Nairobi in the Making

Nairobi in the Making
Author: Constance Smith
Publisher: James Currey
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2022-06-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781847013262

Examines the making and remaking of Nairobi, one of Africa's most fragmented, vibrant cities, contributing to debates on urban anthropology, the politics of the past and postcolonial materialities.

The City Makers of Nairobi

The City Makers of Nairobi
Author: Anders Ese
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2020-07-21
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000096777

The City Makers of Nairobi re-examines the history of the urban development of Nairobi in the colonial period. Although Nairobi was a colonial construct with lasting negative repercussions, the African population’s impact on its history and development is often overlooked. This book shows how Africans took an active part in making use of the city and creating it, and how they were far from being subjects in the development of a European colonial city. This re-interpretation of Nairobi’s history suggests that the post-colonial city is the result of more than unjust and segregative colonial planning. Merging historical documentation with extensive contemporary urban theory, this book provides in-depth knowledge of the key historical roles played by locals in the development of their city. It argues that the idea of agency, a popular inroad to urban development today, is not a current phenomenon but one that has always existed with its many social, spatial, and physical ramifications. This is an ideal read for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students studying the history of urban development and theories, providing an in-depth case study for reference. The City Makers of Nairobi broaches interdisciplinary themes important to urban planners, social scientists, historians, and those working with popular settlements in cities across the world.

Digital Kenya

Digital Kenya
Author: Bitange Ndemo
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 518
Release: 2016-11-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1137578785

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. Presenting rigorous and original research, this volume offers key insights into the historical, cultural, social, economic and political forces at play in the creation of world-class ICT innovations in Kenya. Following the arrival of fiber-optic cables in 2009, Digital Kenya examines why the initial entrepreneurial spirit and digital revolution has begun to falter despite support from motivated entrepreneurs, international investors, policy experts and others. Written by engaged scholars and professionals in the field, the book offers 15 eye-opening chapters and 14 one-on-one conversations with entrepreneurs and investors to ask why establishing ICT start-ups on a continental and global scale remains a challenge on the “Silicon Savannah”. The authors present evidence-based recommendations to help Kenya to continue producing globally impactful ICT innovations that improve the lives of those still waiting on the side-lines, and to inspire other nations to do the same.

Rethinking Smart Urbanism

Rethinking Smart Urbanism
Author: Prince K. Guma
Publisher: Eburon Uitgeverij B.V.
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2021-01-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9463013253

Rethinking Smart Urbanism is an empirical exploration of the multiple ways in which cities and infrastructures are constructed and reconstructed through ICT innovation and appropriation. Drawing on the case of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, the study explains existing infrastructure constellations through countervailing processes and rationalities in the context of splintered urbanism. In doing so, the study examines the relationship between urban plans and digital infrastructure development, place-based contexts that shape digital infrastructures, and the extent to which these infrastructures facilitate utility companies’ ambitions of extending centralized networks to new territories. It draws on the theoretical and empirical base of urban and infrastructure studies, particularly in the fields of smart urbanism, postcolonial urbanism, and Science and Technology Studies. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative research design and presents in-depth case studies that combine ethnographic methods with a thorough investigation of written sources. Ultimately, it is hoped to enhance our understanding of urban and digital possibilities, and add new insights to debates on technology and urbanity in Africa and beyond.

Matatu

Matatu
Author: Kenda Mutongi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2017-06-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 022647139X

