Nairobi County

I think most recently, one of the examples of the work that African Cities Research Consortium has been partnering with has been in Nairobi, when 17 individuals working with waste, so people who scavenge waste, people from dump sites, people who collect waste from houses, People who aggregate those frontline collection services came together and documented those processes.

And then when they were sharing with us what happened when they shared their data with Nairobi City County Government, who sadly for them, suddenly realised that their approach was, to supporting informal waste collection in the informal settlements of Nairobi was simply partial, that the city council officials did not have a good understanding of the processes that were involved.

So they were missing really important groups.

So you begin from all those examples, you realize that data collection by community residents, by workers is important for what it offers to them and their voice and their ability to represent their needs and interests in addition to supporting learning more generally and engaging with researchers.

You have one control unit which will handle all these agencies that are supposed to respond to this.

And that's something that the Nairobi County government has said that it's doing.

It's set up around 170 rescue centers across the city of Nairobi in places mostly that are known to flood.

But these systems, these preparation systems will be tested in a few weeks.

In Nairobi?

In Nairobi, the Nairobi city.

But we also had moments of going to upcountry, you know, where my parents had been born.

And where was that? Which part of Kenya was that?

official Kenyan language.

Right, right.

So you grew up in Nairobi City.

Yeah.