Nairobi’s largest informal settlement is getting an upgrade. But who will actually benefit from new apartments?

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Bulldozers and construction crews are reshaping parts of Nairobi's best-known informal settlement, Kibera. In a video shared by President William Ruto, new apartment blocks rise alongside existing corrugated-iron structures, while new roads cut through the settlement. The message is clear: Kenya's affordable housing programme is bringing modern housing to one of the country's most visible symbols of urban poverty.

The redevelopment forms part of Ruto's broader affordable housing programme, which aims to deliver 200,000 housing units annually, combining social housing, affordable homes and market-rate units. By March 2026, government figures indicated that 8,367 units had been completed since Ruto took office in September 2022, with many more at various stages of construction across the country. Completed units therefore remain well below the programme's stated annual target.

Supporters see it as a long-overdue investment in urban infrastructure and housing. Critics, however, have challenged the compulsory levy used to finance the programme: employees pay 1.5% of their gross monthly salary, matched by a 1.5% employer contribution, while people outside formal employment pay 1.5% of their gross income. They have also raised concerns about whether the homes will be affordable to lower-income households and allocated transparently.

I have conducted research in Nairobi's informal settlements since 1996, focusing on urbanisation, informal economies and the social consequences of housing and redevelopment policies. Over three decades, I have seen redevelopment schemes generate both genuine improvements and new forms of exclusion. Previous upgrading projects have brought tangible improvements, including more durable housing, sanitation, roads and access to basic services. But they have also shown how higher rents and maintenance costs can push intended beneficiaries to sublet or leave, allowing better-off households to replace them. This is not unique to Kibera: displacement and social replacement can occur when upgrading raises housing and living costs beyond what original residents can sustain.

On the ground in Kibera, residents whose homes are targeted for demolition are uneasy. They want to know whether they will be recognised as beneficiaries, allocated one of the new units and able to afford its ongoing costs. The State Department for Housing and Urban Development has enumerated residents and issued Makao Bora cards as proof of registration. But uncertainty remains over how registration will translate into final allocation and long-term affordability.

Therefore, the question is not simply how many apartment buildings are completed, but for whom they are built and who will still be living in them a few years from now.

Kenya urgently needs better urban housing, and redevelopment is necessary. But the success of Kibera's transformation will be measured not only by the number of apartment blocks completed, but by whether the people who built their lives there can afford to remain.

Who counts as a legitimate beneficiary?

Kibera is more than a collection of inadequate dwellings. It is not simply a “slum”. It is a complex urban territory in a strategically central part of Nairobi. For decades it has served several functions at once: a reservoir of low-wage labour close to the city centre; an informal response to chronic shortages of affordable housing; a dense ecosystem of micro-enterprises; and a politically significant voting bloc.

Kibera is probably Africa's most talked-about informal settlement. Long-repeated claims that it contains one million people or is Africa's largest slum have been challenged by census data and independent research. Population estimates vary according to the boundaries used, but generally place its population at around 170,000 to 200,000. Its symbolic importance nevertheless extends far beyond Nairobi.

This makes it a showcase for both development interventions and political narratives. Governments, non-government organisations and foreign media have long used Kibera as a symbol of global urban poverty. Redeveloping it therefore carries political value well beyond Nairobi.

Yet every housing upgrading programme faces one core issue: who counts as a legitimate beneficiary? This is difficult because residence, ownership and vulnerability do not coincide. Tenants may have lived in Kibera for decades without owning a structure. At the same time, some structure owners live elsewhere and derive rental income from the settlement.

Under the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme, initiated in 2004, the allocation of 822 units in Soweto East Zone A in 2016 relied on censuses, historical resident lists, documentation checks and field verification to identify genuine beneficiaries. Even so, the allocation process was challenged in court. To ensure fairness, the court granted oversight of the process to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, an independent national rights watchdog.

That history tells us two things. First, formal criteria can be created. The current process also uses resident enumeration and documentation, but it is not yet clear whether all the earlier criteria and safeguards will be applied in the same way. Second, contestation is inevitable. The most important conflict is not necessarily between government and residents, but within the community itself. Kibera has long contained different social groups with unequal interests: tenants renting single rooms; structure owners who own shacks but not the land beneath them; absentee landlords collecting rent from elsewhere; local power brokers; and politically connected intermediaries.

These groups are not equally vulnerable. Some structure owners are themselves poor residents. Others are small investors or better-connected actors who profit from informal rent systems. If new apartments are allocated without distinguishing between those who genuinely lived there and those who extracted income from the settlement, public resources risk rewarding rent capture rather than need.

The less photogenic side of redevelopment

Then there is the less photogenic side of redevelopment: eviction. In April 2026, more than 10,000 residents of Kibera's Soweto Zones C and D were reportedly given 13 days to vacate areas required for demolition and construction. Residents were offered KSh60,000 (about US$460) in relocation assistance, but some said this was insufficient to cover rent deposits, school transfers and the cost of restarting small businesses.

For families living on unstable incomes, relocation means much more than moving house. It can mean losing access to school, work, childcare networks, customers, transport routes and trusted neighbours.

In informal settlements, housing is rarely just housing. A single-room dwelling may also function as a shop, a food stall, a tailoring space, a storage room or a social support node. Moving a household into a cleaner apartment can still reduce livelihoods if it destroys the economic ecosystem that sustained them.

This is one reason why many social housing schemes around the world struggle. They are often designed for households with stable monthly salaries, but targeted at families surviving on daily, irregular and informal incomes.

Rent, utilities and maintenance fees are fixed. Income is not. The result can be arrears, subletting, informal resale, or a gradual return to cheaper informal settlements on the city's periphery. Even when initial allocation is fair, social replacement can follow. Poorer original residents may give way to more solvent households. What begins as anti-poverty policy can become a slow form of gentrification.

So what would success look like? A credible model would include several safeguards: transparent and updated resident registries; explicit protection for long-term tenants; no preferential treatment for absentee landlords; affordable and flexible rent systems; commercial space reserved for local operators; relocation that preserves neighbourhood networks rather than dispersing individual households; and public monitoring after six, 12 and 24 months.

Above all, there should be no eviction without a realistic alternative.

Fabrizio Floris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

By Fabrizio Floris, Phd professor sociology of development, Université catholique de Milan