Map Kibera

The 2009 Kenyan census puts Kibera’s population at 170,070, very far from the usual 1 million plus figure thrown around. The scale of the change has rightly shocked people.

When we first prepared to come to Kibera last year, we looked for a source for this one million number. It was widely quoted in all the major media and even the UN, but never with a source, and we found this very suspicious. With caution, we always qualified the population number in writing and presentations with a question mark or the clause “widely quoted number”. With a little more investigation, we found some quality work on this question. The Map Kibera Project (different project, similar in spirit, unintentional namespace clash) undertook a door to door survey in Kianda village, and based on the population density there, extrapolated to all of Kibera for a figure of 235000-270000. The KeyObs RESPOND project derived an estimate of the number of built structures in Kibera from satellite imagery, and then conducted a sample to estimate population per structure, and came up with a number in the range from 199,959 to 205,108. Both efforts clearly published their methodology and seemed like reasonable efforts.

infographic by Jennifer Baranoff

Despite this, when Jill Biden visited Kibera in June, the White House reported the number jumping to 1.5 million! What motivations are there inflating Kibera’s population numbers? The cynical claim is that NGOs and CBOs use the 1 million number to benefit themselves. I don’t see much evidence that people are getting rich from NGOs, but then there’s not much evidence at all of how much money has flowed through Kibera ineffectively. Certainly Kibera has had more attention than other places equally deserving of help, and of course it is the place we started in Kenya. Kenyan’s understandably want to change the perception of informal areas. The large number of retweets I think reflects the desire of well-off Kenyans to put Kibera behind them. Despite the 1 million number falling, Kibera is still a place underserved by government, and one of many informal settlements in Nairobi and other parts of Kenya. The truth is that Kibera is still there.

In our work, somehow Kibera never felt like “1 million”, and but much closer to the MKP and KeyObs number. We had been talking about replicating the KeyObs work with satellite imagery, and also counting daily out and in flux as Kiberians going to work in the industrial area and surrounding estates.

We’re glad to see that light has finally fallen on Kibera’s population in a big way. Certainly a revision is needed. But we’re concerned with the way these new numbers from the Kenyan Census are seized on without question. The number 170,000 is at least on the same scale as previous counts, but it is relatively lower. There are no doubt issues with doing any sort of census anywhere, but especially in a place like Kibera. Definitely the Kenyan census was undertaken professionally, but part of that professional work would be openly discussing methodology and difficulties encountered. Collecting data in an informal settlement is challenging … what special measures were taken by the Kenyan census in Kibera?

The truth is that we still don’t know how many people live in Kibera. It’s a different number today than yesterday. The definition of “living” in Kibera varies, it’s quite a transient place. Whether it’s 170000 or 1.5 million, the truth of that number is intertwined with the understanding of where it’s coming from. And questioning authority in Kenya doesn’t come easy. One chink in the armor is exploited to cast doubt on the entire enterprise. Authority means knowing all.

We’ve come to Kibera fully admitting we don’t know everything. Not only is OpenStreetMap always wrong, every map is always wrong, a representation of a reality which always changes. When we think about how the map and technology will be used in Kibera, we fully admit we don’t have answers but are ready to engage with everyone to perhaps discuss the questions. Understanding that precision and authority is relative, that we don’t understand everything, and understanding the motivations and methodology of how data is collected … all is vitally important in open data, in addition to the “precise” number or position.

… and only now noticing Brian Ekdale’s excellent analysis.

Congrats to Ahmed Mohamed Maawy and Jamila Amin for submitting two awesome apps to Apps 4 Africa.

They both worked with Map Kibera to develop apps, driven by needs from the community.

Kenya Constituency Development Fund: Community Tracking and Mapping enables Kenyans to easily view all official and on-the-ground details on CDF funded projects in Kibera. KCODA (Kibera Community Development Agenda) monitors submit detailed reports on the real status of projects, and contrasts with officially reported government status,the amount allocated, the contractor involved, photographs, and geographic location.

