From above, there is a place where the rooftops, packed tightly together, resemble chocolate– softened and gently melting, under the relentless sun. Walking up past the streets of Toi market, Nairobi’s famous second-hand market, one arrives at a village lined with small, brightly coloured shops, each roughly two or three meters wide, tucked beneath those brown roofs. Here, there are stalls selling flour, toothbrushes, and other daily necessities, alongside small factories crafting accessories and furniture with discarded wood, metal, or even butcheries. Out in the open air, boys sell mandazi, dropping lumps of dough into cauldrons of furiously bubbling oil, while women press chapati flat against heavy griddles. Men carry sugarcane and potatoes on wooden handcarts, and nearby, salons braid customers’ hair, and rows of boda boda wait for passengers along the roadside. This is Kibera, an informal settlement in southwestern Nairobi, often described as Africa’s largest slum.
“Kibera is one community. We help each other. Forty-three different ethnic groups live here, and during election season there can be tension, but we know each other’s faces, and we try to live in peace” – Kibera free school’s teacher.
Kibera is estimated to be home to between 250,000 to 1 million people, with population estimated varying because it remains largely informal, and it has one of the highest population densities in Kenya. Made up of thirteen villages, it is a place where many ethnic communities live side by side, and where most people sustain themselves through small retail businesses or hand crafting. When I asked one workshop owner how he had come to this work, he said, “I knocked on the doors of companies everywhere, but in the end I couldn’t find a job. There was no work, so a few of us got together and started something ourselves.”
In Kenya, 83.6 per cent of employment was in the informal economy as of 2024, and 90 per cent of the 780,000 new jobs created that year emerged from that same sector. Formal employment remains scarce. For many, survival depends on staying within the informal economy, running small shops, repairing goods, or working as artisans in small manufacturing spaces.
There are also many agencies within Kibera devoted to supporting the community. One of them, Power Women Group, helps women prevent HIV. Founded by fifteen women from Kibera, the organisation works to reduce the stigma and prejudice surrounding HIV while teaching life skills that can help women live more independent lives. They also make scarves from leftover fabric and roll discarded magazine pages into bracelets and necklaces to sell. Young women in Kibera are exposed to severe gender-based violence, and HIV rates among them remain disproportionately high. In this context, organisations work not only to help ensure a stable supply of free HIV treatment, but also to equip women with the means to protect themselves.
Another such organisation is SOMO, an NGO that supports micro and small businesses in marginalised communities. Through partnerships with foreign organisations, SOMO provides training for local entrepreneurs, improves access to financial capital, and lends equipment so that running a business becomes more possible. When I visited SOMO in Kibera, I found eight men and women who ran retail or manufacturing businesses gathered in a yellow room, sharing their goals and strategies, their eyes bright as they leaned into the training session. One of SOMO’s staff members told me, “Growing up, I watched up close the difficulties small business owners faced among my family and neighbors. I started this work because I wanted to help them.”
For three weeks, I also visited a school in Kibera called Hope and Shine, where I witnessed the children’s shining eyes and their joy in learning. The school is staffed by volunteer teachers, all from Kibera. On the first floor are classrooms for children aged three to four, along with a small library. Upstairs are classrooms for five- and six-year-olds, as well as a kitchen and toilets. By 8AM, the children begin arriving one by one. For about three hours, they move through lessons in mathematics and English. Around 11AM, the smell of firewood begins to drift from the kitchen, where teachers prepare tea and food for the children. After lunch, classes continue into the afternoon. There are thirty-six primary schools in Kibera. Yet even when schooling is officially public, some children still cannot attend because their families cannot afford uniforms or meal costs. That is why volunteers came together to build this school.
Kibera has a long history. During British colonial rule, the colonial government granted this area to Nubian soldiers from Sudan as part of their compensation. What began as an official military settlement became, after Kenya’s independence in 1963 and the abolition of segregation under colonial rule, a target of rapid urbanisation. Because land ownership in Kibera remained ambiguous , waves of incoming residents crowded into the area and began building homes of corrugated iron and mud walls, and Kibera gradually transformed into the settlement now known to the world as a slum. Its population has long made it politically significant. During election seasons, politicians come in search of its formidable voting power. And yet, even now more than sixty years after independence, it has not escaped the label of Africa’s largest slum.
There is irony in this. On April 9, during the three-day African Urban Forum, Kenyan President William Ruto declared that the problem of Kibera’s slums would be eradicated and the area rebuilt into a modern residential complex. In fact, housing rehabilitation projects, called the Soweto East redevelopment project, collaborated with international agencies have been implemented since 2004. President Ruto has sought to expand this long-running project, with thousands of additional housing units planned in Kibera. The problem, however, is that many of the residents targeted for relocation are so economically vulnerable that even subsidised low-cost housing may remain beyond their reach.
The awareness of Kibera’s living conditions is unmistakably there; what is missing is the strong political will to move beyond speeches at international forums and promises made in the heat of election season without facing the issue properly. And so Kibera survives by saving itself. For the education of its children, for the safety and health of its women, for stable work and income, people here continue to hold one another up. In this place, so often politically and economically neglected, life is still sustained by mutual reliance, by endurance, and by the quiet, stubborn work of people refusing to let one another fall.
By Hwikyung Lee
April 24, 2026
