Kibera – What the State Withholds, the Community Builds

A Place the City Forgot

Kibera’s origins trace back to 1904, when Nubian soldiers in the British Imperial East African Company were settled on forest land outside Nairobi. They called this land ‘Kibra’, from their word for 'land of forest'. Following Kenya’s independence in 1963, Kibera was reclassified as an 'unauthorised settlement on state land,' – rendering its residents legal squatters. By then, rapid population growth had already replaced the forest with an ever-denser patchwork of single-room dwellings.

Today, the Kenyan government owns all the land on which Kibera stands, and to this day does not officially acknowledge the settlement – a legal fiction that has been used, repeatedly, to justify withholding basic services and, periodically, to threaten demolition.

These conditions have produced various social challenges. Unemployment is estimated at 50 per cent. A 2009 survey by the French Institute for Research in Africa found the average resident earns less than US$2 per day. A study published by the International Society of Applied Preventive Medicine i-gap indicates that up to 21 per cent of the population is living with HIV. 

The absence of private or accessible sanitation at night has been documented as a direct driver of sexual violence. The open wastewater channels that run alongside Kibera's footpaths are both an eyesore and a public health problem. According to the Pulitzer Center, sanitation failures account for 40 per cent of all diarrhoea deaths across Nairobi County. Electricity reaches only about 20 per cent of the settlement, and where it does it is typically an illegal tap. 

The Weight of Being a Woman in Kibera 

If Kibera's conditions fall hard on everyone, they fall hardest on women and girls. The mechanisms are both structural and intimate, and they begin before adulthood.

A 2023 Deutsche Welle feature revealed that women and girls in Kibera are often forced to trade sex for water. Reports indicate that women in Kibera contract HIV at a rate five times that of their male counterparts. These are not abstract statistics, but the outcome of what happens when girls grow up without food security, school access, safe public spaces, or economic alternatives.

In 2024, thousands of Kenyans marched in cities across the country to protest femicide, following a surge in murders of women. In 2026, the government announced new protections for female athletes who had been specifically targeted – a signal of how widely the danger extends. 

In Kibera, the conditions that produce gender-based violence are structural. A study on slum sanitation found that women in Nairobi's informal settlements reported fear of rape as a reason for not using communal toilets at night, with some drinking less water during the day to avoid having to use facilities after dark. 

CFK Africa, the NGO whose landlord training programme operates in Kibera, described the structural problems: 'Shared walls, limited privacy, and dense living often escalate domestic disputes and increase risks of sexual exploitation. Most tenancy agreements are informal; survivors may fear eviction or retaliation if they report abuse', CFK told FairPlanet in an email response. The organisation also refers to economic aspects: 'Economic pressure can increase household conflict, dependency, and vulnerability to exploitation. Housing insecurity contributes to the fear of losing shelter that can trap survivors in abusive relationships or discourage reporting.'

Kenya's constitution, under Article 43, guarantees every citizen the right to clean water, reasonable standards of sanitation, and accessible healthcare. The Sexual Offences Act provides, on paper, a comprehensive legal framework for prosecuting gender-based violence. In Kibera, the distance between these legal promises and what the settlement's residents experience is vast.

A Community-Led Response to the Water Crisis 

What happens when a state repeatedly fails to show up? In Kibera, the community improvises, driven by necessity. Kibera’s water crisis illustrates this with particular clarity. For years, Grace Achieng, a mother of three and a resident of Kibera, would begin her mornings queuing at a vendor's water point. The vendors charged above 20 Kenyan shillings (roughly €0.14) for a single 20-litre container. According to SHOFCO, which later built the settlement's first dedicated water network, those vendors 'controlled' the supply in the absence of any public alternative, and their prices were described by the organisation as 'exorbitant.'

'Some days I had to choose between water and food,' Grace told FairPlanet. 'And the water we got was not even clean. My youngest was almost always sick.' SHOFCO explained the issue to FairPlanet: 'There was a high risk and cases of water contamination due to dilapidated and leaking ground and surface pipes running along the drainage system. This contributed to high prevalence rates of preventable WASH-related diseases such as diarrhoea and typhoid.' Those diseases, in a settlement where children are already malnourished and healthcare is barely affordable, can be fatal.

SHOFCO's solution was to take the pipes off the ground entirely: Today, an 18-kilometre aerial pipeline carries borehole water treated through ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis across all 14 of the settlement's villages. The pipes are mounted on poles, protecting them from vandals and contamination. The system feeds 52 community kiosks that operate around the clock. A 20-litre container costs three Kenyan shillings – one-seventh of the vendor price. SHOFCO's own impact assessments found a 30 per cent decline in diarrhoea cases in served areas. The network currently reaches 40,000 people a day, with expansion plans targeting 140,000.

James Otieno, a bodaboda motorcycle taxi rider and resident of Kibera's Soweto East village, remembers the old arrangement with visible frustration: 'The vendors knew we had no choice. You paid whatever they said, or you went without.' He now fills his family's containers at a kiosk on his way home from work. 'It takes five minutes. That is all,' James told FairPlanet.

Fatuma Hassan, who runs a small food stall near one of the kiosks, explained to FairPlanet that the new water supply leads to fewer sick customers, fewer complaints, and fewer lost days: 'Before, I was scared to cook for customers. I never knew what was in the water. When water is clean, everything else gets a little easier.'

'The easily accessible water translates to keeping girls and kids at school,' SHOFCO notes, 'as less time is used to search for water.' In a settlement where fetching water has historically been a task that falls to women and girls, that redistribution of time carries consequences that reach into classrooms and household income alike.

A Community-Led Response to Gender-Based Violence

Another community response addressed the silence around gender-based violence, and it worked through an actor the formal system had overlooked: the landlord.

CFK Africa's compound-to-compound initiative trains landlords in Kibera as responders to domestic abuse and sexual violence. 'Landlords live near or within compounds and often learn about violence early through noise, distress, tenant disclosures and neighbour reports,' the organisation explained to FairPlanet. 'In the slums, landlords control access points, making them practical actors in prevention and early intervention.' In a place where survivors fear police, where the nearest hospital is outside the settlement, and where reporting abuse can mean losing a home, a trained landlord with a referral pathway is often the only first response.

The training covers Kenya's Sexual Offences Act, privacy rights, survivor-centred referral principles, and a structured framework for responding to disclosures. Crucially, it also engages landlords as male allies – deliberately shifting the burden of safety from the women who have been carrying it alone. After a case is flagged, referrals are channelled to police gender desks, health facilities, legal partners for protection orders, and safe houses where needed.

In 2025 alone, 92 referrals were made through the programme. CFK Africa has trained 40 landlords in Kibera, and a further 80 across Mathare, Mukuru, and Kajiado. Researchers studying community allyship internationally have taken notice: a 2024 academic study conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo, found that the most effective allies against gender-based violence are not outside experts but trusted local figures who mobilise their community's own values and structures – which is precisely what the CFK Africa model does.

The Limits of Community-Led Resilience

It is important not to overstate what any of this means. An 18-kilometre pipeline serving 40,000 people a day leaves tens of thousands dependent on vendors. Ninety-two referrals in a settlement where, by SHOFCO's own research, 66 per cent of girls have traded sex for food represents a beginning, not a resolution. Evictions persist, unemployment remains high, and sewage still runs through open channels.

The water pipeline and the landlord programme represent evidence that even though Kibera’s communities have been systematically denied services, they find the leverage points and use them.

Grace Achieng no longer queues for water. Landlords have become first responders to domestic abuse and sexual violence. Fatuma Hassan cooks for her customers without fear. In Kibera, what the state withholds, the community continues to build.