The Challenges Faced in Integrating Participatory Communication Methods into Slum Upgrading: A Case of Kibera, Kenya

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Mara International Journal of Social Sciences Research Publications
Vol. 1, No. 1, August 2017, Pages 38 - 48
The Challenges Faced in Integrating Participatory Communication Methods
into Slum Upgrading: A Case of Kibera, Kenya
Lilian Kimeto*
1
and Antony Somba
2
1Communication Department, Daystar University, Kenya
2Department of Education, Kabarak University, Kenya
Email: liliankimeto@gmail.com, asomba@kabarak.ac.ke
* Corresponding author
Received: June 23, 2017
Published: August 31, 2017
Abstract
As it can be argued, it is quite difficult to measure effective communication. However, from an African perspective, a
complete transformation of the communication structure in development programs if it is to succeed in enhancing the
understanding of the program has always been encouraged. This paper critically looks at the challenges that are faced
in integrating communication methods into slum upgrading project. Specifically the paper focused on Kibera, one of
the largest slums in Africa located in Kenya. To get the findings, the research relied heavily on different
methodologies. Prime among these were the interviews, questionnaires and focus group discussions. In the final
analysis, the paper established that integrating participatory communication methods into slum upgrading has faced
numerous hurdles.
Keywords:kibera, participatory communication, slum upgrading
© 2016 by the author(s); Mara Research Journals (Nairobi, Kenya; Vancouver Canada) OPEN ACCESS
1. INTRODUCTION AND THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS
This paper critically looks at the challenges that are faced in integrating communication methods into slum
upgrading.It is difficult to measure effective communication. However, from an African perspective, Ansu-
Kyeremeh (1997) called for a complete transformation of the communication structure in development
programs, if it is to succeed in enhancing the understanding of the program. Ansu-Kyeremeh contended
that the present centrifugal structure-communication flowing from the center to the periphery-must be
replaced with a centripetal structure-communication flowing from the grassroots to the center.
White (2008) reviewed Ansu-Kyeremeh’s (1997) views and observed five major themes, which for this
study could guide the understanding and analysis of participatory communication at the grassroots. White
(2008) noted that Ansu-Kyeremeh (1997) talked about the validity of local knowledge. Secondly, that the
most effective research and experimentation are not found in the established learning centres, such as
western oriented learning universities but in the constant trial and experimentation carried on in local
communities. Thirdly, the most effective structure of communication in Africa is dialogical, that is the on-
going conversation, palaver and interchange of all actors involved in the process. A fourth theme is that the
structure of communication is focused on the issues, and questions raised inside African countries adding
that the Nigerian film industry has been created from indigenous capital and with little reference to
international canons of what film should be. The fifth theme is the belief that the source of the vitality and
creativity of African culture in all aspects is to be found in the popular intermediate classes.

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Still on dialogue and the people’s voice that is still missing in development processes, Dutta and Basnyar
(2006) observed that practitioners adopting the participatory framework ought to examine the ways in
which the cultural context and the voices of cultural participants are reflected in such projects. They further
noted that projects that have a predetermined agenda, and seek to use participatory platforms to diffuse this
agenda in the community are fundamentally top-down projects, in which participation is used as another
communication tool for achieving predetermined change.
Understanding the participatory process has implications for the success of any project that attempts to
apply this approach. Several issues relate to stakeholder involvement (Chambers 1997; Richards et.al
2001). From their experiences in Africa, Ashcroft and Masilela (1994) raised the issue of operationalisation
of the concept, exactly how to measure individual involvement, which is internally inconsistent, abstract
and ambiguous in the social sciences. Other issues relate to lack of proper planning and practicing top-
down decision-making processes with the justification of not having the time or resources to plan and
involve stakeholders (Agunga, 1997).
