


The Mukuru Kwa Njema slums are made up of several informal areas southeast of the city centre, including this one called "Riara". Added together, the slums have a population totaling over 120,000, a vast slum city with poor services, stolen electricity, and mounds of rubbish in the streets. The unerring regularity of long tin roofs, perfectly parallel, belie the squalor underneath, and from the air create incredible striated patterns.
Next door is the Imara Daima estate, where affluent Kenyans live in single-family homes on cul-de-sacs which directly abut Riara. Much like in other parts of the world, developers have built a "buffer zone" in between the two communities, a wall and a pathway which serves as a dumping site and toilet. Illegal electrical and water connections by Riara residents often cause problems in Imara Daima, creating an uneasy codependence that typifies many unequal communities.
While Mukuru and other informal areas around Nairobi are highly unequal, they are not completely poor either. On a conservative basket of services (electricity, water, toilet access, and rent), Mukuru’s annual economy is estimated at USD $70 million, much of which ends up in the hands of informal service providers. So while the poverty penalty presents a challenge, it also demonstrates the latent capacity of communities to afford services, invest in their communities, and perhaps make contributions to housing improvement.

The dense settlement of Riara fits together with Imara Daima estate like two puzzle pieces.

An "upgrade" to Kibera has been the steady removal of informal houses from alongside the train tracks which run alongside the Royal Nairobi Golf Course. This does have a good reason - freight trains pass multiple times a day through densely packed neighborhoods full of children.





The Kilimani-Langata road connector was an audacious plan to bulldoze right through the middle of Kibera, Africa's "largest slum". In 2018, it happened two weeks before I arrived.

Half of the Mashimoni Primary School, and hundreds of homes, have been razed for the planned Kilimani-Langata road extension, built in 2018. The initial stats estimated by Map Kibera: 11,500 people displaced, and 598 structures destroyed.

A board member from Mashimoni Primary School sits amongst the desks moved after 1/2 of his school was demolished to make way for the road. Hundreds of his school pupils stop showing up after the road was built. "We don't know where they went", he told me.

A member of the community of Mashimoni, in Kibera, walks in the bulldozed land where hundreds of homes used to be. Residents complained that they were given little warning of their evictions.




The Kilimani-Langata connector road before it was built, in 2016 - soon to bisect the Kibera slum in Nairobi, displacing thousands of people.


As in many places around the world, the rich and poor are separated by only a thin concrete barrier. But inequality in Kenya represents much more than that - the divide is also an invisible barrier to social mobility.



The scars of bulldozing through Nairobi's largest slum are clear. The initial stats: 11,500 people displaced, 598 structures destroyed.


The "Lunatic Express" railway in Kibera.

Often, freight trains will not be able to get traction to make it up the hill inside Kibera. Here, an engineer spreads sand on the track to help.

Looking at homes slated for demolition, Kibera.

Residents run for cover as a train approaches in Kibera.

Immediately after trains pass, life goes back to normal.