Why majority of Nairobi residents can no longer afford to eat

Majority of residents can no longer afford three meals per day in Nairobi while others have stopped cooking altogether, a report by African Cities research consortium has revealed.

The research links this to rising food and energy prices which the majority of those living in the informal settlement areas can no longer sustain.

As a result, children in informal settlements typically have extremely high prevalence of stunting, wasting, underweight and micronutrients deficiencies.

“Such nutrition –related outcomes of unhealthy diets can significantly impair children’s intellectual and physical development, with negative long-term impacts upon their well-being and socio economic progress more broadly,” the report says.

The report however says some schools are promoting healthy diets in informal settlements citing the current school feeding programmers reaches only public primary schools yet the majority of schools in informal settlements are informal.

The research also focuses on how some services in Nairobi are offered, pointing out that multiple informal providers offer low quality services including water and sanitation, sold waste management and transport systems.

“Cartels-large scale informal providers who establish local monopolies, typically offer costly, hazardous provisions particularly in informal settlements,” the reports say.

Reportedly, the said cartels are protected by politicians or collude with Nairobi’s official service providers.

At the same time, it was noted that there is widening gaps between supply and demand as Nairobi’s population growth and spatial expansion continue in speed.

The researchers noted that lack of integrated forward-looking planning, especially land-use housing and infrastructure limits the city’s potential for economic development and climate resilience.

“No matter what we do, development gravity will set in. So, infrastructural development must never be at the expense of social reorientation and mental infrastructure,” Wale Akinyemi, one of the key speakers during the launch of the report noted.

He added that, “And I think developers need to be part of the social reorientation process in order to preserve the integrity of their developments,”

The research says most of Nairobi’s Labour force remains in informal jobs that use less productive techniques and employ low wage workers.

However, some of the major challenges include high cost of doing business, large informal economic base and rent-seeking by political class which results in power contestation between national and county governments.

The report says Nairobi’s political leadership has often echoed the national government’s challenges including limited accountability and widespread use of funding.

“This hampers the delivery of critical service and infrastructure, especially in Nairobi’s informal settlement,” the research says.

Under housing in Nairobi the findings say there are stark differences in quality of shelter, access to infrastructure and designs of Nairobi’s settlements.

African Cities Research Consortium Director Shuaib Lwasa noted that the ACRC research program is intended to catalyze urban transformation and intended to be transformative.

“In other words, the change you have all agreed in India and all that you desire for Nairobi that is differently pursued and inclusive of everyone,” Lwasa noted

Pointing out, “Change can be measured in many ways or different means, and the change that we see in Nairobi is very obvious to us, but the question is for you all, is that change for everyone?”