Containment from Within Women Entrepreneurs’ Strategies for Accessing Public Space and Securing Livelihoods in Nairobi during COVID-19 Pandemic

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Cover image: A public space in Johannesburg. Credit: GIZ VCP, Inclusive violence and crime prevention programme.
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Published: Dec 31, 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32891/jps.v7i1.1503
Keywords:
COVID-19 restrictions women headed households public space livelihoods women's organisations

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Anders Ese
The Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Kristin Ese
Urban-A
Ida Zeline Lien
Urban-A
Joseph Mukeku
University of Nairobi
Romola Sanyal
London School of Economics and Political Science
Benjamin Sidori
Urban-A
Synne Bergby
Urban-A

Abstract

The restrictions limiting social interaction and use of public space in Nairobi during the COVID-19 pandemic have disproportionately affected residents in poor urban communities, who are dependent on using streets, alleyways, and communal areas as extensions of their household spaces to secure livelihoods. This research focuses on how this situation has been handled by women entrepreneurs living in these communities, a group that literature suggests are among those most vulnerable. Kenyans are not unfamiliar with severe limitations and control. Restrictive and punitive measures have been regularly meted out by authorities in times of crisis. While we did find evidence of restrictions being highly detrimental to the livelihoods and incomes of the women, women were able to reorganise their income generation and expenditures in attempts to cope with the situation. They were, however, unable to come together to communally address grievances and challenges; they were barred from spaces of public, important platforms that aided group interests for the women pre-COVID-19 and allowed them to take part in placemaking. The women’s abilities to cope were largely determined by the neighbourhoods they lived in, showing the need to understand and respond differently to the respective historical, social, and economic realities of these communities.

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How to Cite
Ese, A., Ese, K., Lien, I. Z., Mukeku, J., Sanyal, R., Sidori, B. and Bergby, S. (2022) “Containment from Within: Women Entrepreneurs’ Strategies for Accessing Public Space and Securing Livelihoods in Nairobi during COVID-19 Pandemic”, The Journal of Public Space, 7(1), pp. 157–174. doi: 10.32891/jps.v7i1.1503.
Issue
Vol. 7 No. 1 (2022): Public Space and Placemaking in African Cities
Section
Academic
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Author Biographies

Anders Ese, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design

Anders Ese is Associate Professor at the Institute of Urbanism and Landscape at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. He specialises in urban development in the overlap between the fields of urbanism, social sciences, and historical research in East and Southern Africa, and has worked extensively on issues related to urbanisation, urban design, poverty, identities, and sustainability through consultancy, academic work, and teaching. Ese has lived and worked in Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia. He holds a PhD on mapping, data collection, and analysis of complex urban settings in Nairobi, and has established and run interdisciplinary practices in both Norway and Tanzania in the cross section between architectural production and urbanism. He also holds extensive knowledge from practice in a Norwegian context for private, municipal, county government and national government clients. His book The City Makers of Nairobi (Routledge 2020) explores African urban identities in Nairobi during the colonial period, arguing that the city’s cosmopolitan African population had a far greater impact on urban developments than what is popularly believed.

Kristin Ese, Urban-A

Kristin Ese is a freelance African historian (Cand Philol.) from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She has lived and worked in Kenya, Zambia, and Tanzania, and is the author of several books. She has previously researched historical urban developments in Southern and Northern Rhodesia. Since 2010 the focus of her research has been Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, in particular the importance of Swahili culture in urban developments. In her work on cities she is interested in how her field can inform current analysis and developments. Highlighting historical African contributions to urban development is important to de-colonising history, while at the same time shedding new light on current urban discourse. In her recent book The City Makers of Nairobi she provides an analysis grounded in histories from below that questions previous held truths about the city’s development. Ese’s methodical approach shows how historical research can be key to understanding the complexities of social structures, and change perceptions and actions in current urban systems.

Ida Zeline Lien, Urban-A

Lien is a Founding Partner at Urban-A. Trained as an economist, Lien specialises in urban research and analysis. Building on her experience from UN-Habitat Afghanistan and several work streams at Urban-A, Lien is contributing to policy development, strategies and action-oriented research on topic including displacement, gender, inequality, and social media. She has been the principal writer on several publications and policy papers for UN and international organizations. She is co-leading a transnational research project on Social Media and Inequality with London School of Economics, and is an affiliate to the Global Research Programme on Inequality at the University of Bergen.

Joseph Mukeku, University of Nairobi

Mukeku is a lecturer at the University of Nairobi Kenya. He holds a PhD in Architecture and Urbanism from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO), Mphil in Environmental Design in Architecture from the University of Cambridge UK, Master of Architecture from University of Nairobi from where he also earned his Bachelor of Architecture. He has over twenty years of mainstream Architectural practice in addition to community design practice in the informal settlements. He has undertaken extensive research on the quality of architecture for the urban poor.

Romola Sanyal, London School of Economics and Political Science

Dr Romola Sanyal is Associate Professor in Urban Geography at LSE. She joined the Department of Geography and Environment in 2013 having held lectureships in Planning at Newcastle University (2010-2012) and University College London at the Development Planning Unit (2012-2013). She has also held the position of inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow at the Chao Centre for Asian Studies at Rice University (2008-2009) and been a Visiting Fellow at the Open University (2009-2010). She has a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, an MSc in Geography from LSE and a B.A in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley.

Synne Bergby, Urban-A

Synne Bergby is an urban crisis response expert, specialised in analysis, policy, programme planning and strategy development. Her focus spans localised response, the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholder programme planning, and supporting international organisations develop strategies and programmes attuned to complex crisis settings. Between 2013-2017 Bergby was deployed by the Norwegian Refugee Council to UN-Habitat Lebanon as Programme Planning Advisor. In Lebanon she was amongst others responsible for building up an urban analysis unit, providing cross-sectoral and spatial studies on the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on the key cities in Lebanon. Before her deployment to Lebanon, Bergby was the chair of Habitat Norway, a Norwegian non-governmental organization addressing urban poverty and global urban development issues. Upon returning to Oslo in 2018, Bergby worked as a consultant to Rodeo Architects on their international portfolio, before she established Urban-A where she is now the CEO and senior analyst. In Urban-A, Bergby leads the strategy work, including the support to UN-Habitat on Urban Recovery Frameworks and support to the Global Alliance for Urban Crises.

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