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Transport and MDGs: Perspectives from a Nairobi Slum

Rachel Reichenbach

The 2007 Transport Forum and Learning Week revealed the World Bank Transport Group’s prioritization of safe, clean, and affordable transport. These broad concepts provide a general framework for other transport proposals. One such proposal, the report “Transport and the Millennium Development Goals in Africa” prepared through a collaboration of multilateral institutions, offers specific quantitative indicators for how the transport sector can facilitate the achievement of the MDGs. To reach the MDGs, the report suggests improving truck transport to facilitate economic growth, constructing rural roads to increase access to health and education, and adopting environmentally-friendly transport policies. Each of these specific areas of focus has accompanying quantitative performance measures such as the unit costs of road freight, the percentage of the population that is more than a half day’s walk from an all-weather road or eight kilometers from a health facility, and the amount of leaded fuels sold.[1]

Although these are worthy quantitative measures, they fail to address other barriers to accessibility and mobility for the general population. A focus solely on the large-scale quantitative transport measures espoused by the multilateral agencies will fail to achieve the MDG targets; the social processes that surround each of these quantitative issues need to be recognized as important components of development and be addressed by any implementation plan.

My second concern with the focus of the Transport Forum and the report is the emphasis on transport issues in rural areas. For example, the report only addresses the relationship between transportation and health in rural areas.[2] Developing better transport systems to meet health needs is just as important in urban areas. Proximity to an urban roadway does not guarantee access to that supposedly “public good,” and stranded mobility is a valid but often overlooked concern in urban areas.

Employing three examples from my research in an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, this paper will highlight some of the complex social issues that entangle quantitative goals and create barriers to the achievement of the MDGs. After a brief overview of the setting, each of the following sections will focus on current policy suggestions in order to highlight the missing social components of those approaches. The final section will offer suggestions of transport development approaches that may be more appropriate for addressing the needs of slum-dwellers.

The Case of Kibera

Kibera, Kenya, has earned the dubious distinction of being the largest informal settlement south of the Sahara Desert, with over one million people crowded onto about one square mile of marginal land.[3] Located seven kilometers from the city center of Nairobi, Kibera offers few opportunities for formal employment. Only 10 percent of male residents are employed in the formal sector, most working in the industrial zone an hour walk from Kibera. Although no specific statistics are available, the high prevalence of under-employment is indicated by the fact that 60-80 percent of both men and women are employed in the informal economy or have only temporary employment.[4] Poor sanitation is a major affliction in Kibera. An insufficient number and quality of toilets - 150 people may share one pit latrine block - have led to unsanitary conditions.[5] Raw sewage fills ditches and the use of “flying toilets,” the jettisoning of excrement wrapped in plastic bags, is common. Health measures such as maternal and child mortality rates are worse for Kibera than for rural Kenya.[6]

Bypassed Again: The Effects of Thru-Ways on Kibera Residents

In order to facilitate economic growth and reach MDG 1, the report and the World Bank Transport Forum place priority on improving the efficiency and decreasing the cost of the truck-transport industry. One common suggestion is to construct bypasses around bottlenecks and urban areas. For example, in Johannesburg, South Africa, bypasses were constructed to improve truck-transport corridors around the city.[7] These bypasses were heralded as reducing truck transport time and bottlenecks, improving road maintenance, reducing transport costs due to breakdowns, and protecting the population from fast-moving heavy trucks. However, bypasses can have negative consequences for the surrounding communities.

Several bypasses have been planned for Nairobi, including a southern bypass that would cut through Kibera. In 2004, a number of shacks were demolished in preparation for construction.[8] The Ministry of Roads and Public Works stated:

These road corridors were acquired under the Land Acquisition Act Cap. 295 of the Laws of Kenya and compensation duly paid for. Over time and due to the fact that the roads have remained undeveloped, substantial encroachments have occurred on these corridors. The encroachments involve illegal allocation of land and construction of structures, mainly residential and commercial buildings. Slums have also mushroomed on some of the bypasses. … Indeed in accordance with the Traffic Act, Cap. 403, Section 91, it is an offence to encroach on public road reserves. The Ministry of Roads and Public Works is thus enforcing the law by clearing away structures encroaching on the reserves.[9]

Since the government deemed the Kibera residents as illegally encroaching, they received no remuneration for the demolition or assistance in resettling. Although bypasses may benefit truck transport around Nairobi, in their current conceptualization they will have serious negative consequences for Kibera.

