The Malfunctioning and the Incapability of the Nairobi Governance - Essay Example

For a that has the highest urban population in East Africa, Nairobi's so-called rise from the swamp it was in 1899 to what it has been today, has been one of fits and starts. It is a city that has grown sporadically, without proper planning or management, and this paper tries to locate the reasons under lying these criterions. Thus, the paper, in more ways than one, as it studies the context of Nairobi from its epistemological roots, becomes a journey into its heart of darkness. It tries to locate the problems of a city that has become an epitome of mismanagement, a place where the lack of governmental ability to check illegal infiltration and administer its own state of affairs has resulted in a total cacophony of affairs. The paper tries to analyse the problems facing the growth of this unplanned city and tries to formulate measures whereby these can be tackled so as to make it more progressive and habitable. Nairobi is a city that faces a major influx of refugees moving into its urban areas. Interestingly, this migration pattern into Nairobi is not only for economic opportunities. Apart from economic migrants, the country also has hordes of people who move out of camps providing assistance to them, as the quality of aid is very low. Regarding this, it would be worth observing that whereas the period 1997 - 2001 was characterised by a 24 percent decline in the global refugee population compared to the pervious five years, the share of refugee from Africa rose from 20 to 45 percent during the same period. Also, as the demographic status of refugees varies across regions, and even within countries, it is dependent on the normative value of the refugees themselves. By end of 2001, Kenya was home to over a quarter of a million refugees. And out of this, almost about 50% of the refugees were aged above 18 years while about 45% of the total population were female. These refugees including those in urban areas posed a challenge not only to the government, but also to the indigenous populations. The host country saw them as an imposing and alarming threat to their own sovereignty, security and global stability. The governmental failure to unify the various clans and tribes of the city along with the influx of the refugees is inter-related to the demographics of the inter ethnic relations of the city. Research involving the various tribes such as the Luyia, Kuria, Suba, Luo, Maasai, or the Kalenjin and their inter racial interactions has shown that the relation of these refugees with the people, as well as the relation within the tribes themselves is pretty complicated. What makes it more dangerous is the existence of separate political affiliations of ethnically defined groups to political parties in the multi-party system of Kenya. Even with the coming of self governance, the colonial power is still considered to be an important influence on ethnic identification. Among the Luo, Maasai and their Bantu neighbours, there is a cultural gradient or a culture prestige gradient with the Nilotes at the upper end, and this status differentiation in several cases is stabilised by the appointment of chiefs from high status groups by the colonial power. This intra racial differentiation leads to a process of social exclusion. This, on the other hand, is also propagated by what has been termed as the 'filtering down process' of educational facilities being provided to the people of the different groups: broadly speaking the 'haves and the have nots'. Put in a nut shell, the educational policy in Kenya is such that it is generally the children from educated and well to do parents who can pursue higher education. The process of filtering down ensures that even when the government adopts a policy of educational expansion, it fails to lead to intergenerational job mobility. As Hazlewood puts it, the much greater expansion of secondary education, drawing in many more, and a much higher proportion, of the children of the uneducated in Kenya than in Tanzania, has made access to secondary education more equal in Kenya, but it has not had a similarly equalizing effect on the labour-market, on the access to higher-level jobs (p. 286). The malfunctioning and the incapability of the Nairobi governance is such that the government cannot even provide the basic amenities of life to its citizens. It is estimated that 89 per cent of Nairobi's population is supplied with water through house connections, communal watering points, and water kiosks. The remaining 11 per cent obtain their water supplies from boreholes. Interestingly, the areas that are dominated by the refugees, both political and economic, are entirely dependent on public water kiosks. They do not have adequate water supply. In this regard, it can be pointed out that the original founders of the city did not strategize to make it into a metropolitan city and it was their hindsight, which is at the root cause of the water crisis in Nairobi. Again, the sewage system is largely inadequate. There are not enough sewage processing plants and which means that a large amount of disposals are dumped into the Nairobi River and other smaller water bodies. This poses a tremendous health hazard to people who use water from those sources. Approximately 58 per cent of Nairobi's population is served by the existing waterborne sewerage system. The remainder of the population is served by septic tanks, conservation tanks, or pit latrines, which contribute to the pollution of groundwater and of piped water owing to seepage into pipes when the pressure is low. There are no foul or storm water connections to the sewerage systems in the slum and squatter areas. Instead, filthy uncared for pit latrines are used. The sanitation problems are compounded by densities in some housing areas that are higher than those for which the sewerage system was originally planned, and the location of some informal housing in areas unsuitable for residential use. The collection and disposal of solid wastes in Nairobi is also not well maintained. Lack of resources, and the general un-hygienic habits of the people mean that a lot of uncollected waste piles up in different parts of the city. Though it is true that some private initiations have been taken, and privatising waste collection has been considered as a possible remedial measure, but this has turned out to be effective as of. As Nairobi grows and the volumes of refuse increases, it is ideal that the government should promote reclamation, re-use, and recycling of materials as a way of reducing the problems. Moreover, such activities could create employment for a section of the population as well as being a source of raw materials. Again, if we consider Nairobi to be an up-coming city, we realise that its government has failed to provide a decent network of transportation. The messed up and chaotic transportation in Nairobi can be broadly classified into five divisions: private vehicles, buses, matatus, commuter trains, and taxis. Where as private vehicles are limited to the middle and upper-income groups, government run busses, most of it a victim of negligence and ill