Drive the streets of Nairobi and you are sure to see many matatus colorful minibuses that transport huge numbers of people around the city. Once ramshackle affairs held together with duct tape and wire, matatus today are name-brand vehicles maxed out with aftermarket detailing. They can be stately black or come in extravagant colors, sporting names, slogans, or entire tableaus, with airbrushed portraits of everyone from Kanye West to Barack Obama, of athletes, movie stars, or the most famous face of all: Jesus Christ. In this richly interdisciplinary book, Kenda Mutongi explores the history of the matatu from the 1960s to the present. As Mutongi shows, matatus offer a window onto many socioeconomic and political facets of late-twentieth-century Africa. In their diversity of idiosyncratic designs they express multiple and divergent aspects of Kenyan life including rapid urbanization, organized crime, entrepreneurship, social insecurity, the transition to democracy, chaos and congestion, popular culture, and many others at once embodying both Kenya's staggering social problems and the bright promises of its future. Offering a shining model of interdisciplinary analysis, Mutongi mixes historical, ethnographic, literary, linguistic, and economic approaches to tell the story of the matatu as a powerful expression of the entrepreneurial aesthetics of the postcolonial world.

European External Action

European External Action
Author: Veit Bachmann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2017-02-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317139682

European External Action provides a critical assessment of the practice of EU diplomacy in a key site of Africa-European relations and the global development industry - the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. It analyses how the EU positions itself through its newly established diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service (EEAS), and how it is perceived as a collective geopolitical actor by its external cooperation partners. Going beyond existing studies on EU policy making in Brussels and African-European relations more generally, this book explores in a novel way the conduct of external relations and perceptions of the EU - abroad. Based on institutional ethnography within the EU Delegation in Nairobi and research affiliation with the University of Nairobi, as well as interviews with leading individuals of Kenyan-European interaction, it analyses the practices, processes and perceptions through which EU diplomacy is enacted and realised in a strategic node of global North-South relations. In light of the EU’s claim as a key partner for developing countries and its ambition to be a major player in global politics, European External Action thereby speaks not only to wider debates on the EU’s role as a global and development actor, but also provides new insights in the internal dynamics and the making of external agency in and through EU diplomacy.

The Struggle for Land and Justice in Kenya

The Struggle for Land and Justice in Kenya
Author: Ambreena Manji
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2020
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1847012558

Finalist for the African Studies Association's 2021 Best Book Prize. Explores the limits of law in changing unequal land relations in Kenya.

Nairobi Days

Nairobi Days
Author: Shelina Shariff-Zia
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2017-10-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1457554828

This diaspora novel is a celebration of Indian and African culture seen through the eyes of a young woman. As a member of an Indian minority in a small African country, Shaza’s life is complicated. She lives in a lively house full of relatives. Later, she meets Idi Amin, the bloodthirsty Ugandan dictator and has a narrow escape… Shaza goes to a convent school. Despite the strict rules, the girls are beginning to discover the opposite sex. Shaza is part of a Muslim family that emigrated from India, the old ways still rule. No one in Kenya dates, they just sneak around. Shaza falls for a Hindu boy, Sameer is smitten but they come from two different religions. Shaza is torn between her sense of duty and longing for Sameer. Will the relationship survive her family’s disapproval and a long separation? They live in difficult times in a turbulent African country; Shaza’s cousin is almost killed by thugs and Kenya has a coup d’état where the Indian minority is targeted. The saga follows Shaza’s life from the 1960’s to the 1980’s showing the political upheavals in Kenya and her move to the United States. Nairobi Days is a coming of age story, a love story, a political novel and above all a celebration of life.

The Making of the Constitution of Kenya

The Making of the Constitution of Kenya
Author: Charles O. Oyaya
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2018-05-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317161734

Kenya, like the rest of Africa, has gone through three sets of constitutional crises. The first related to the trauma of colonialism and struggle for independence. The second a period of constitutional dictatorship and the clamor for reform. The third, most recent crisis, being one of identity, legitimacy and the inability of the state to discharge its functions which has resulted in civil unrest, violent ethnic conflicts, poverty, social exclusion and inequality. The Making of the Constitution of Kenya examines the processes, issues and challenges of constitution making, governance and legitimacy in that country and the lessons that can be learned for others on the continent. Equipping the reader with a sound historical perspective on constitutional developments and the crisis of constitutional legitimacy in Kenya it gives an invaluable insight into the normative and political complexities involved in evolving a truly democratic and widely acceptable constitutional order in Africa.