A Case of People’s Participation in Slum Upgrading

By Steve Ted Gome, Architect

The world’s population is fast becoming predominantly urban. It’s estimated that 52% of humanity will be living in urban areas by the year 2020. Meanwhile the divide and inequalities in the cities continues. Today 55% of Nairobi’s population lives in approximately 5% of its total area. These form the slums and informal settlements.

The inequality of access to land in the city is one of the largest factors and contributors to development of slums. Various definitions of slums have been derived from the high population densities, poor and impermanent construction materials, and lack of access, water and basic sanitation among other parameters. Characterization of slums as unproductive and places of insecurity led to ideology of slums elimination. This thinking was the reason for forceful evictions and demolitions in earlier years.

The impracticality and the misery that the ideology bore alongside the growth of the civil society that emancipated the populace on the right to the city led to the relook into the slums as areas of opportunity and a home to majority of city dwellers. A new ideology of “slum upgrading” hence emerged. Various actors like the central government, municipalities, civil society and the UN-Habitat have since the turn-around attempted and endeavored through various programs towards upgrading and prevention of new slums.

Sites and services program done in the 1970s by the GOK and UN-Habitat was one of the steps towards extension of services to Greenfields to avert development of new slums. In the last decade, the government has also pushed the upgrading agenda through Ministry of Housing Kenya National Slum Upgrading Project (KENSUP) in Kibera. Other efforts e.g. “minimal intervention” approach by the Ministry of local government piloted in Korogocho and lately the Kenya Informal Settlement Improvement Project (KISIP) spearheaded by Ministry of housing in several municipalities throughout the country.

Huruma Villages community led upgrading project

Popular participation and leadership in all these efforts is paramount. Pamoja Trust, an NGO based in Nairobi has demonstrated the importance of a people led process in improvement of their neighborhoods and environments in informal settlements in Kenya. The most notable project in Huruma Nairobi is testimony on how community participation at every level of decision making in their own prioritized projects could lead to successful upgrading efforts.

Pamoja Trust began engaging with Huruma settlements soon after its formation in 1999.The community prioritized house upgrading and the Trust helped to mobilize the community to come together to start saving little monies on a daily basis and to start negotiating with the city council of Nairobi to grant them access to the land they had lived on for several years for upgrading.

In the meanwhile, the community was engaged almost on a weekly basis to give views, visions and dreams of an upgraded neighborhood and to enumerate themselves to ascertain the numbers of beneficiaries. More discussions were done and agreements on enumerations and possible design options arrived at.

Co-operation between different stakeholders is very important in participatory processes. In 2001, an MOU was signed between the six settlements of Huruma, Pamoja Trust and The City Council of Nairobi among other stakeholders. The city council would give the land for upgrading to the community in trust of the agreed residents.

Consideration of the upgrading as a special development, approval of plans and supervision of construction alongside Pamoja Trust’s technical team would also be the mandate of the City Council. Pamoja Trust nurtured the saving schemes and provided 80% soft loans to individual beneficiaries for upgrading.

The Trust also organized technical exchanges to India and South Africa for the communities to learn appropriate technologies applied in upgrading efforts. The unit construction cost was also drastically reduced through application of “sweat equity”. The concept involved the individual community beneficiary contributing self labour of about 80 hours to the construction. Skilled labour is also sourced within the community. Other partners contributed to the cost of infrastructure and services connection.

The design of the improved units allowed incremental construction. This was not only convenient for slum dwellers who cannot raise the required total construction cost in a one-off but also allow incremental occupation beginning with the starter unit. Allocation criteria are agreed upon by the community members based on their own set criteria hence a guard against gentrification. Post construction management and loans repayment are handled by the saving schemes.

The Pamoja Trust Huruma project was meant as a demonstration of best practice to be picked for up scaling by the authorities of implementation. In-situ urban upgrading had its challenges. The community members found temporary accommodation within the settlements as other parts were voluntarily demolished to create space for construction.

The challenge of dispossession associated with decanting sites was thus avoided. Today, the Trust has facilitated the saving schemes to transform into Housing co-operatives to widen their scope of engagement and attract more financing for up-scaling and general post construction management. It’d also be important to tap into the demonstrated synergy and construction skills.

Construction guilds of the urban poor could be an option in reducing upgrading costs. The ongoing slum upgrading and prevention policy is also expected to recommend appropriate land tenure system, financing and prevention of further proliferation of slums. Adequate planning measures should precede the anticipated rapid growth of towns in the new counties to avoid carrying over of the lessons badly learnt in our current cities.