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Cities are increasingly attracting the world’s population and economic activities as they offer specific advantages. This rapid urbanization, as characterized by the bustling cities, has been accompanied by the development of informal settlements that are now home to multitudes in cities around the globe, such as Nairobi.

Nairobi’s burgeoning slums are, like all communities, places where people live and work. Settlements provide low-cost, affordable housing for low-income residents, as well as alternative places where residents earn their living from informal sector activities. However, while large numbers of people continue to congregate in urban areas leading to a continual proliferation of informal settlements, a range of inequalities sprout, most of which are particularly felt by the urban poor. The expansion and growth of cities strains the capacity of city authorities to provide required basic services to cater to the growing populations. Of greater concern, however, is the exclusion of many informal settlements from the city’s planning agenda.

Developing a community address register in Mathare Kiamutisya village

To help local governments accurately identify the needs of informal settlement residents, SDI’s slum dweller movement has leveraged its  mapping, profiling and community-led enumeration processes to provide an up-to-date, accurate account of the conditions in the slums and serve as useful planning tools through the provision of accurate data.

In May 2021, the Kenya Slum Dweller Movement, Muungano Wa Wanavijiji, undertook a comprehensive mapping and numbering exercise in Mathare Kiamutisya village, with the aim of developing a community physical address register. Kiamutisya is one of the villages in Mathare slums located near Mlango Kubwa Village, bordering the Nairobi River and covering about 13 acres of land. This information collection focused on providing community information, which is vital for planning and effective mobilization of resources and services at the grass-root level. This data makes the invisible visible and provides a basis for negotiations with local authorities for citywide initiatives to improve the current condition at community level.

This one-week, community-driven process brought together community residents who were trained and later participated in data gathering. Rather than developing an external team of data collectors, 40 community data collectors helped to organize communities into larger federations and build a basis for the inclusion and active engagement of residents in the process.

The mapping and numbering exercise began with a comprehensive community training session primarily involving the youth and village elders. Pens, markers and maps spread on the floor amidst the ongoing community conversations marked the start of the training session. The federation’s team of urban planners started by taking the community co-researchers systematically through the mapping and numbering process, while giving opportunities to raise questions to clarify the process. Community elders, federation members and the young people further engaged in heated discussions and debates and raised questions.

Boundaries were drawn, disputed and redrawn, and landmarks and services were marked out. Community boundaries were then compared to satellite imagery and the discussion continued. For most community members it was their first time seeing their community drawn on a map.

Next was the community data collection exercise. Resident co-researchers first assigned each structure a door number and located all existing settlement structures on a map. The co-researchers ensured that the painted door numbers corresponded to the numbered structures on the map, while additionally recording the numbered structures on the household numbering sheet. The data collected provided further insights about the numbered household represented on the map by capturing information on the type of structure, construction materials used, the household size, and the occupancy status. The co-researchers made certain this set of household data was captured on the household numbering sheets provided.

This process provides the residents with residential addresses and, in turn, makes it possible to derive a physical address that aids in identifying and locating each structure on the ground.

It also ensures that each structure is assigned a unique door number through a distinctive systematic method of numbering eg. KMY/A/001/A. The number comprises of the short-form name of the settlement, the cluster in which the household is located, the household number and, lastly, the number of rooms the household structure has.

Rolling-out the process

Similar processes of mapping, numbering and community enumerations have been rolled out in areas such as Mukuru and Kiandutu, which aimed to obtain the data on the number of households, but more so to help develop a community physical address. In Mukuru, the process started amidst a period of widespread eviction notices being issued to the community, with community residents collecting data in an effort to prevent eviction through documenting their presence in their community and tying their status to their physical addresses. The process involved the community through the 10 cell (Nyumba Kumi) method, which comprised of the local youth, the 10 cell heads, local authorities and the Member of County Assembly (MCA). The community was involved in mapping, enumerations, profiling and data collection, after which the data was used to spearhead the ongoing Mukuru SPA process.

Over time, the Federation has proved the effectiveness of this community-driven process, which emerges more impactful when the community concerned participates in providing their precise data. Community mapping and numbering processes seek to bring community residents together into larger federations to participate in the process, thereby serving as an effective community mobilization and organizing tool. In addition, the process creates a basis for full involvement of community in large-scale community development projects as they demonstrate the practicability of community taking center stage in driving their own processes. With the development of residential addresses, the push for the provision of services at community level by city authorities, with an efficient system for billing individual households for services provided at a standardized rate, can be made possible.

Beyond the community-driven process

Ultimately, the community-driven data collection process aims to contribute to the Know Your City global campaign to collect and consolidate data to create a basis for inclusive planning. Drawing from this overarching agenda, the collection of such data aims to contribute to the Mathare Special Planning Area Research Collective (MSPARC), a research consortium formed in 2019 with the aim of bringing about community-centered planning and upgrading in Mathare. The contribution of the mapping and numbering process within the Mathare MSPARC will fundamentally help to demonstrate ways in which the collective power of a community driven data collection process can increase slum dweller participation in their own development.