Participatory methods ought to be used in a creative and flexible way and, if needed, in combination with
other approaches, depending on local circumstances; these methods risk becoming yet another imposed,
top-down approach designed to fulfil and satisfy one’s agenda (Mele&Zakaria, 2005). This is a pointer that
the road to participatory communication is wrought with obstacles.
Waisbord (2008) observed that there are institutional dynamics that undercut the potential contributions of
participatory communication in three ways. First, bureaucratic requirements favour the use of informational
models over participatory approaches. Standard institutional procedures inside governments, and even
development agencies, perpetuate understandings and uses of communication as a set of technical skills to
disseminate messages. Second, the weak status of communication as an autonomous field of study and
practice undermine the prospects for expanding the understanding of communication that does not fit
prevalent institutional expectations. As long as technical experts in other fields expect communication to be
the ‘art of messaging’, communication staff lacks the autonomy to make decisions and incorporate
participatory approaches.
The third factor identified by Waisbord is that the institutional predominance of a technical mind-set also
limits the uses of participation thinking. The prioritization of technical perspectives decouples development
programs from local processes of participation and change (Waisbord, 2008). Cooke and Kothari (2001)
observed that programs are hardly subjected to the “tyranny of participation”.
In addition, Waisbord (2008) noted that programs typically follow pre-established goals decided at the
national, regional, and/or global levels, such as the MDGs, under which slum upgrading falls. Waisbord
says that participation understood as the prioritization of local knowledge and local needs are rarely a
driving factor in international agencies and governments. This is because the programs carried out have
been previously agreed upon in global agreements and national policies, out of complex negotiations and
advocacy involving governments, UN agencies and bilateral donors. Rarely do communities get to be in the
lead of making decisions about programmatic goals although occasionally, affected communities are
mobilised.
As Ravallion (2007) said, within the current structure of the development aid system and governments, it is
rather difficult to have a high degree of participation. The agenda of projects and programs is often set by a
few individuals, for example, policy makers or technocrats with very little input from other stakeholders,
especially at the local level. Moreover, the rigid management procedures and the tight deadlines for
planning and funding required for approving and implementing projects allows little flexibility needed for
participatory processes. But that’s not the worst communication challenge in many institutions such as

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KENSUP. It is the failure to incorporate true participatory communication principles that have made
communication not to have any impact in development programs.
Communication scholars and practitioners have asked several questions in contemplation of the prospects
of participatory communication in development programs. If participatory communication goes against
prevalent organizational imperatives, how can it be fully institutionalized? If politics is at the heart of social
change, how can participatory communication be incorporated into institutions that prefer to keep local
politics at bay? Is it a matter of changing institutional incentives and procedures? Does it require a
substantive overturn of prevailing disciplinary mind-sets? Is it inevitably ‘wishful thinking’ given
entrenched organizational cultures and hierarchical nature of development agencies? Given institutional
needs and professional reputation, are communication offices the best platforms to promote participatory
communication inside development agencies and governments? (Stiglitz, 2005)
As Waisbord (2008) contended, there is little hope for the institutionalization of communication thinking
and practice in terms of relevance of local knowledge and decision-making in many organizations,
governments included. He said that the organizational obstacles for participatory communication are
similar to the ones that have frustrated efforts to introduce ideas and practices that emphasize community
participation in international aid. He added that the incorporation of participatory communication has been
limited by institutional imperatives and professional cultures. He further argued that demands for
organizational publicity, the subsidiary role of communication within dominant ‘epistemic communities,’
and the hegemony of a technical mind-set, that favours informational approaches to communication and
discourages the use of models that put politics at the center, have been used to put aside participatory
communication in many programs.
2. THE CHALLENGES FACING THE INTEGRATION PARTICIPATORY COMMUNICATION METHODS
INTO SLUM UPGRADING
The paper notes that the greatest challenge faced in integrating participatory communication into slum
upgrading seemed to be the way the government was handling participatory communication, plus how it
was making decisions about the program. The 34% of the respondents who apportioned blame to the
government for making exclusive decisions would have liked to see a horizontal and dialogic
communication between the government and the community with regards to KENSUP. As a solution, a
total of 52% of respondents (34 % + 18 %) in Table 1 vouched for face to face meetings plus use of social
groups not the vertical communication approach the government had adopted.