Kibera Open Directory and Repository: An Accessible WhoWhatWhere for Kibera is an organization directory and report repository, seeded from existing offline directories of organizations and available reports, based on Crabgrass. Information is accessible by web; and by mobile phone, which are increasingly and inexpensively connected to the Internet in Kenya. There are literally hundreds of NGOs, CBOs, faith-based, and other even more exotic species of organizations, operating in Kibera, with budgets from pennies to millions, involved in all aspects of life. As with most informal settlements, Kibera is under-served by government and that gap is particularly filled by civil society organizations. These actors are not directly accountable to the community, and it is difficult to get the bigger picture and small details of their work. Newcomers wishing to start working in Kibera, or existing organizations looking to partner, reduce duplication of work, and collaborate, face a daunting task of finding the information they need. Reports and data collected in Kibera is plentiful, but hard to access, particularly from Kibera itself. Individuals from Kibera have repeatedly asked Map Kibera for a solution to this problem, leading to this App.

We’re excited to see all the submissions. Good luck to all!

August has been awesome. Busy and intense, in a transitional sort of way. We’ve been putting a wrap on mapping in Kibera (for now) and planning the first replication to Mathare. And along the way, getting out, doing stuff, meeting people. Here’s a shotgun of August.

Getting Out

TedX

Regynnah has been speaking on Map Kibera, and Sande on Voice of Kibera, and TedX tours four informal settlements throughout Nairobi. It’s a great idea to make connections between these areas, they have more in common than not, and can learn and build with each other.

Maker Faire Africa

Kibera News Network came out in force to contribute to the fun house that is Maker Faire Africa. Gratifying to see lots of existing knowledge and interest in Map Kibera and OpenStreetMap.

Mukuru

Primoz helped Millicent and Kevin lead a 2 day mapping party (plus 2 day follow up) with mappers in Mukuru. These guys have been working with Partnership for an HIV-free Generation and Emory University, and had previously done some paper based mapping. Super enthusiastic group, opens the door to more work there.

Getting Recognized

Youth Fund

Map Kibera was awarded a grant by the UN Habitat Youth Fund! The group now has support to directly and independently replicate in another Nairobi informal settlement, sometime next year. We’ll have more to say on this later on.

Ars Electronica

And we were awarded Distinction by the Ars Electronica Festival, in Digital Communities category! Should be even more wild than Maker Faire.

Robert Chambers and Mark Hamnolan

Kibera News Network has been going strong, producing high quality reporting, during the Referendum and otherwise. This weekend, they had a visit from Professor Robert Chambers, a pioneer in participatory approaches to development. And Mark Hamnolan is here, working with KNN to interview Kiberians about crisis for a Red Cross project, and generally share some skills.

Wrapping Up

Water/Sanitation is wrap

We finally finished editing on the final theme of “phase 2” of Map Kibera, Water and Sanitation. We held a community map drawing meeting at the offices of KWAHO, attended by many professionals from the watsan network of Kibera. The discussion was extremely interesting, and opened up many possibilities for application of maps and other tools for their work.

We’ll continue to engage in Kibera, to figure out how the map can live and benefit this and other core issues.

Put a bow on it

With help from Meghana, we’re redesigning the Map Kibera site to present everything we’ve learned over the past 6 months. Luckily we’re in good hands.

On the mapping side itself, Eric Brelsford has been rationalizing the crazy tags that evolved out of mapping the kind of place completely new to OpenStreetMap. He’s looking at improving the rendering for each theme, in seperate layers, and may be getting some help from a certain large company that’s recently taken a big interest in OSM.

On the printing side, we’re nearly through the design process for the posters and atlas. Primoz and Emma have been working hard translating the mass of digital information to paper. These will be printed up in the hundreds and distributed to organizations, schools, etc throughout Kibera.

Apps4Africa

I’m mentoring two projects in Apps4Africa. I’ll have more to say on those soon.

Making Plans

Mathare, Rebel Film Board, PLAN CLTS

In Mathare, we’ve been greeted with lots of enthusiasm when presenting to the Rebel Film Board, and the Community Total Led Sanitation network. There’s many more groups and people who are welcoming us to Mathare. The ground work is being set for our next steps there. PLAN International is also coming on board to support.

Strategic Thinking

In the rest of our free time, we’ve been taking a look to the long term. How do we carefully build on the successes in Kibera, and bring the benefit of these tools to new communities? Will be interesting for sure.