Authors: Susan Wangui (KYCTV), Jackline Waithaka

Nelly Muturi from LVCT Health reflects on what she has learned from conducting a Photovoice project with marginalised community members in the informal settlements of Nairobi.

While I have been working with marginalized people from urban informal settlements for some time, my experience from the Photovoice phase of the ARISE study has been unique. It opened my eyes to the realities of living in urban informal settlements and being marginalized.

Photovoice is a collective visual method of data collection in which selected people use photographs to capture aspects of their environment and experiences within communities that are important to them.  These pictures can be used – usually with captions written by the photographers – to bring the reality of the photographers’ lives to the attention of policy makers and other stakeholders in order to spur change.

In the ARISE study, photovoice is being used as a data collection approach to amplify the voices of marginalized and vulnerable community members in urban informal settlements in relation to what affects their health and well-being.

Everyone living in urban informal settlements is marginalized, however some are more marginalized than others, and communities know this. One such group are Persons living with Disabilities (PLWD). As part of the Photovoice study, we began engaging with PLWD living in urban informal settlements and from this, I have learnt a few lessons.

• Treat PLWDs sensitively – Many of the people that we worked with have experienced trauma. Research can evoke traumatic memories for example injuries that led to their disability or more recent experiences with COVID-19.
• Disabilities vary and require different communication strategies – People with different impairments will need to be communicated with in different ways. Researchers must be considerate of the needs of each of the different categories of marginalized people. For example, deaf people can have different levels of understanding of sign language influenced by literacy levels and the ‘hood’ which differs from one urban settlement to another. You need to understand your research participants well to know how to be able to communicate effectively.
• Support systems matter – PLWD need good, trusted support systems both at home and project level to be able to participate effectively in research studies. They may well have been taken advantage of in the past. So as a researcher it is important to identify the support system that a PLWD uses and trusts and work with it. This requires flexibility in terms of adjusting for the time it takes to engage and where this engagement will take place.
• Build trust – Research requires trusting relationships with communities and with participants themselves. Though this takes time, it can be achieved through regular feedback sessions with all relevant stakeholders, regular meetings and de-brief sessions with participants
• Listen – Regular engagement meetings with people from marginalized communities provides them with an opportunity to speak out and share their concerns, struggles and achievements. It is important to have these frequent meetings as it is helps in providing psychosocial support through speaking out challenges.

Working in the ARISE study has provided me with a great opportunity to highlight the situation of marginalized residents, especially PLWDs, and I am looking forward to seeing this project make a difference in their lives by allowing them to raise their voices in governance and accountability structures in their communities to address the challenges they face.

Image showing ARISE team members conducting an interview with a deaf community member. Note that for deaf people it is not possible to interact/communicate with them with masks on despite the possible health risks due to COVID-19.

The UKRI research budget is facing cuts that may affect our ability to continue with work within ARISE. Our team in Nairobi, Kenya from LVCT Health reflect on what potential reductions in the budget for this work means on the ground.

Before COVID-19 many people did not understand why we have to address the health and social needs of slum dwellers and how their poor health affects all of us. With the pandemic, it became a worry when it was thought that COVID-19 would spread rapidly due to poor ventilation and lack of water and sanitation in slums resulting in widespread deaths.

A COVID-19 response that included lockdowns and curfews highlighted the vulnerability and desperation of the situation in slums which have chronically lacked water, sanitation, ventilation and other amenities. Gender-based violence emerged as a real and present danger as reports of women and girls being raped on their way to the outside toilet at night or being abused in their houses by their newly unemployed partners. The government prioritized identification of the vulnerable but discovered that data on these groups was lacking.

ARISE – a UKRI funded research project – identified vulnerability and marginalization as a key challenge that would limit attainment of the Sustainable development goals (SDGs) even prior to COVID-19. Through ARISE in Kenya, partners had begun to identify the most vulnerable and marginalized within slums (even though most slum dwellers are disadvantaged, some are worse off than others). This information proved to be critical to the county government when the identification and registration of the vulnerable in slums by the government begun.

LVCT work in ARISE has involved identifying, following and working with the poor elderly, people with disabilities and child headed homes who emerged as extremely vulnerable to document their lives in visual form using photos (photovoice). The stories are aimed at showing the county government, NGOs and other community members their day to day lives, the struggles they go through ensuring that interventions involve them and are evidence based.

Story One

Alice is a 17 year old girl. Her mum is bedridden so she is the breadwinner for her mother and younger siblings. She is forced to work in the dumpsite and wash clothes in people’s homes to buy food which affects her ability to go to school. As a young girl she is easily verbally abused or not paid when she goes to wash clothes in people’s homes.

Story Two

“I took a photo of that trench because of the blind and old people like myself because an old person cannot be able to jump across it. It is a danger to the old and it is problematic to me because I use this route often as I go to the shop. The sewerage that passes through there is also hazardous,” Beatrice a 78 year old woman.

