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Slum Upgrading Initiatives
Cities Without Slums Sub regional Programme for Eastern and Southern Africa
KISUMU, KENYA
EXECUTIVE BRIEF
Background
 UN-HABITAT has been assigned the responsibility to assist United Nations member states in monitoring and eventually attaining the global "Cities Without Slums" target of improving the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020. Cities in nine countries have been selected for the piloting phase of the Cities Without Slums (CWS) Sub-Regional Programme for Eastern and Southern Africa. In Kenya, Kisumu was selected, because of several factors, one being severity of urban poverty.
Kisumu, the third largest city in Kenya, experiences the highest average urban poverty levels at 48% against a national average of 29%. The city lacks adequate shelter with approximately 75% of peri-urban inhabitants living in temporary and semi-permanent structures. Over the past 2 years, the Kisumu City Council (KCC) together with UN-HABITAT and in consultation with the residents of the city, have produced a City Development Strategy, which is an array of strategic responses generated through consensus building. The Kisumu City Development Strategy has an investment plan to initiate Settlement Upgrading Schemes and it is in this context that UN-HABITAT is proposing to work closely with KCC under an Agreement of Cooperation, to initiate the Cities Without Slums sub-regional programme for Eastern and Southern Africa.
 Read UN-HABITAT Activities in Kisumu Brochure
Overall objective
The objective of this initiative is to improve the livelihoods of people living and working in informal settlements in Kisumu by promoting and facilitating, the provision of security of tenure, housing improvement, income generation and physical and social infrastructure, including addressing the problems and impacts of HIV/AIDS. All these will be done through engaging full and active participation of stakeholders.
Activities
The programme will be implemented in several phases. The Inception Phase is designed to facilitate extensive consultation among five groups composed of representatives of grassroots organisations, NGOs, public sector (government at all levels), International development agencies, and the private sector. The culmination of the inception phase is the development of an Action Plan, that identifies issues and conditions prevailing in the informal settlements including housing and infrastructure, employment and income generation, security of tenure, tenant/structure owner relations etc.
In the Preparatory Phase, the Kisumu City Council, UN-HABITAT and other stakeholders will undertake detailed preparatory activities such as social and physical mapping of slum areas selected, policy development, implementation of institutional framework, co-ordination, mobilisation of resources, as well as capacity building and sensitisation of stakeholders.
The Implementation Phase will involve physical developments in selected slum areas. The actual development activities will be a result of consultations with slum dwellers and KCC. Once determined, the type of physical development will be an entry point towards comprehensive slum upgrading that will encompass improvements in services, shelter, land tenure, and asset generation.
The Replication Phase of the programme will involve evaluation of the initiative as well as extracting lessons learned, which could be helpful for scaling up and replication.
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