The other challenge to incorporating participatory communication emanated from differences amongst the
community members. The respondents blamed the complexities within the community – politics,
corruption, illiteracy, crime, casual jobs, and tribal differences – for negatively impacting the integration of
participatory communication. Also the community did not have the capacity, and yet wanted to run
communication processes in the program. This is according to the perspective provided by Stanley Kurgat,
the KRS Caretaker that:
The community in Kibera is a very difficult one to communicate with as they agree in meetings on
the way forward, only for them to renege when swayed by other interests like politics, tribe or
money, and then they opposed what they had initially accepted. Even when you put up a poster or
letter, a malicious person can tear it down and others coming later cannot see it. Community
members who have been profiled as HIV/AIDS patients or prostitutes do not access information
that circulates in the informal groups and social forums, which they are not accommodated, so they
miss on information. Others such as criminals, brewers of illicit drinks, and drugs peddlers do not
want to attend any social gathering for fear of their cover being blown. This undermines the

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effective information flow in the community (Caretaker at the KRS, in-depth interview, May 12,
2015).
Table 1: List of Challenges faced in Integrating Participatory Communication into Slum Upgrading
Responses Percentage
Only government officers deciding on program interventions/
communication
34 34%
Complexities within the community e.g. politics, corruption, illiteracy,
crime, casual jobs, tribal differences
22 22%
Government/community do not understand participatory communication 19 19%
Not responsive 25 25%
Total
100
100%
From Table 1, 19% of the respondents gave answers that apportioned blame to both government and
community for not understanding what participatory communication is. Related to this is the 7% of
respondents in Table 1, who preferred that let it only be government who communicates with them and not
SEC or community itself. Specifically, one questionnaire respondent said it took two months for the
community to agree on the slogan Keja poa maisha poa. This was because according to some residents
Keja connotes a shack and that is not poa (good). It took a top-down decision to get that slogan accepted so
that it could be used in the IEC materials. This point was supported by the citation from the SEC FGD:
There is the negative energy emerging from the community itself and from other opinion leaders
who want to decide on behalf of the community instead of us the SEC who were duly elected. They
are inciting the community that we have overstayed yet we are a standing committee. Even the
KENSUP officials have decided to work with some of those opinion leaders and are bypassing us.
The people living here may not say, but they think along tribal and political lines. Those whose
community is leading the government support the program. Those whose community is in the
Opposition have no interest. Even in their welfare groups they are divided along tribal lines (SEC
FGD, 7 May, 2015).
The 25 non responses could be attributed to either interviewer fatigue or the respondents did not just have a
suggestion to put through. For those who responded, they seemed to agree that both the government and
community were to blame for the communication challenges and ineffectiveness of the communication
strategy.
The SEC FGD offered this explanation of why it felt the community members were to blame:
Some residents would like the status quo to remain. We hear of bribes by slumlords, NGOs or
politicians sabotaging the slum upgrading process. We hear some residents have sold out their
enumeration cards and may not even be eligible for a house back in Soweto East. They have not
saved anything in their housing cooperatives. Others are criminals like illicit drink brewers and
drug pushers who have a market they don’t want any movement from the relocation site to our
former village (SEC FGD, 7 May 2015).
The respondents to the questionnaire, who represented slum residents of Kibera where the program was
being piloted and who were the primary and direct beneficiaries of KENSUP, provided solutions as per the
Table 2.