maintained, in the eastern part of Nairobi (where the bulk of the low-income people reside). Although the fares are quite low they still remain high for the general masses. Again, taxis have little impact on the mass transportation systems in Nairobi, simply because they are accessible and affordable only to tourists. An interesting mode of communication in Nairobi is the matatu. These private taxis provide services with better time periods than the buses, and thus are a popular mode of relatively quick travel in Nairobi. The recent launch of commuter trains has helped to ease transportation to the sub-urbs and this service has been well received despite the high fares (Aduwo, 1990; Obudho 1993b, pp. 91-109). Another problem, which makes the heart of Nairobi so chaotic, is the fact that the area has witnessed unbalanced growth. The aesthetic and recreational environment in Nairobi is almost marginal, largely due to administrational negligence. The city has become a concrete jungle, a very unplanned one at that, as urban parks and gardens continue to be taken over for the development of commercial buildings. Out of the six major open land in Nairobi: Uhuru/Central parks, Jamhuri and City parks, one arboretum, and two forest areas, all of them face the threat of commercial development. All this means that almost more than half of Nairobi's residents are crowded into unplanned or inadequately serviced settlements. They reside and work in unhealthy environmental conditions and suffer from endemic diseases like diarrhoea and gastro-intestinal problems, general ill health and dermatological problems. All these illnesses are related to poor environmental hygiene, which in turn is a consequence of poverty, overcrowding, and neglect of the urban poor. Women folk are most hard hit largely due to their low incomes and their responsibilities for mothering and providing food for their families. Another major problem in Nairobi, which the government has failed to meet is the alarming rise of AIDS. Nairobi's population, with its broadened sexual network of refugees indulging in flesh trade, is extremely susceptible to the disease. The abject condition of Nairobi has also been largely due to the "urban bias" of the government in investment and employment. What the city of Nairobi needs is a series of policies and a spatial framework to guide social and economic activities, coordinate and integrate development activities, and mobilize the involvement of residents in the planning and development process. The planning of Nairobi should emphasise upon the protection of various racial and ethnic communities' interests. Moreover, it ought to be be cost-effective, be sensitive to the environment, and be consistent with broad regional and national urbanisation policies. The problem of economic growth in the city can be minimised by encouraging economic diversification on areas such as Machakos, Ongata, Rongai, Ngong, and Kikuyu. Neglected in the past, these centres have an important role in agricultural processing, marketing, storage, and distribution. Their prosperity depends on the availability of markets in Nairobi and the city's ability to supply them with goods and services such as agricultural equipment and repair services. The issue of optimum usage of land, without the racial dominance, is another major aspect that the Kenyan government should emphasise upon. It is true that international funding has had a large hand to play in the sectors of public health, education, the informal sector, and social service projects in Nairobi. In fact, housing and water supply, in particular, have received a large amount of funding from the World Bank and USAID. The delivery of services has, however, not improved significantly despite this financial assistance. Thus, what the city desperately requires is ways of revenue generation, especially a process whereby services reach a greater volume of the urban population and they are made to pay for it. If racial dominance has been a hindrance to Nairobi's growth, corruption and undue advantage to the rich have been the other causes. Immediate measures are needed to ensure that higher-income residents are not subsidized and that service provision is extended to currently unserviced or inadequately serviced low-income areas. Alternative means of generating increased revenue, such as increasing the yield from existing taxes and fees, bidding for a larger share of national taxes from central government, and mobilizing resources from the private large-and small-scale sectors and NGOs, need to be investigated. Nairobi also faces the problem of criminalisation of politicians and the legitimisation of criminals as 'urban banditry'. As we know that without political support and administrative capacity the implementation of resource mobilisation policy can never happen. But, as the city lives under the shrouds of criminalised politicians, the concept of decentralisation, though absolutely essential, is not an easy proposition. The city also has a shortage of trained personnel in the local authority, and ineffective monitoring and evaluation systems. It is high time that the Nairobi City Council should be given greater financial autonomy and its responsibilities defined more clearly. Its fiscal and physical strengths needs be enhanced and the urban information system improved. Policy and programme responses to deficiencies in shelter, services, and infrastructure have been disjointed and ad hoc. In Nairobi, the urban poor's capability to acquire shelter has been constrained by high land prices, lack of access to credit, inadequate opportunities for participating in the planning and implementation of shelter projects, inadequate cost recovery, high and inflexible building codes and standards, and the high cost of building materials. More appropriate standards for infrastructure provision and housing construction are needed, in addition to measures to reduce other constraints and provide services more cheaply. The efficiency of relevant institutions needs to be improved, and private sector provision, the use of community-based organisations and NGOs, and self-help programmes encouraged. The informal sector significantly contributes to Nairobi's economy. It also generates a large volume of employment, and has strong backward linkages with commercial and public enterprises and caters to the "consumption basket" of individual households. Although large-scale public sector investment is probably not needed, appropriate support to the sector might include improved infrastructure, credit, and training. The general sense of angst and aridity that seems to pervade the city of Nairobi can be eliminated only if a constant series of planning and implementation is carried forward. A city, which is confined in the post-colonial gasp of limbo, of corruption, stark economic divides and injustices, can only arise from this darkness with conscientious effort from its inhabitants and the outside world. As of now, Nairobi remains a postcolonial trashcan, satiated by the hollows of an ugly mix of cheap modernity and filthy euphemisms. Works Cited Aduwo, G. O. 1990. 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