Nairobi-Mombasa highway: An opportunity to embrace inclusivity

I wrote this blog post in Bellagio, Italy. This is a commune in the Province of Como, in the northern Italian region of Lombardy, near Lake Como.

Together with a number of academics, civil society and some ICT practitioners, we are discussing the role of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in enhancing inclusivity around transportation, mobile money, agriculture and business process outsourcing.

In my blog last week, I dealt with agriculture. Today I will focus on transportation, considering the fact that the government has announced plans to build a major highway between Nairobi and Mombasa.

The expansion of the highway is necessary to ease congestion in Nairobi. It is also an opportunity to take care of the poor, who are consistently excluded every time major infrastructure is built.

It is a common practice globally that when such infrastructure is built, widespread public consultations are carried out to create a perception of inclusive infrastructure development.

Different views ensure that all issues are taken into consideration before the design stage of the infrastructure.

That way, we could at least deal with the previous shortcomings seen during, and since, the development of Thika highway.

My brief experience in the development of large infrastructure compels me to advocate for full public participation.

LAND SPECULATORS

However, trying to accommodate views from all walks of life is extremely painful exercise. The only thing that makes it worthwhile is that such consultations greatly help when implementation starts.

The announcement of the dualling Nairobi-Mombasa road is causing excitement among speculators of land. Real estate investors want to take advantage of the opportunity to place their investments in key locations next to the highway.

Land grabbers too are not to be left behind as they have seen a window of opportunity in some of the public development projects along the corridor.

But the development of this much-awaited highway should be an opportunity to address the lingering issue of inclusivity. This will come out of public engagements.

It is critically important that public engagement start immediately as a strategy for effective support communication at the earliest.

If anything, the development of the standard gauge railway has provided good reasons for bringing the public on board at an early stage.

Unlike in the past, there are many platforms for public engagements and perhaps a great opportunity to start open procurement initiatives that would change the narrative of infrastructure development in Kenya.

Public consultations, although a constitutional requirement, are a necessary pain in building much needed positive perception, and helps to avoid delays from unnecessary lawsuits and other individual or community rights activism along the infrastructure corridor.

There are many issues that would require consultations, including environmental safety, smart urban development, as well as inclusive infrastructure development.

SMART URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Even as we need infrastructure, we must bear in mind that aesthetics too matter. This is why the concept of smart cities is gaining traction globally.

The phrase “smart city” is defined by Sam Musa as the ability to integrate multiple technological solutions in a secure fashion to manage the city’s assets – the city’s assets include, but are not limited to, local departments information systems, schools, libraries, transportation systems, hospitals, power plants, law enforcement, and other community services.

As recent infrastructure developments have shown, private development follows the laying of public infrastructure. Hotels, shops, malls, and estates, followed by schools and churches, will inevitably frank the new highway.

It is therefore important to plan for this and invoke the idea of a smart city while doing so.

A smart city roadmap consists of three major components: studying the community, developing a smart city policy, and engaging the community by fostering e-government initiatives.

ROGUE INVESTORS

Even with existence of the Thika Highway, accident victims who need emergency services near, say, the Kenya School of Monetary Studies could die on the way due to delays as they are ferried to Aga Khan University Hospital, which is less than five kilometres away.

The highway designers did not take into account the smart city concept. Some of the developments on the road were afterthoughts, including pedestrian overpasses, matatu stages and the annoying speed pumps that slow down traffic.

Save for a few sections of land owned by institutions, the Thika highway is becoming a jungle of unplanned housing along the highway.

Unlike many countries that have internalized the concept of smart cities, Kenya continues to be overrun by rogue investors who associate infrastructure like highways to convenience of proximity to transport then build housing just by the roadside.

Unbeknown to them is that the higher the density of people living on the roadside the higher the fatal accident rates.

The National Transport and Safety Authority estimated that 3,000 deaths from road crashes occur annually in Kenya out of which about 40 per cent are pedestrians.

Most of the pedestrian fatalities are avoidable if the building codes can be changed such that residential housing is at a distance from major highways.

LOW-INCOME HOUSING

Land grabbers, investors and speculators are on the prowl now on the Mombasa Highway corridor, looking to purchase anything that touches on the highway. By the time the road is complete, several apartments will be finished too – all by the roadside.

Almost always, such investments disrupt low-income earners pushing them further away from the city and making it too expensive for them to afford transport.

Githurai, for example, was largely a low-income area whose proximity to Nairobi was reasonably close but the construction of Thika Highway has changed the order pushing out low-income earners to beyond Ruiru.

This is largely happening due to lack of planning by the Nairobi and Kiambu Counties.

While gathering information for this blog post, I met John and Robert, both temporary residents of Mukuru Kwa Njenga.

They live here during weekdays and only get to see their families in Ngong over the weekend.

SPECTACLE OF OMISSIONS

Their salaries are equivalent to their monthly transport budget for the Nairobi-Ngong commute and sometimes during the rainy season, transport costs are more than their pay.

They now pool resources to rent a single room in the shanty town, where they stay during the weekdays. They have accepted this anomaly as the natural order of things but this should not happen if public infrastructure is planned and managed well.

Although more than 80 percent of Nairobi residents are pedestrians, infrastructure development never takes care of their needs.

If you want to see the spectacle of omissions due to lack of public consultations, go to Museum Hill during rush hours.

Pedestrians hop across multiple lanes while unforgiving matatu maniacs speed through laughing at those they have missed to hit by a whisker.
There have been several crashes here. Instead of calling for a redesign of the road, we call it a black spot.

The designers of highways should also be cognizant of many pedestrians in a country like Kenya to make provisions of walk paths, under passes and over passes.

COUNTY LEADERSHIP

It is a shame that the colonial administration was more inclusive in provision of transport, housing, planning and environmental safety than subsequent postcolonial governments.

The Kenya Bus Service worked efficiently. Through it, the company transport subsidy was provided to accommodate the poor.

Much of Eastlands housed the poor with decent utilities. These necessities seem not to be in the minds of county leadership.

Devolution initiatives that were meant to address regional issues are non-existent in Nairobi as the poor languish in poverty while some spend their entire income traveling between peri-urban centres and Nairobi due to lack of housing in the city.

It is worth noting that of all the politicians who have announced their intention to seek Nairobi’s gubernatorial seat, none has quite laid out what they will do for poor residents in the city.

Most of the candidates have no clue about environmental safety and development. There are no emission-level standards. Vehicles spew out carbon monoxide to innocent citizens living precariously by the roadside.

PEDESTRIANS

There is wisdom now than ever before to discourage any construction within at least 50 meters from the highways.

The highways should at least be fenced off to prevent reckless crossings by undisciplined pedestrians.

This will both improve the traffic flow as well as the safety of other road users. There is nowhere in the world where pedestrians cross highways at will as it happens in Kenya.

We must revisit the greater Nairobi development plan and secure infrastructure corridors while engaging the public.

This new development presents an opportunity to address problems at the bottom of the pyramid.

This will call for new policies and embracing of new concepts such as smart cities.

The writer is an associate professor at the University of Nairobi’s School of Business.