If the MDGs are to be achieved, policies regarding the construction of bypasses must consider the implications for those living in their shadows. First, bypasses can decrease services and mobility for slum dwellers. High-speed thruways provide few opportunities for slum dwellers to use the road-way. In fact, the construction of bypass roads may cut off Kibera residents who are employed outside the slum from existing pedestrian pathways to work. The highway creates a cement barrier between Kibera and other sections of town. The community can be further isolated economically and socially from the rest of the urban area as opportunities for informal markets along the roadside are eliminated. The small stores that line most roadways in Nairobi and hawkers who sell their wares at traffic-congested intersections would suffer the most. Alternative marketplaces for this economic activity are not included in the bypass plans and the lack of the construction of feeder roads into Kibera highlights the failure of bypass planning to address mobility and economic vitality for settlement dwellers.

Second, bypasses can increase hazards and inequality for slum dwellers. Bypasses result in exposure to greater vehicular pollutants, especially for children playing near roadways. Kibera occupies marginal land sloping down to the Nairobi dam where air-borne pollutants and particulates, such as those from leaded and diesel fuels, can settle in the soil. The U.S. Department of Energy states that “lead is extremely toxic, and causes mental retardation in children. Lead oxide from car exhaust accumulates in soil near roads, and children can get it on their hands from playing outside. They then ingest it, and it causes its damage.”[10] Sulfur from diesel fuel and particulate-forming nitrous oxide have been shown to have similar serious health consequences in children. Also, in the morning, an exodus of pedestrians flow out of Kibera. If residents employed outside the slum are cut-off from existing pedestrian pathways to work by a bypass, they either must spend more time walking to their job or use the high-speed roadway as a walkway, increasing the potential for fatal road accidents. Already, road-traffic injuries are a significant cause of adult mortality in Kenya and pedestrian accidents account for the majority of traffic related fatalities in Nairobi.[11] Finally, bypass construction may increase inequality by disproportionately targeting informal settlements because the land is cheap and easy to obtain. The affected residents face a loss of assets, livelihoods, and security as well as dislocation from their social environment because of the destruction of homes and businesses along the road right-of-way.

Overall, bypasses will only help to achieve the MDG targets if these localized problems are recognized and addressed by the planning process. For example, project money can be budgeted to accommodate the construction of a frontage road and overpass walkways for pedestrians or to build structures within the community to accommodate displaced livelihoods and homesteads.

Stranded Mobility: The Health Experiences of Kibera Residents

The report, “Transport and the Millennium Development Goals in Africa,” identifies two targets in order to achieve MDGs 4 and 5 on child and maternal mortality. First, “rural access and urban mobility [should be] improved for reliable supply of inputs to health facilities, to provide affordable access for all households, and to enable cost effective outreach health activities.” Second, “emergency transport response for medical crises in rural communities [should be] improved through community communications facilities linked to improved transport services.”[12] There are two key problems with these targets. First, both goals primarily target rural areas. Second, they fail to fully develop the phenomenon of stranded mobility that creates a barrier to health care for slum dwellers. This section will discuss some implications of stranded mobility that are not explored in the report.

Demographic research using the Nairobi Cross-Settlement Slum Survey reveals that urban areas face a severe health crisis. Since the signing of the MDGs, maternal and child mortality has increased in Kenya, most sharply for slum dwellers. In Kibera, the under-five mortality rate in 2000 was 186.5 deaths per 1000 children. This can be compared with rural Kenya at 113 per 1000 and Nairobi at 61.5 per 1000. Infant mortality rates in Kibera are shockingly high in comparison to rural Kenya and Nairobi.[13] Likewise, maternal mortality, due to complications in childbirth, absence of a certified health-practitioner at delivery, and the lack of antenatal care, is much higher in Kibera than rural Kenya and Nairobi in general. Indeed, one of the main health complaints of female Kibera residents is the lack of antenatal care. This service identifies maternal complications, administers appropriate immunizations, and offers education on sanitation and nutrition. With no antenatal or delivery care the neo-natal mortality rate reaches 71.4 deaths per 1000. However, with either antenatal or delivery care, neo-natal mortality drops to 20.2 deaths per 1000. Similarly, infant mortality rates drop from 157.3 to 100.2 deaths per 1000 with some antenatal or delivery care.[14] These significant reductions reveal the need to address mobility and access to health care for Kibera residents.

