Informal Settlements and the Role of Infrastructure: The case of Kibera, Kenya

Abstract

Urban settlements and cities in Africa continue to become more chaotic as increasing population put more pressure on capacity of urban ities to provide services to their residents. The cost of urban infrastructure and services (Housing, Water, Transport, Healthcare, and sanitation among others) has become unaffordable to majority of urban dwellers due to widespread poverty, and low-income levels. This has resulted to the growth of slums and informal settlements, which are unplanned, lack basic infrastructure and services such as water, electricity, roads, lighting and sanitation among others. It therefore emerges that Housing planning and development policies and concepts applied have failed to meet the demand for housing, infrastructure and services. This paper takes a case of Kibera Slums in Nairobi City, Kenya to emphasize the role of infrastructure in slum upgrading efforts which has generated a lot of interest among housing and infrastructure policy and development agents and service providers in the recent past. The paper proposes the view that pro-poor urban housing and infrastructure should be provided through a package approach and from a complementary welfare perspective to meet housing and infrastructure needs of the poor, where taxes paid by the rich should be used to subsidize infrastructure costs of the poor.