Samuel Owuor

University of Nairobi | UON · Department of Geography & Environmental Studies

This study analyzes the experiences of urban refugee communities, precisely the challenges young South Sudanese refugees living in Kenya face. We divert from the comprehensive examination of refugees in camps to focus on urban youth amidst Kenya’s refugee policy changes and the COVID-19 pandemic. With the support of South Sudanese community leaders...

The rapid urbanization in developing regions, particularly in Asia and Africa, has sparked concerns regarding the decreasing availability of green spaces within urban areas. This study aimed to evaluate the characteristics of urban green spaces, comprehend public perceptions, and suggest enhancements for urban green spaces in Nairobi City County. T...

The current study focuses on food consumption and dietary diversity among internal migrant households in Kenya using data from a city-wide household survey of Nairobi conducted in 2018. The paper examined whether migrant households are more likely to experience inferior diets, low dietary diversity, and increased dietary deprivation than their loca...

Rural-urban migrants in Sub-Saharan Africa do not generally cut their links with rural homes and much has been written about the character, types and implications of connections between rural areas and rapidly growing cities. The persistence of circular migration and the perpetuation of rural-urban connectivity is a distinctive feature of Kenyan ur...

An understanding of the types of shocks that disrupt and negatively impact urban household food security is of critical importance to develop relevant and targeted food security emergency preparedness policies and responses, a fact magnified by the current COVID-19 pandemic. This gap is addressed by the current study which draws from the Hungry Cit...

This paper draws on data from a representative city-wide household food security survey of Nairobi conducted in 2017 to examine the importance of food remitting to households in contemporary Nairobi. The first section of the paper provides an overview of the urbanization and rapid growth of Nairobi, which has led to growing socio-economic inequalit...

Wheat is the second most important carbohydrate staple in Kenya and is produced by both smallholder and large-scale farmers. Smallholders are the majority, but produce <20% of the total national production. Compared to large-scale farmers, they have been considered to be less efficient producers and thus fail to benefit fully from their participati...

The need to merge scientific with societal knowledge in addressing global sustainability challenges has deepened research on a methodology known as co-producing knowledge. It differs from participatory approaches by holding potential for solution-oriented research through sustained relationships with actors across disciplines and sectors. Although...

Even though urban poverty is a key component of the development agenda in Nairobi with a focus on job creation, provision of basic infrastructure (such as roads and clean drinking water), food security has traditionally been omitted by city planners and managers despite its centrality to people's health and well-being. One of the consequences of th...

Beef production in Kenya is the forte of pastoralists and large-scale ranches in the Arid and Semi-Arid areas. Cross sectional data was collected from 67 pastoralists and seven large-scale ranches, selected through multistage stratified sampling. Comparative descriptive statistics, gross margin analysis and analysis of production constraints were d...

African cities are largely less-built with agile informal settlements and multiple ecologies that harbor different pathways for resilience to climate change. We undertook a qualitative systematic review of academic and policy evidence, to address the question of what interventions are emerging at neigbourhood to city scale to enhance resilience to...

Smallholder farmers and pastoralists produce the largest proportion of food consumed in sub-Saharan Africa. However, they remain among the food insecure populations. This paper explores the food (in)security among smallholder farmers and pastoralists using a sample of 175 households in three agro-food value chains of wheat, dairy, and beef in the n...

Recent conceptualizations of ‘food deserts’ have expanded from a sole focus on access to supermarkets, to food retail outlets, to all household food sources. Each iteration of the urban food desert concept has associated this kind of food sourcing behavior to poverty, food insecurity, and dietary diversity characteristics. While the term continues...

https://journals.openedition.org/articulo/3719 This introduction highlights the paradox of the uses and regulation of public spaces by street trading reflected in two interwoven contradictions. The first contradiction is about the massive presence of street trade and the persistent ambiguous regulatory framework. The second contradiction deals wit...

In near future, wood-based biomass energy will remain the main cooking energy for households in East Africa, especially for poor households due to its availability and affordability. Alternative biomass fuels however exist. Economic viability of these alternatives is important due to its potential to influence their adoption and sustained use. This...

Con el compromiso de que "nadie se quedará atrás", la Agenda 2030 de las Naciones Unidas y los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS) tienen un gran potencial para el avance del desarrollo sostenible de montañas y para fortalecer la resiliencia de las comunidades y ecosistemas en áreas montañosas. Sin embargo, para alcanzar ese potencial, los ODS...

Due to its availability and affordability for poorer populations, wood-based biomass energy remains vital in meeting local energy demands – especially for cooking fuel – in many regions of the developing world. However, increasing feedstock scarcity (e.g. due to deforestation) coupled with the negative socio-economic and environmental outcomes of i...

FOODMETRES has combined quantitative and qualitative methods and engaged with a variety of actors in metropolitan regions including food producers, civic food organisations, and government bodies. FOODMETRES defines metropolitan regions in the context of the land use impacts of cities on their surrounding areas. It hence considers phenomena such as...

Les mouvements sociaux sont devenus une caractéristique incontournable du paysage politique urbain dans les villes africaines contemporaines-de la mobilisation urbaine contre l'apartheid aboutissant à rendre les villes 'ingouvernables' en Afrique du Sud, et contribuant à la chute du régime en 1994 ; au plus récent mouvement pour la démocratie qui a...

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This chapter is inspired by the gap we find in academic literature on the role, impact and place of party politics in urban governance, at both the metropolitan and neighbourhood levels. Much evidence in our fieldwork demonstrates the importance of political parties, their agents and party politics in the everyday lives of city residents, as well a...