Female slum-dwellers face significant obstacles to obtaining health care for themselves and their children. Transporting children is costly and difficult; they cannot walk as far or as quickly as adults, have more urgent needs for latrines and food, are at higher risk for traffic accidents, and cost extra money to bring on public transport. If children are left at home, a trusted attendant must be found and sometimes remunerated. If a male partner is at work, leaving the home unattended may provide opportunities for burglary. Furthermore, male partners are often in charge of the decision-making process, and if they are absent from the home, the woman may not seek medical help even in urgent situations. Transport accessibility and availability restricts the decision to seek advanced medical care since private transport is expensive and cannot reach most homes in Kibera. The two most-commonly frequented hospitals also do not have ambulances. If complications arise at night, women are even less likely to seek medical attention due to the security risk and complete lack of access to transport.[15]

Other marginalized groups such as the elderly and the disabled face an extra set of barriers that may strand them within the slum. Navigating the informal passageways to reach the edge of the slum where motorized transport is available is energy and time-consuming. Often physical barriers, such as a narrow plank of wood serving as a bridge over a river or open sewer, prevent mobility for elderly or disabled slum-dwellers.

Removing the Refuse: A Neglected Transport Issue in Kibera

The aforementioned report and Transport Forum presentations primarily focused on particulates and vehicular pollution when seeking to achieve MDG 7 on environmental sustainability through the transport sector. At the Transport Forum, suggestions were made to retrofit pollution-emitting public buses with particulate-reducing filters, improve the energy efficiency of engines, increase fuel taxation, and to shift to alternative fuel sources. Although fuel composition and emissions are key components of safe, clean transport, refuse removal is another major environmental issue that has not been fully addressed by the transport sector.

When building the foundation for a latrine site in Kibera, a local contractor discovered that the top six feet of earth was a mixture of organic waste and un-decomposed plastics. The build-up of informal dumping sites and rubbish-clogged streets provide evidence of an unrecognized transportation failure. City Council garbage trucks are prevented from entering the settlement by the poor quality of roads and pathways within Kibera. Therefore, the garbage is trapped in the slum as if in testament to the stranded mobility of its residents.

Even more disturbing than the piles of rotting trash is the open sewage in the streets. With limited space to construct new latrines, old latrines sometimes overflow and human excrement floods streets and houses. Although several unpaved roadways wide enough for one-way motorized traffic run through Kibera, the majority of houses are constructed on winding alleyways, inaccessible to vehicular traffic. Thus, trucks to remove the excrement are unable to reach overfilled latrines. A generator-powered pit-latrine exhauster is available, but the small capacity requires multiple trips to empty it, resulting in exorbitant costs. Most latrines are emptied manually by youth with buckets. Lacking an ability to transport these buckets long distances, the excrement is often emptied into the nearest available stream or open sewer. The resultant environmental degradation has serious consequences for child and maternal mortality. Not surprisingly, Kibera fares worse than Nairobi or rural Kenya in terms of sanitation related illnesses such as diarrhea and fever. The results of a slum survey conducted in 2000 show that in the two weeks prior to the survey, 32 percent of children under three experienced diarrhea, which was double the rate of Nairobi as a whole (13 percent).[16]

The focus on vehicular emissions and not on the emissions of human beings has furthered the taboo of discussing excrement removal and thus compounded the sanitation problem for Kibera residents. Having seen the gravity of the crisis, the final section will discuss how to incorporate the needs of slum dwellers into transport policy.

Annexing Existing Transport: A Minimalist Approach to a Maximum Crisis

Building more and bigger roads is not the ultimate solution for slum improvement and will not achieve the MDGs for these areas. Most road building projects benefit the middle and upper classes who have access to motorized transport and means of mobility. Large-scale infrastructure interventions can have severe deleterious effects for those already excluded and living on marginal land. Mobility and access to markets, social services, and health facilities for slum-dwellers will not occur unless social constraints on transport are addressed. This section will discuss three specific ways existing transport corridors and transportation infrastructure can be reconceptualized and redesigned to meet the needs of slum communities. Implicit in this approach is the integration of multiple community perspectives in the decision-making process.