Making an impact

Our work in ARISE Kenya has been of great utility to the Kenyan Government (Nairobi Metropolitan Services) by providing empirical and systematic approaches for identifying marginalized and vulnerable people to benefit from government funded social assistance programmes.

In March 2021, the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) initiated a mapping of vulnerable households for purposes of enrolling these households into the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) programme. At the same time, the NMS needed to know and map people that are most vulnerable to economic shocks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. NMS urgently required concrete and empirical evidence/approaches for identifying people that would benefit from publicly funded social assistance interventions. Lessons from the community based participatory research approaches by ARISE Kenya were taken up by NMS decision-makers to tailor the kind of assistance provided to these vulnerable groups in the slums.

All this has only been possible due to funding from UKRI and our partnership with LSTM to carry out research that is relevant, high quality and timely. Cuts to development research mean that work that looks beyond the surface and ensures investments by low- and middle-income countries are evidence based and relevant suffer. Gains made towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will be lost and even reversed.

We urge the UK government to reverse the decision to cut funding to international development research.

The UKRI research budget is facing cuts that may affect our ability to continue with work within ARISE. Our team in Nairobi, Kenya from APHRC – Blessing Mberu and Caroline Kabaria – reflect on what potential reductions in the budget for this work means on the ground.

Now and into the foreseeable future, Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to have the highest rates of urban growth of any major region, and with its cities already having the highest proportion of slum-dwellers and urban poverty, the policy challenge for solutions remain enormous.

As cities continue to attract excess rural populations and people looking for economic opportunities, slums’ share of the urban population will continue to grow, particularly in fast developing and low-income countries where the rate of urbanization exceeds urban systems’ ability to scale services. One key feature of African urbanization is the associated degradation in human dignity engendered by intra-urban inequities.

Significant investments in evidence generation and policy and programmatic interventions will be needed in the coming years if sustainable urban living is to be achieved.

In seeking answers to these challenges, the ARISE Hub funded by UKRI provided a unique opportunity to begin the measurement and documentation of these issues through a spectrum of research methodologies and equitable collaboration among various global Northern and Southern experts.

Data gaps in urban informal settlements

Several key questions arising from past and future research investments relate to how to achieve improved health and economic outcomes for the urban poor. What particular interventions work and which did not? Answering these questions and taking adequate stock, require appropriate data at the local levels. The importance of local-specific data systems is reinforced by the limitations of global and national level data sets, which generally produce national indicators that blur inter and intra sub-group inequities and often lack aggregation at local levels, where the needs are located

To address this gap, the ARISE Hub in collaboration with African Population and Health Research Center  collected and documented evidence to inform policy and action in Kenya. This is informed by the perspective that sustained significant investments in data systems at local levels will be an important component of the push to address urban challenges, especially in monitoring and evaluation of interventions and in determining what works for specific sub-groups of the urban population, including migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, non-migrant and several vulnerable sub-groups. This work which has taken place in the last two years may be jeopardised if the UKRI funding cuts did not exempt and protect such efforts.

The importance of participation

As part of the search for pathways to address urban inequities, promote inclusive urban development and build resilient and healthy cities in Africa, our Hub has set up research infrastructure that have employed public participation methodologies, including community recruited co-researchers in the co-identification and definition of community problems.

Our approach supports communities to be active drivers of the charge towards the promotion of equity, security, health and well-being in informal urban settlements. This is the process of working with marginalized people living in poverty in informal settlements to create strategic alliances for collective action to demand rights, and improved accountability and responsiveness of services to promote health and wellbeing. It involves the convening of fora that enable dialogue and build coalitions of residents of informal urban settlements, formal and informal actors and service providers to set priorities, co-develop, and test actions for change in accountability, promote service provision and system responsiveness.

This model research engagement is being shaken and may be aborted if the funding cut announced by the UKRI are not reversed or in the worst-case scenario, affirmatory and protective initiatives of such unique outreaches and engagements on behalf of the British people and Government are not undertaken.

Supporting students

Linked to this agenda is capacity building at Masters and Doctoral degree levels together with exchanges and collaborations to develop a critical mass of African and Africanist and young Global South researchers that will continue to champion evidence generation, knowledge management and evidence-based advocacy for cities, citizens and governance through the 21^st Century and beyond. This program, has kicked off to a great start and enthusiasm with up seven Doctoral and two Masters Students from India, Bangladesh, Kenya and Sierra Leone, all whom are registered at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

For ARISE this typifies the evidence of collaboration and equitable global partnership, which was a set goal under the grant. The danger to this initiative is looming under the UKRI proposed funding cuts and the opportunity cost to global health and UKRI and LSTM’s contribution in capacity building for public health will be significant and will be a very great lost opportunity.

To conclude, as we strive to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable we will require sustained investments informed by credible local scientific evidence. It is important to develop and implement tested, context relevant service delivery models that engender inclusiveness and address intra-urban inequities. Identifying and promoting empowerment of communities as active drivers in the vision of co-creation of development, sustaining past and future investments in data collection, evidence generation at local levels and capacity building at graduate levels will need to be prioritised, protected and sustained.