Water services in urban Africa are generally in a bad state and low-income neighbourhoods are not usually connected to the municipal water supply and infrastructure. The Kenyan government attempted to address these problems with its Water Act of 2002 and by creating water and sewerage companies. This chapter recounts how this idea was adopted and t...

School feeding has a direct and indirect impact on children's nutrition, and thus on their health. However the success of such programmes is determined by market forces, in particular the price of food at the market. Based on a survey of all the primary schools in Nakuru town, Kenya, this chapter shows that children in Standard 1 who received meal(...

School feeding is an important development tool and is related to at least three Millennium Development Goals. School farming has been largely overlooked in the urban agriculture literature but with many parents nowadays unable to afford school lunches for their children, it can play a vital role in reducing the costs involved in providing nutritio...

School feeding programs are an important development tool and relate to at least three of the Millennium Development Goals. School farming has been largely overlooked in the urban agriculture literature, but with many parents currently unable to afford school lunches for their children, it can play a vital role in reducing the costs involved in pro...

School farming is becoming common in Africa to provide cost effective feeding to children. It is considered beneficial for both the physical and mental growth of the children. The two most frequently mentioned benefits of crop cultivation were that it helps improve the school's feeding program and that the school saves money that would otherwise be...

A number of political commentators, the media and observers have portrayed the 2007 election violence in Kenya as an ethnic conflict between two of the largest tribal opposing factions: the Kikuyu and the Luo. However, the situation in a multi-ethnic country like Kenya could prove to be much more complicated than one may think. According to Mueller...

Nairobi is the main door to the East African market and a safe haven for most international firms and organizations, yet it nurtures so much poverty. Part of the explanation for this situation is embedded in the social history of today's citizens of Nairobi. This book is based on the biographies of almost 1,500 men and women aged 25-54, to find out...

As in many African countries, the university scene in Kenya has undergone profound changes during the past 20 years. The liberalisation of the availability of higher education has generated unprecedented forms of competition between courses and public and private establishments which now offer options which best meet market needs. The article descr...

Farming among urban dwellers in Sub-Saharan Africa is a common phenomenon. The present study, carried out in a medium-sized town in Kenya, not only confirmed this but also showed that farming by urban dwellers in the rural areas was even more important for these households’ livelihoods than farming in town. However, those who could benefit most fro...

In the literature on rural-urban linkages in sub-Saharan Africa the focus has so far been predominantly on the urban dwellers contributing to the livelihood of the rural ones, usually through remittances from family members living in the city. Although acknowledged in the last two decades, the reverse flow, i.e. the extent to which town dwellers re...

Johannesburg, Ibadan and Nairobi have recently witnessed the rapid development of enclosed neighborhoods, i.e. neighborhoods whose access is controlled by a group of residents by the closing-off (through temporary or permanent barriers, with or without a pedestrian access) of the streets leading to these neighborhoods. This form of territorial cons...

Johannesburg, Ibadan and Nairobi have recently witnessed the rapid development of enclosed neighborhoods, i.e. neighborhoods whose access is controlled by a group of residents by the closing-off (through temporary or permanent barriers, with or without a pedestrian access) of the streets leading to these neighborhoods. This form of territorial cons...

Based on a study in Nakuru town, Kenya, this volume deals with the multi-spatial (or multi-local) livelihoods of households with livelihood sources in different localities. It focuses in particular on the rural livelihood sources of urban households. To cope with the adverse economic effects of increasing unemployment, the escalating cost of living...

(english) Since the pioneer analysis of the labour market by the ILO team in the early 1970s, the NUrIP, which collected about 1,600 biographies among a sample of the Nairobi adult population, is the first to provide for a comprehensive view of the social, demographic and employment situation of Nairobi. The analyses draw a picture of surprising st...

In Nakuru town (northwest of Nairobi, Kenya), two out of five households were living in conditions of absolute poverty in 1997. Farming in town is one of the ways people employ to cope with this problem. Based on a survey held in 1999 among almost 600 households, it is estimated that about 30 percent of the Nakuru population is engaged in crop cult...

Multispatial livelihoods refer to households with a livelihood foothold in both urban and rural areas. Although it is well-known that multispatial households are common in sub-Saharan Africa, the phenomenon has seldom been looked at from the urban household perspective. A review of the literature indicates that rural food and/or income sources are...

East Africa, comprising the Republic of Kenya, United Republic of Tanzania and Republic of Uganda, covers a diverse region of the central portion of Eastern Africa. These three national states have varied and different historical, economic, political and socio-cultural development which must be taken into account in presenting the urbanization proc...

As far as rura l-urban linkages in sub -Saharan Africa are concerned, the focus has so far predominantly been on the urban dwellers contributing to the livelihood of the rural ones, usually through remittances from family members living in the city. Hardly anything is known about the reverse flows, i.e. in how far urban households realize part of t...

The present report contains the result of a general survey, carried out in June-July 1999, on farming practices performed by the inhabitants of Nakuru town, Kenya. The two major objectives of the survey were: 1) to collect basic data on farming by the Nakuru townspeople and 2) to provide the municipal authorties of Nakuru with information on urban...

Most research on urban agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa has concentrated on farming by individual urban households, while farming by urban institutions has been largely overlooked. Probably the most prevalent and important type of institutional urban agriculture is school farming, the focus of this paper. The authors examine school farming and sch...