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Table 2: List of suggestions by respondents on methods to address challenges faced in integrating
participatory communication into slum upgrading
Response Percentage
Face to face meetings between government and community 37 37
Use of social groups to communicate on program 18 18
Bring communication experts 11 11
Embrace new technology 9 9
Eliminate opinion leaders
9
9
communication from government only 7 7
Use non technical language 2 2
Make communication a program intervention 2 2
Design new communication strategy
Use slum residents in UN Habitat Videos not Juliani
1
1
1
1
No response 3 3
Total participants 100 100
The majority of the respondents at 37% preferred to receive information through face to face meetings
while 7% desired immediate feedback, 18% preferred to receive information from their social networks
while 11% preferred to get it information communication experts. Going by the typology of Morris (2003),
the community seemed to be saying that there were structural inequalities in KENSUP i.e., their knowledge
had been ignored and they were seeking equity. That is why they wanted face to face communication to
take place between them and KENSUP officials as well as the use of their social groupings namely chamas,
religious meetings and other social networks.
Some of the responses grouped into the need to bring in communication experts included: “there is need to
have communication officers in the program”, “communication is being done (driven) by housing planners
and sociologists who did not learn communication in school” and “train the KENSUP officers to use
communication knowledge on us because they communicate poorly with us”.
These responses to questionnaire agree to what UN Habitat Officer said during the in-depth interview:
The KENSUP officials are professionals and experts in their various fields but they do not
appreciate the philosophy of participatory communication and how this could inform designing of
messages, choosing appropriate communication channels or utilising the local knowledge,
capacities and skills. This knowledge not only exists within the community but is more effective
when dealing with Kibera residents (UN Habitat officer in-depth interview April 24 2015).
The findings, from the questionnaire in Table 2 and the in-depth interview from the UN Habitat officer
affirm that the community has possible solutions to the communication challenges facing the program.
This view is underscored by the SPIU officer who in support of seeking solutions from within the
community itself said:
The application of the Participatory Urban Appraisal (PUA) was proposed and captured in the
KENSUP capacity building assessment report and work plan. KENSUP should adopt this approach
because it allows for a situational analysis to be carried out and the outcome to be used to prioritize
project interventions. The proposal was to get members of the community critically analyse their
situation; come up with prioritized interventions or solutions as well as clear implementation
programs. Then the community members who have participated will be trained so that they
undertake the PUA on other members (SPIU officer, in-depth interview, May 23 2015).

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Further, this perspective seems to be supported by Ceasar Handa, the communication consultant who said:
The participatory process in KENSUP was designed to help in getting a buy in, particularly from
the beneficiary community of the project and to allow them to make decisions that would impact
positively on their lives. It was designed to facilitate representatives of the beneficiary communities
to give the necessary suggestions at the project formulation stage and to provide the necessary
feedback to the project implementers as it progressed. Besides, the process was meant to allow the
community members to organize themselves in a manner that would allow the project
implementers have crucial entry points into the community and for feedback on the project
implementation (Communication Consultant, in-depth interview, May, 22, 2015).
However, the view of allowing the community to come up with the interventions/solutions/implementation
programs is opposed by Stanley Kurgat, the caretaker who said:
PUA has not been easy to implement as it has challenges. One fundamental challenge is that
communities in slums are not cohesive; they have divisions based on tribe, politics, religion,
economic class. Participation may not be as effective as it should because of the nature of income
of the residents at the relocation site where most residents are casual labourers and may not have
time to sit down and train their fellow slum residents on PUA (Caretaker at the KRS, in-depth
interview, May 12, 2015).
To conclude this section, the findings revealed suggestions preference to a mix of both horizontal and
vertical communication approaches. The community viewed face-to-face meetings with the government as
a sign of respect and when they spoke something in those meetings and their word taken on board, they felt
a part of it. That seemingly was how they viewed empowerment or their voice being heard.
3. DISCUSSIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS
On challenges faced during the implementation of the communication strategy, the government had already
decided how to communicate and the community had no say. As noted by 22% of the respondents, it is
very difficult to integrate participatory communication into slum upgrading because of complexities within
their community. They mentioned issues like crime, tribal differences, and nature of livelihoods which
make it difficult to craft communication for them. The key interviews and FGD revealed that the socio-
economic-political strata, literacy levels and the mind-set of deprived persons who make up this
community complicate how to communicate with them. It also emerged that slum residents were gullible
and even persuasion didn’t seem to work in getting them to believe and support a good cause. They didn’t
respect dialogue’s outcome. Even some respondents felt the community was misusing the dialogue and
community engagement approach to play hard and sabotage the project.
Sobotova (2011) in her study notes that an informal settlement consists of diverse interest groups and
individuals of varioussocial, cultural or religious status, political interest, livelihood activities and needs to
befulfilled. She adds that their perceptions of a community action and ‘common good’ differ in hand
withtheir role in the community. Sobonotova (2011) cites Botes and Rensburg (2000: 48), who observe that
in a slum, new comers live together with old timers, tenantswith owners, unemployed with employed, these
legally working with informally self employed,residents of different age, sex or level of education, etc.
They add that community members are often less likely to participate due to divisions of language,tenure,
income, gender, age or politics, than in less diverse communities and that they may even be having
opposing desires which affect their motivationto be or not to be engaged in programs such as slum
upgrading.

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In terms of communication channels the community preferred interpersonal and group networks for
information and knowledge exchange. Although the government blamed those networks for distorting
messages and taking the government round and round in endless dialogues, 18% of respondents trusted
their social groups and networks.The reason why the respondents could have preferred group
communication was probably as argued by Ansu-Kyeremeh (1997).He says that typically, people in Africa
watch television or home video in groups and they talk about media in groups. The news may come to an
individual and then the individual spreads the news within the community through oral networks. The
dilemma for government was that these channels distorted messages.
According to 19% of the respondents, it appeared the government and the community didn’t even
understand what participatory communication was. The KENSUP communication strategy was
implemented by sociologists and housing experts. As Waisbord (2006) noted, everyone seems to think that
communication is important; apparently it is not crucial enough to even make it into the MDG. It was not
clear to the implementers and even the community what participatory communication was. In the KENSUP
document the terms IEC strategy, communication strategy and participatory were used to refer to the same
thing. Communication was not an intervention at the same level as roads and health. This phenomenon was
reflected in a study by Mefalopulos (2003) who suggested that scholars also need to address the issue of
how to promote participatory communication to policy and decision-makers. He concluded that this field is
still experiencing one of the problems highlighted by experts in their 1987 meeting at FAO (1987a): how to
“persuade” decision-makers of the relevance of participatory communication. Mefalopulos argued that
there was the need to investigate and document how it was not only politically correct but also an asset for
development to adopt such an approach.
When asked in question B14 for suggestions on how to make communication in KENSUP participatory, 34
+ 9= 43% respondents said the government should talk directly with the community not through the SEC or
other opinion leaders, 21% called for use of social groups/networks, 14% called for use of new technology
such as SMS and social media and 7% advocated for use of IEC materials. Also, 8% of the respondents
wanted the youth trained on communication. Others are let community members tell their stories to media,
send media to community, fund local community radio, set up information centre (1% each).
According to Mfumbusa (2009) cited Richards et.al (2001) believed that systems of access to knowledge
and of communication are not necessarily controlled by urban-technical elites but the poor themselves. He
gave the examples of community radio, folk drama, traditional games and dances, music and the rhetoric of
the people. He called for the use of paraprofessionals who live within these communities of the poor and
are able to engage the poor in a discussion while utilising the indigenous knowledge and capacities of the
poor themselves as the reference point.
Ansuh-Kyeremeh (1997) and White (2008) alluded to another dimension of indigenous communication that
is now the popular culture of the huge urban conglomerates such Lagos, Kinshasa and Nairobi. According
to these two scholars, this is the world where the informal economy defines the material conditions of
cultural production and life is more sharply divided between work and leisure. They say that leisure time
communication is very much structured around the popular arts of Africa: home video, television, and radio
with genres of entertainment that have their roots in the popular theatre, local music, and popular novels of
the recent past. They add that this popular communication is framed in the cultural memory of the many
local language regions of Africa: Yoruba, Akan, Swahili, Zulu, to mention but a tiny fraction.
