* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Water problems persist in part because local governments refuse to recognize Nairobi's slums as part of the city
The Nairobi slums have never had reliable access to safe water. Unless the government addresses this and other basic needs, life for the city’s poorest residents cannot improve.
The slums, where I grew up and now work every day, were never a great place to live. And for most slum dwellers, conditions are worsening. According to the Nairobi Cross Sectional Survey, residents of informal settlements continue to have limited access to health care and family planning services, inadequate access to water and sanitation, poor housing conditions, limited employment opportunities and almost no public sector services.
These problems persist in part because local governments refuse to recognize these populated areas as part of the city, and therefore do not offer municipal services to the people who live there.
One potential ray of hope for slum dwellers came from a recent WHO report announcing that since 1990, more people on average around the globe have access to safe water. Lack of water is an enormous concern for the people who live in informal settlements.
But data has a way of hiding the truth. It reminds me of my grade school teacher who, when teaching us about the concept of averages, mentioned that when six chickens are eaten by three families, on average each family will have eaten two chickens.
I remember thinking that it’s possible all these chickens could have been eaten by one family. In this way, numbers can obscure glaring inequalities. With this in mind, I have no doubt that the recent WHO report on water is generally true. It’s just not true for everybody.
In the Nairobi slums, the lack of access to safe water has long been a fact of life. As a child I remember one of my daily chores was to wake up very early and go to the well, line up for water and carry a twenty litre can back home.
This was filthy, contaminated water; diarrhoea, typhoid, scabies and other water-borne infections were common. We stopped going to the well only when businessmen started buying water tanks and selling “clean water” in our neighbourhoods. This practice has continued, with families relying on water vendors for their daily supply.
The cost of accessing water in the informal settlements is much higher in Nairobi than for residents of richer areas, who have water piped to their houses.
A twenty litre can costs up to five Kenyan Shillings (about five U.S. cents) and a family of 7 needs approximately 10 cans per day. Per month they would need 1,500 Kenyan Shillings (approximately $17) to meet their water needs, while I now pay just 500 Kenyan Shillings for an unlimited monthly supply of water from the faucet.
Though $17 per month may not seem like a lot of money, to a poor family in Nairobi it can mean the difference between sending a child to school or eating a daily balanced meal.
These are families living at the very lowest income bracket and must devote a big chunk of their budget to access this vital commodity. Out of desperation, sometimes they break the pipes that supply others with water in order to siphon off some precious water themselves.
The businessmen who sell water in the informal settlements are themselves profiting from illegal pipes connections, so accessing water while living in a slum often involves breaking the law.
Why has my community been denied our basic human right for so many years? Because the informal settlements are technically illegal, the Kenyan government says it is not obliged to provide municipal services like water connections.
However, this population is allowed to pay taxes, vote and offer labour in the industrial areas. So why is it illegal for them to access water at an affordable price?
I believe we should celebrate that access to water has increased globally over the last two decades. But the forgotten families in Nairobi’s informal settlements – like many other slums across the developing world -- have not seen a drop.
It is important for African governments to make a deliberate effort to provide water and other services including education, health care, housing, electricity and employment for the people living in the informal settlements.
Africa is urbanizing at an annual rate of 3.5% and in Nairobi it is estimated that by 2025, 60% to 70% of the population will be living in the slums. This is too large a population to ignore.
With better hygiene, clean drinking water and proper drainage, the slum dwellers will be in a better position to contribute to the nation’s economy.
If Kenya’s government continues to turn a blind eye toward the problems of the slums, they’ll remain places where people have little hope or dignity, becoming breeding places for extremism.
Simple solutions like constructing water tanks that will supply the informal settlements in Nairobi will go a long way towards ensuring that this population has access to safe and clean water.
We need to encourage inclusive growth of cities, and support the people who come here to find a better life. With the law of averages, Nairobi’s growth and prosperity will be dragged down by the poverty of its slums if our government continues to ignore this significant portion of its population.
Jane Otai is a Senior Program Advisor for Jhpiego, a non-profit global health affiliate of Johns Hopkins University. Currently she is working on the Tupange initiative, an urban reproductive health project focused on improving the health of women and families in the urban slums of Kenya. Otai is a 2013 New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute.
