Making ends meet: Nairobi’s informal economy and Africa’s urban future

Nairobi, like many other cities across Africa, relies on a different kind of worker to keep it moving, one without any formal employment, writes Samuel Derbyshire. What does this mean for a rapidly urbanising continent?

A craftsman on Ngong Road working on a new chair (Samuel Derbyshire)

Nairobi never stands still. Generation after generation, it draws its population from the length and breadth of Kenya, manifesting, in these 269 sq miles of cityscape, the energy and confidence of the entire country. Like all great cities, it seems always to be in the process of becoming something new. As soon as you think it has arrived, it has moved on.

This is not only true in a metaphorical sense. Anyone who lives here will be able to tell you about the radical transformations rippling through the very fabric of their neighbourhood. Multi-story apartment blocks rise ever higher above once quiet suburbs. New roads and bypasses take shape around them. The entire urban infrastructure grows both firmer and more elaborate with each passing year. But this restless growth is not unique to Kenya. It is a story that characterises cities across the African continent, which has the fastest growing urban population in the world and where, according to the Institute for Security Studies, more than half of all citizens will live in towns and cities by the year 2050.

What is the lived reality of this trend? For some, it is jobs with regular office hours that come with health insurance and pension plans: a sense of security, and stability. The recipients of such jobs – Africa’s ever-expanding middle class – are shaping democracy, and propelling region-wide processes of social change through links back to family homes in rural villages. But this is only one side of the story.