For the 34% who called for removal of the SEC and 9% who do not like the use of opinion leaders, to
communicate them, this revealed a community that didn’t like mediated communication. They didn’t want
levels in the social system. Servaes (2007) for instance, dismissed it saying it was an elitist and incongruent
with the desire to bring on board all stakeholders and beneficiary communities of a project, whose

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participation in the project is critical for its success. He added that while groups of the public can obtain
information from impersonal sources like radio and television, this information has little effect on
behavioural changes and yet, development envisions precisely such change. Servaes (2007) also posited
that in order to share information, knowledge, trust, commitment and a right attitude in development
projects, participation is very important in any decision-making process for development.
Second, because of its unilateral communication approach (Taran, 2011), some scholars have observed that
DOI misses out on fundamental principle of participation and involvement, thereby sustaining the heavily
expert-driven approach, stereotypical thinking, to development thus failing to promote more understanding
of diversity to offer full respect for dignity and equality for whom development efforts target (UNESCO,
1980)
The supporters of DoI have contrary positions. Waisbord (2008) did not seem to agree that time was up for
diffusionism, but argued that the informational approach to communication has continued to thrive and that
there has been growth in diffusion studies. Although academic debate and research on communication is no
longer dominated by a single theoretical approach, the situation is different in the practice of
“communication” in the international aid system, (Dagron, 2001;Waisbord, 2008). Whereas they agreed on
the popularity of the DoI, they also conceded that participatory approaches which are premised on the
notion that communities need to be protagonists of development and social change are rare and/or implicit.
According to Huesca (2008), participatory communication scholars prescribed that all people experience
the freedom and equal access to express feelings and experiences and to arrive at collective agendas for
action. He adds that under these circumstances, all people are said to take ownership of communication and
to experience empowering outcomes.
In paper study, the respondents called for a mix of both vertical and horizontal approaches and bring in new
technology like short text messages and social media. The mix would favour this type of audience, because
monologic communication helps in information and persuasion while dialogic empowers. There is need to
inform and persuade and that is what builds the empowerment. The diffusion approach suggested by
Rogers(1994,2003) and which is monologic can be useful in raising awareness, increasing knowledge,
promoting attitude and behaviour change. This is what is needed to precede the dialogic whose reference is
analysing issues and building capacities.
A comprehensive review of 2009 development communication studies from 1958 to 1996 downplays the
role of media in either individual modernization or social change. Most researchers note that mass media
only provide a vast reservoir of knowledge and information, serve as tools for development, and
complement other approaches (Fair & Shah, 1997). Recent empirical studies have indicated that the mass
media in them does not help development as much as participatory media does nor does mass media work
magically (Hornik, 1988; Wilkins, 1999). Wilkins (2000) expressed this pessimism more when she argued
that the field of development communication now faces a ‘critical juncture’ (p.19). She said that despite
development communication being designed to resolve social problems such has poverty and inequality
through the strategic application of communication technologies and processes, development
communication programs for the most part, have failed to achieve their objectives as the burdens of global
commercialization and development privatization have weighed heavily on the potential of development
communication to foster significant social change.
The analysis by Morris (2005, 2003) as seen in Chapter Two compared 45 empirical studies of health
development projects on their objectives and outcomes. She encountered the difficulty that most projects
identify themselves as in either the diffusion or participatory category, and consequently disregards
mentioning the outcomes related only to one or the other framework. Furthermore, participatory and
diffusion approaches are commonly evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively respectively, which limits the

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extent of comparison, and therefore, the possibility to discover patterns of successful techniques.
