Wangui Kimari

African Centre for Cities

Building on ethnographic fieldwork and interdisciplinary theoretical approaches, this article historicizes poor urban settlements in Nairobi as ruins–the product of systemic ruination from the colonial period to the present. In so doing, it offers the provocation to think ‘slum’ dwellers as relics: remains of past/present conterminous ruins who are...

This paper seeks to address the connection between economic opportunities and violence prevention, through an in-depth study of the National Youth Service ( NYS ) Community Cohorts Programme – the biggest youth empowerment programme in Kenya’s recent history. Using field data, it seeks to answer the following question: To what extent did the Nation...

Kilamba, the first of the new centralities in Angola, is increasingly visible in recent urban scholarship about Luanda, further establishing it as the symbol of both this “new” post-war city and the “New Angola.” Within local discourses of progress, its emergence from within “petro-urbanism,” and its size and modern aesthetics are emphasized, while...

How do grassroots activists in Kenya protect themselves from torture and related forms of violence when formal protection mechanisms are not guaranteed? In answering this question, this article details the diverse tactics activists use to keep safe while doing unsafe work. Informed by the concept of social navigation, I explore two broad Kiswahili...

The marginalized in Brazil and Kenya, poor Black and Brown bodies, are caught up in colonial and localized regimes of anti-Blackness and complementary regimes of transnational biopolitical governance. In this regard, while they are under siege by colonial borderlines and racialized class dynamics, they are also subject to the surveillance and inter...

From the beginning of its colonial settlement in Kenya, the British administration criminalized Kenyans. Even now, colonial modes of punishment, incarceration, closure, interrogation, curfew, confiscation, separation, displacement, and detention without trial are deeply embedded in the spatial and ideological arrangements of post-colonial Kenya. In...

This first issue of Annals of Crosscuts includes eleven richly textured films that speak from the growing environmental humanities with strong intent and originality. The films speaks to the theme of "Ruptured Times" and forms a testimony to the integrative ambitions of the environmental humanities. The contributors come from a range of disciplines...

Case studies of metropolitan cities in nine African countries from Egypt in the north to three in West and Central Africa, two in East Africa and three in Southern Africa make up the empirical foundation of this publication. The interrelated themes addressed in these chapters the national influence on urban development, the popular dynamics that sh...

Much has been said about the presence of China in Africa over the last fifteen years, with, for the most part, these discussions affirming either a ‘for’ or ‘against’ position. Working from a micro-level perspective, this ethnographic article looks at how the everyday associations of ‘China’ and ‘the Chinese’ in Kenya are increasing, engendering ex...

This paper introduces the Special Collection ‘Youth, the Kenyan state and a politics of contestation'. It focuses on youth and the heterogenous ways this social category responds to inordinate state action. Specifically, we foreground the various roles the Kenyan state has played in the construction and politicization of Kenyan youth across time an...

In this article, I detail how youth in poor urban settlements in Nairobi use a vernacular that I term war-talk. This is a speech, anchored in the Swahili derived urban slang language Sheng, which includes words that reference combat situations. If Sheng, as has been argued, is a generational articulation of unequal spatialized relations in Nairobi,...

This short essay, flowing through Nairobi and Toronto, represents a transnational conversation on what the contemporary status of urban rivers can tell us about the endurance of coloniality in these two spaces. Against the hegemonic bids for their “revitalization,” we attend to these two rivers, both of which helped propel the growth of their respe...

This issue of NokokoPod presents a discussion on an urbanizing Africa and its potential urban futures. The audio connection was not strong and as a result an audio podcast is not available for this discussion, however the annotated PDF is available on the Nokoko journal website. This conversation took place on March 18th, with Logan Cochrane in Can...

In this paper we combine infrastructure studies and black radical traditions to foreground how imperial remains deeply inform the logics that bring forth contemporary large‐scale infrastructures in Africa. The objective, prompted by the ongoing avid promotion of such architectures on the continent, is to contribute to an analysis that centres race...

Through a story that connects the rhizomatic trajectories of abandonment in Mathare, Nairobi, I show how the continuities of an imperial planning become territorialized in a water pump in this “slum.” These events highlight the assembling of empire through ideas and practices for politics, ecology, economics and society thatproduce the city of Nair...

Security issues imbricate a wide range of fears and agendas in cities of the global north and south. Everyday life experiences in informal settlements reflect, however, not only residents urgent need for enhanced security but that the state is unable (and often unwilling) to provide it. Because approaches are dominated overwhelmingly by a focus on...

Security issues imbricate a wide range of fears and agendas in cities of the global North and South. Everyday life experiences in informal settlements reflect, however, not only residents' urgent need for enhanced security but that the state is unable (and often unwilling) to provide it. Because approaches are dominated overwhelmingly by a focus on...

Community activists living and organizing in Nairobi’s harshest geographies are tasked not only with intervening for ‘justice’ but also with (re)establishing care and emotion in landscapes devastated by both colonial and neoliberal divestments and violence. When they act to demand and bridge actions to ensure, for example, water, sanitation and an...

Though a perennial problem in postcolonial Kenya, extrajudicial executions (EJE) show few signs of ending and in recent years are even accelerating amongst young men in informal settlements. Avenues for legal, institutional and civil society redress, nominally expanded in recent years, display an ongoing tendency towards disconnection from the gras...

Youth in the global south share similar challenges, including unemployment, precarious access to education and scarcity of opportunities to participate in decision-making processes, all of which produce an increasing lack of hope. In this post, Wangui Kimari reflects on Brazilian and Kenyan youth who, despite these problems, engage in civic partici...

In Kenya the social movement (Bunge la Mwananchi) concept has grown organically and spread in towns across the country. The oldest gathering being Jeevanjee grounds where members meet every day for more than 15 years now. Amongst the towns that the movement has grown are Mombasa, Kisumu, Eldoret, Nakuru and Kakamega. The unique thing about the move...

Enticed by the various economic, academic and social promises offered by this new ‘metropole’, Africans have begun to form a new diaspora in Brazil, the country with the largest concentration of Afro descendentes outside of Africa. This paper aims to explore, through interviews, the various motivations and experiences of these Africans, as well as...