20. Nairobi

The site of Nairobi on the equator was selected originally as a settlement at the turn of the 20th century when the British were developing a new railway line from Kenya to Uganda.

By a small river before climbing the Limuru escarpment, having a good climate and with its higher elevation, the nature and surrounding environs of the Rift Valley of the emerging place were as broadly described in the opening words of Blixen’s ‘Out of Africa’.

“I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills… The Mountain of Ngong stretches in a long ridge from north to south and is crowned with four noble peaks like immovable darker blue waves against the sky. It rises 8000 feet above the sea and to the east 2000 feet above the surrounding country. But to the west the drop is deeper and more precipitous – the hills fall vertically down towards the Great Rift Valley… From the Ngong Hills you have a unique view, you see to the south the vast plains of the great game-country that stretches all the way to Kilimanjaro; to the east and north the park-like country of the foot-hills with the forest behind them, and the undulating land of the Kikuyu Reserve which extends to Mount Kenya, a hundred miles away – a mosaic of little square maize fields, banana groves and grassland… Nairobi was our town, twelve miles away, down on a flat bit of land amongst hills. Here was the Government House and the big central offices… Nairobi was a medley place, with some fine new stone buildings, and whole quarters of old corrugated iron shops, offices and bungalows, laid out with long rows of eucalyptus trees along the bare, dusty streets”. *

Besides its generally open savannah and semi-arid areas there were rich lands suitable for the planting and production of tea and coffee and sisal.

After independence, as capital of Kenya, the city of Nairobi grew as a communications centre within East Africa alongside Uganda & Tanzania.

From the development of streets around the railway station, its initial layout was zoned with different residential communities of varying density.

But it was the rapid rise in population and increase in in-migration from rural areas that was to create significant change.

Besides the National Park created just on the outskirts of the city, with the pastoralist Maasai, the agriculturalist Kikuyu contributed to the promotion of cash crops for export.

But with a high population growth rate, the rate of urbanisation grew sharply leading to the growth and extension of new urban areas.

Now, the reach of the city has extended greatly beyond the central business district and the former higher income north-western neighbourhoods of Karen, Langata and Muthaiga to the more commercially active Westlands and Parklands.

Significant growth resulted in eastern districts of Embakasi, Dandora and Umoja with their lower income areas.

This has led to a major increase in informal settlements on the outskirts of the city where, in the absence of infrastructure and adequate services, huge informal areas such as Kibera have resulted, densely populated and without employment opportunities for the young.

As a result, Nairobi has become one of the largest and densest urbanised areas in East Africa with 5 million people and its continuing high growth of population but diminishing sites and services to accommodate such rising challenges of human needs and health services.

*Karen Blixen – Out of Africa – Denmark, 1937.