Additional difficulties arise because most projects apply a combination of strategies (participatory and
diffusion) but not with the same combination (Morris, 2003; 2005)
According to Quebral (1985), the problem is that development communicators merely attach new labels to
the old formulae and lack the boldness and the prescience to break out of foreign moulds and recreate
others more fitting. But probably the harshest verdict comes from Okigbo (1985) who observed that
scholars have found themselves in a vicious cycle of self-defeating prophecy. He noted that the poor results
derived from applying the theory of development communication, based on the models of agricultural
extension and knowledge gap as proposed by Everett Rogers, have led to the abandonment of further
efforts to research communication and development.
4. CONCLUSION
This paper has established that there are various challenges faced in attempts to integrate participatory
communication into the slum upgrading program and how they could be addressed. The essence of this
paper was to find out how best participatory communication principles can best be integrated into slum
upgrading to make it a successful program. From the qualitative evidence gathered during in-depth
interviews and in the focus group discussion, it became apparent that this community was a victim of
multiple messages from different interest groups, distortion of messages by noise, and the choice of the
communication channels is not what they prefer. The community seemed to understand its challenges. That
is why they advocated for the use of interpersonal communication as well group communication through
their social networks for their communication needs. The channels they prefer are participatory in nature
and can be used for information, persuasion, and securing the buy-in needed from the community for
KENSUP activities to be implemented.
Another finding was that the while the community preferred the use of dialogic, horizontal communication
channels, the government preferred and was using a monologic, linear top-down communication approach
to pass messages about the program. The key informants from government explained that the community
had abused dialogue and community engagement yet the program had timelines. They also pointed out that
it was very difficult to communicate to the community in Kibera, because it was not a cohesive one, owing
differences arising from factors such politics and tribal affiliations within the community. The residents’
attitude toward anything government had always been negative and so dialogue and community
engagement had become counterproductive. They had even started opposing some of the messages they
agreed upon with the government and, which they initially constructed together. The social networks they
preferred their communication to go through were controlled by opinion leaders or even the SEC and so
residents took them as rumour mills.
The paper, therefore, inferred that some beneficiaries preferred the government’s top-down approach,
because they were wary of manipulation by criminal elements such as slum lords, brewers and drug
pushers, or other slum stakeholders like the civil society. These residents would rather the government
dictated everything to do with the slum upgrading process and ensured fairness for all as their opinion
leaders sometimes perpetuate discrimination.
The other challenge was that pointed out by 19% of the respondents (in response to question E1), who felt
that the government and also the community did not seem to understand what exactly participatory
community was all about. Some of the answers provided included “we do not know what participatory
communication is” and “KENSUP officials do not understand what participatory communication is”, the
officers in KENSUP are mainly sociologists and housing planning officers and they use very technical
language when talking to us” and “Some of the KENSUP officers are not friendly and do not communicate

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well with the community”. Yet, as felt from the government side, they were working with a very complex
group of audience in the Kibera residents.
Therefore, the paper has provided both quantitative and qualitative findings from the research that was
conducted using questionnaires, FGD and the in-depth interviews with key informants, who had different
responsibilities in the program. The findings revealed that both at the design and implementation of the
communication strategy, KENSUP adopted the principles of participatory communication at varying levels
as per the typology of participation by Tufte&Mefalopulos (2009).The highest level of empowerment
participation was not attained. It emerged that the government had mixed both the participatory and
informational communication approaches because of the dynamics of the community they were working
with, as well as tight program deadlines. Although, the government’s approach had a degree of success,
there was still ineffectiveness in the communication strategy, as it has not adequately assisted in helping
slum upgrading diffuse as an innovation to the community. That ineffectiveness was located at both the
design and implementation stages of the strategy.
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Cite this article:
Kimeto, L., and Somba, A. (2017). The Challenges Faced in Integrating Participatory Communication
Methods into Slum Upgrading: A Case of Kibera, Kenya. Mara International Journal of Social
Sciences Research Publication, Vol. 1, No. 1, Pages 38 - 48