in Asia. In this survey, Nairobi is ranked 115 out of 120 cities for overall competitiveness.
While acknowledging these shortcomings, government officials insist that they are being addressed comprehensively as part of the country’s development road map, Vision 2030.
“We have been aggressively investing in infrastructure,” says Vision 2030 director Mugo Kibati. “We have built roads and we have completed the first phase of the commuter rail network.”
Last year, the Syokimau Railway Station opened its doors. It is the first phase of a city-wide rail network that is expected to lower congestion in the central business district.
By 2016, the city is expected to have rehabilitated and upgraded power lines, thus eliminating the more-than-frequent blackouts.
Kenya has also earmarked about Sh15 billion to invest in upgrading slums across the country.
One of the objectives of this project is to regulate land tenure in informal settlements. The money will also go into installing basic utilities.
Once fully implemented, the Nairobi Metropolitan Masterplan will impose the kind of sound urban planning that has evaded city officials for more than a century while new legislation on the built environment will crack down on illegal developments.
Mr Kibati further argues that the country’s planned devolution will have an indirect but positive impact on Nairobi’s informal settlements.
“Today, almost everyone troops to Nairobi after school looking for opportunities. Infrastructure growth cannot keep up with population growth. However, with devolution, there will be urban centres offering opportunities akin to those found in Nairobi in almost every county,” he says.
There have been concerns that this expected reverse migration may simply serve to transfer Nairobi’s slums to the rest of the country.
In some areas, the government has already started taking steps to prevent such an occurrence.
A 10-kilometre radius of land has been ear-marked for controlled development around the planned Konza Technocity. However, this may not be enough.
“Controlled development will not work. As long as there are people working in these cities for less-than-minimum wages, slums and informal settlements will develop. Much of Kenya can still not afford to live in the middle-class utopia we are developing,” says Ms Weru
mumumo@ke.nationmedia.com
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