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Opinion: fifty years of upgrading plans, and the land question is still the answer.
Opinion & Voices. The views here are the writer's own.
Kibera has been the subject of upgrading schemes, sites-and-services projects, slum improvement programmes and flagship national initiatives for the better part of half a century. Some delivered real things: water points, roads, toilets, a decanting site, apartment blocks. None resolved the question underneath, which is who owns the ground.
The structure of the problem
Almost all of Kibera sits on government land. The people living in it are, overwhelmingly, tenants. They rent from structure owners, a large proportion of whom live elsewhere and hold their claim through occupation, allocation of dubious provenance, or inheritance from someone who did.
So there are at least three parties with a claim to any given ten-by-ten: the state, which owns the land; the structure owner, who owns the building and collects the rent; and the tenant, who lives there and has no security at all. There is a fourth party in Makina, where the Nubian community's claim predates all of it and has been the subject of litigation for decades.
Every upgrading scheme has to decide who it is upgrading for. Almost every one has, in practice, chosen the structure owner, because the structure owner is organised, has a documented claim and can obstruct the project.
How that plays out
The pattern is consistent enough to predict. New units are built. Allocation is meant to prioritise the tenants who were displaced. Some of those tenants, facing service charges and mortgage-style payments they cannot sustain on an informal income, sell or sublet their allocation and return to the settlement. The unit ends up occupied by someone from a higher income bracket. The settlement's population does not fall. The scheme reports units delivered.
This is not corruption in most instances, though there has been plenty of that too. It is a design flaw. If you rehouse people into a tenure and cost structure that does not match their income, they will convert the asset into cash. That is a rational response, and any planner who is surprised by it has not been paying attention.
What a serious approach would involve
Enumerate first, and publish it. A household-level register, done with residents, of who lives where and on what terms. Every successful upgrading programme internationally has started here. It is also the step most often skipped, because the results are politically inconvenient.
Recognise tenants as a party with rights. Not as beneficiaries of a scheme, but as holders of an interest in the outcome. Until tenants have a legal seat at the table, structure owners will keep capturing the benefit.
In-situ, incremental and secure. Upgrade where people are, in stages they can afford, with a form of secure occupancy short of freehold if freehold is impossible. Certificates of occupancy, community land trusts and long leases have all worked elsewhere.
Infrastructure first and unconditionally. Drainage, sewerage, water and lighting benefit everyone regardless of tenure and do not require the ownership question to be settled first. It is striking how much of this remains undone while the tenure argument continues.
Settle Makina. The Nubian land claim has been through Kenyan courts and regional human rights bodies. Leaving it unresolved poisons every other negotiation in the settlement.
The uncomfortable part
Doing this properly would reduce the incomes of a group of people who currently profit from Kibera's status quo, some of whom are politically connected. That is the real reason fifty years of plans have preferred to build things rather than settle rights. Building things is popular and hurts nobody.
The next plan will be announced eventually, with a name and a ribbon. The only question worth asking about it is whether it starts with an enumeration and whether tenants are named as parties. If not, we already know how it ends.
That was a Kibra News Network report, read by an A I voice.
Opinion & Voices. The views here are the writer’s own.
Kibera has been the subject of upgrading schemes, sites-and-services projects, slum improvement programmes and flagship national initiatives for the better part of half a century. Some delivered real things: water points, roads, toilets, a decanting site, apartment blocks. None resolved the question underneath, which is who owns the ground.
The structure of the problem
Almost all of Kibera sits on government land. The people living in it are, overwhelmingly, tenants. They rent from structure owners, a large proportion of whom live elsewhere and hold their claim through occupation, allocation of dubious provenance, or inheritance from someone who did.
So there are at least three parties with a claim to any given ten-by-ten: the state, which owns the land; the structure owner, who owns the building and collects the rent; and the tenant, who lives there and has no security at all. There is a fourth party in Makina, where the Nubian community’s claim predates all of it and has been the subject of litigation for decades.
Every upgrading scheme has to decide who it is upgrading for. Almost every one has, in practice, chosen the structure owner, because the structure owner is organised, has a documented claim and can obstruct the project.
How that plays out
The pattern is consistent enough to predict. New units are built. Allocation is meant to prioritise the tenants who were displaced. Some of those tenants, facing service charges and mortgage-style payments they cannot sustain on an informal income, sell or sublet their allocation and return to the settlement. The unit ends up occupied by someone from a higher income bracket. The settlement’s population does not fall. The scheme reports units delivered.
This is not corruption in most instances, though there has been plenty of that too. It is a design flaw. If you rehouse people into a tenure and cost structure that does not match their income, they will convert the asset into cash. That is a rational response, and any planner who is surprised by it has not been paying attention.
What a serious approach would involve
Enumerate first, and publish it. A household-level register, done with residents, of who lives where and on what terms. Every successful upgrading programme internationally has started here. It is also the step most often skipped, because the results are politically inconvenient.
Recognise tenants as a party with rights. Not as beneficiaries of a scheme, but as holders of an interest in the outcome. Until tenants have a legal seat at the table, structure owners will keep capturing the benefit.
In-situ, incremental and secure. Upgrade where people are, in stages they can afford, with a form of secure occupancy short of freehold if freehold is impossible. Certificates of occupancy, community land trusts and long leases have all worked elsewhere.
Infrastructure first and unconditionally. Drainage, sewerage, water and lighting benefit everyone regardless of tenure and do not require the ownership question to be settled first. It is striking how much of this remains undone while the tenure argument continues.
Settle Makina. The Nubian land claim has been through Kenyan courts and regional human rights bodies. Leaving it unresolved poisons every other negotiation in the settlement.
The uncomfortable part
Doing this properly would reduce the incomes of a group of people who currently profit from Kibera’s status quo, some of whom are politically connected. That is the real reason fifty years of plans have preferred to build things rather than settle rights. Building things is popular and hurts nobody.
The next plan will be announced eventually, with a name and a ribbon. The only question worth asking about it is whether it starts with an enumeration and whether tenants are named as parties. If not, we already know how it ends.
