Documenting the special planning area and redevelopment process in Nairobi’s Mukuru informal settlement

General

Residents of the Mukuru informal settlement, home to approximately 10% of Nairobi’s population, have faced many challenges in gaining access to services (water, electricity, housing, and schooling) and secure land tenure. After years of high-impact research and successful engagement with local and national authorities, the Nairobi County government declared a special planning area for Mukuru in August 2017. The special planning area froze development in Mukuru while a consortium of forty local organizations developed an integrated development plan. In recent months, as part of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Nairobi Metropolitan Services has started implementing the plan and allocated $12 million for infrastructure development during the current financial year. This project will support the efforts of Akiba Mashinani Trust to document and disseminate lessons learned from an innovative and transformational process to redevelop the Mukuru informal settlement. Through field research, policy engagement meetings, workshops, and dissemination events, the project aims to capture first efforts to implement the special planning area redevelopment plan. In capturing lessons learned and emerging best practices, these knowledge translation efforts seek, on one level, to capture the full history of the special planning area story and tell it from the perspectives of the people who were closest to it. Priority will be placed on capturing unique experiences of different groups, like the leadership of women and youth populations over the years. On another level, activities are planned to share findings with global audiences, with the aim of improving urban planning and governance approaches in contexts of widespread urban poverty and informality.