First, existing transport corridors and the type of traffic they harbor can be easily documented. These corridors can be upgraded in non-invasive but productive ways. For example, the one-lane road running through Kibera can be paved with inexpensive, light-use bitumen, such as that designed by Shell Bitumen for rural all-weather roads, to facilitate small-truck traffic for latrine-exhausting, providing food supplies, and delivering construction materials. This paved lane may also enable manual pit-latrine emptiers to use wheel-barrows to transport excrement longer distances to reach more suitable dumping sites. Certain rules of use or time-schedules may be implemented to coordinate motorized and non-motorized traffic and address pedestrian safety issues. If the community decides it wants to further limit truck traffic through the settlement, pathways on either side of the existing roadway could be paved instead of paving the entire road-bed, facilitating personal transportation but not truck traffic.

Another major thoroughfare in Kibera is the rail-line bordering the northern edge of the settlement. Improving the evenness of the existing pedestrian pathway and facilitating wheeled traffic by adding narrow paved transport lanes along the rail-line would decrease time spent on transport and increase mobility opportunities. In particular, this could reduce the strain on women by offering them alternatives to head-loading and reduce the amount of time spent bringing water, fuel, and food to the household. The improvement of the roadway and paths along the rail-line may help to facilitate inter-settlement traffic, communication, and markets. Possibly, bicycle taxis and other forms of small transport will develop to provide job opportunities and internal transport.

Currently, few Kibera residents own bicycles, motorbikes, or other personal transport machines. Although cost and security issues remain, one major barrier to the use of bicycles is the hazard of roadways. Outside the settlement, adequate transport lanes for non-motorized vehicles and pedestrians should be provided, particularly along well-traveled routes to social services, markets, and employment. This infrastructure is much less expensive than building new roads and specifically targets the needs of poor people.

Third, to further reduce the cost and human footprint of improving urban transport systems, alternative technologies should be promoted. Technological developments have made it possible to implement infrastructure with less environmental damage. For example, photovoltaic panels can be used to provide electricity in off-grid zones. Likewise, instead of building roads to facilitate the flow of information, cell phones can be used to inform slum-dwellers of market conditions. Already, slum residents have created systems of cell-phone sharing and a youth group in Kibera is selling small solar panels that recharge cell-phones or radios. Other alternative technologies, such as bio-gas latrines, can improve the sanitation of the environment while providing a renewable energy source. However, not all technology is applicable to informal settlements and the “unthinking transfer” should be avoided.[17] For example, Kibera residents were concerned that large, visible photovoltaic panels on a latrine would create a security risk. There is a lucrative black-market for such technology and its installment would not only jeopardize the project but would put the management staff in danger. Such high-technology inputs may also suggest significant capital resources to the community and perhaps reduce community ownership of the project. Clearly, cultural, social, and political constraints must be evaluated before simply transferring in new technology.

Finally, valuing local knowledge and community participation is essential. Although the term “community involvement” appears in many multilateral recommendations, it often amounts to little more than reviewing quantitative demographic surveys or conducting opinion polls, as in the suggested “Citizen Report Cards.”[18] To address this tokenism, infrastructure and planning discussions should follow three guidelines. First, participation from vulnerable and underrepresented groups such as women, the disabled, children, and the elderly should be solicited. Cultural and social norms should be considered when creating venues where groups feel comfortable sharing their opinions. Silence within a certain setting should not be assumed to imply a lack of opinion. Second, lack of participation should not be assumed to come only from the side of residents. Too often, representatives from the government or NGOs have failed to show up to community meetings. If community participation is to be taken seriously, planners, government officials, and transport sector representatives must commit to attending and participating in community meetings. Third, community participation strategies should be guided to focus on three levels of intervention. Communities and subgroups can identify micro-level projects they can do themselves, projects that can be undertaken in partnership between the community and a NGO, and macro-level projects which need the participation of more powerful stakeholders.

World Bank Targets: Missing Dimensions in Achieving MDGs

Inadequate attention to the social barriers to accessibility and mobility in transport will further marginalize and impoverish residents of Kibera. One woman I interviewed in Kibera in March 2007 lamented, “We are charged for everything. Even for things that every body must do such as to relieve ourselves. If we care about the environment around us, we are charged for that too.” Lack of access into the slum has unnecessarily increased prices on basic needs such as water, food, and latrine access and restricted the provision of key social needs. Lack of mobility out of the slum has contributed to the alarming rise in infant and maternal mortality since the signing of the MDGs. Focusing on these transport barriers is a step towards achieving meaningful improvements in lives of Kibera residents.