Tomorrow's Nairobi

We are living in unprecedented times due to the Covid-19 pandemic, an unparalleled disaster in many respects. At the time of writing this article (April 27, 2020), almost three million people have been infected and more than 200,000 people have died from Covid-19 related infections across the world. In Kenya, there are 398 confirmed cases of infection and 14 deaths. Global Prediction models suggest grim but largely uncertain future scenarios. So far, the disaster has resulted in the unprecedented overstretch of global health systems and the conscious closure of social and economic systems by nation states to prevent the further spread of the catastrophe. The outcome has been devastating: Millions of people have lost their jobs or taken pay-cuts; small-to-medium-to-large scale businesses across the world face imminent collapse; education, training and research plans (like our own under the Rights and Resilience program) have been significantly disrupted, and hundreds of thousands of families are grieving the loss of loved ones, whom for precautionary reasons cannot give them usual decent sendoff. With each country investing most focus and resources in managing the crisis within their borders, international humanitarian responses as we know them are severely disrupted. Still, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been at the forefront in helping nations to deal with the crises, particularly in providing much-needed knowledge in the form of health guidelines to manage the outbreak. This, despite notable criticism from the President of the USA for alleged failure to curtail the spread of the pandemic.

A major response by governments across the world has been partial to total “lockdowns” aimed at preventing further human-to-human transmission of infections. Simply put, a “lockdown” demands that people minimize or completely stop outdoor activities. By and large, this response appears to be an effective way of minimizing risk of infection, if reports of trends in many counties that were initially severely hit such as China and South Korea are anything to go by. It is also in line with WHO’s call for social and physical distancing as one of the most effective ways of minimizing the spread of the virus. But while millions of people have heeded this call, an equally vast number of people, particularly in the so-called developing countries, have defied it. For instance, on March 24, 2020 one of Kenya’s most widely read newspapers, the Daily Nation, reported in bold: “It’s business as usual as Kenyans snub stay home orders.” The result has been cat-and-mouse type chases between law enforcers and the people, leading to loss of lives, injuries and a plethora of prosecutions. On its part, the government has emphasized that either people observe the strict restrictions or face the full force of the law!

But why would citizens risk their lives and the lives of others by being out of their abode in the face of a deadly virus? Critical disaster studies may help us understand this conundrum.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents unique challenges to the research community beyond the devastating impacts to livelihoods and economies across the globe. Most researchers are currently struggling to develop adaptive measures to facilitate the continuity of ongoing research activities, and at the same time identify the relatable opportunities from the pandemic.

The Nairobi Risk Hub, part of the broader Tomorrow’s Cities research project, is one of numerous donor funded research projects experiencing this adjustment. The UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) funded project is expected to undertake interdisciplinary research and inform disaster management in rapidly developing cities: Nairobi, Kathmandu, Istanbul and Quito. The vision of the Nairobi Risk Hub is specifically to generate research evidence geared towards helping the city of Nairobi move from crisis/emergency response to integrated, proactive urban planning to enhance disaster risk preparedness and management. The research puts specific focus on floods and fires as the most prevalent hazards in Nairobi, especially within the informal settlements, as well as other cascading hazards that affect the wellbeing of the residents. The COVID-19 pandemic thus becomes a research opportunity for the hub, as well as a bottleneck to the planned research activities designed to be achieved through the application of multidisciplinary research to establish an integrated evidence base on the city’s leading risks and hazards, their drivers, institutional structures, and feasible disaster reduction measures that support pro-poor action planning.

The Nairobi Risk Hub plans involve a very ambitious research and policy action plan and learning agenda. More specifically, the critical path for the hub is premised on locally grounded research involving community engagements, ground measurements, and leveraging key insights to the Nairobi city-wide policy planning. This critical path enables the hub’s work to directly and indirectly interact with the COVID-19 management processes including the impacts on research plans, but also presents new opportunities to inform strategic policy responses to the pandemic. Nairobi is one of Africa’s main economic hubs with a large attraction of international trade and activities, but faced with numerous social, economic, environmental, and urban risk-related challenges that constrain the city’s growth and resilience. Ultimately, understanding how the hub is reorganising itself and adopting to the ensuing COVID-19 related challenges and opportunities is an important element in the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) framework. This article outlines the experiences of the Nairobi Risk Hub in this regard. The article also draws from the ongoing COVID-19 discussions and communications taking place at the overall Hub level on mapping out the entry points for working within the context of COVID-19.

This report presents the proceedings and reflections of the ‘Future Resilient Nairobi’ Workshop held virtually on the 7th of August 2020. The workshop, the first in a series of workshops under the Nairobi Risk Hub, provided an opportunity for city stakeholders to create a shared vision of ‘Future Resilient Nairobi’.

The overall objective of the workshop was to facilitate key in-city policy actors in the identification of a shared vision for a future resilient Nairobi. This involved the identification of potential challenges and opportunities towards building resilience for the urban poor and; establishing the role of science in integrating risk management in urban planning and development processes in Nairobi. Section 3 below provides a brief description of the context of risk and development in Nairobi. This is followed by a description of the methodology and detailed accounts of the workshop findings. Lastly, the report concludes by providing reflections on the workshop methodology and implications for the Nairobi Risk Hub.

Disasters do not discriminate; however, existing socio-economic conditions present segregated disaster impacts even for similar communities- demographically. Here, the most vulnerable groups within these communities suffer most. Research shows that disasters increase gender inequalities. This framework analysis sought to bring to the construct of disaster risk reduction, gender intersectionality perspectives, and ways of gender mainstreaming in disasters in Kenya.  It is undeniable that each time a disaster occurs, gender relations are part of the human experiences that arise from disasters. Therefore, the inclusion and advancement of gender mainstreaming or responsiveness into disaster risk reduction are timely, especially when the world is faced with numerous disasters inclusive of emerging ones as COVID19. The findings resulting from this study used a Participatory Action Approach. Primary data presented a multi-level approach to disaster risk reduction comprising of local, city-level and international participation. The results show a need for gender mainstreaming in disaster risk reduction in Kenya. These efforts call for training, community leadership network and a rethink on policies for research and practice to address the local people’ sufferings in the face of disasters, and lost livelihoods.