Impacts of Urban Agriculture Annual Report.p65 - International ...

Dirty secret treasures in NairobiNairobi has passed through many changes since itsfounding a little more than a century ago. Today it isstill a cosmopolitan city known variously as the “GreenCity in the Sun”, the “Safari Capital of the World” or the“Place of Cold Waters”, although many parts of it haveincreasingly become buried under mounds and heapsof garbage and a lot of the “cold waters” arecontaminated by sewage. About 40% of the more than1740 metric tonnes of solid waste generated every dayby its approximately 3 million residents gets collectedand disposed of. The rest continues to mount up in openspaces, along the roads, the railroad, the river, formingpiles everywhere in most of the residential, industrialand commercial neighborhoods, even in the businessdistrict. Like other cities in developing countries, themunicipal infrastructure has not been able to keep pacewith the rapidly growing population. By the mid-1980s,private waste collectors serviced middle and highincome residential neighborhoods, but lower incomeresidents had to find other solutions to the sanitationproblem. About 50% of Nairobi residents live below thepoverty line and are concentrated in peri-urban slumareas characterized by limited amenities and unhygienicliving conditions. By the early 1990s there were a fewsmall-scale community-based composting groups, whoutilize a small amount of the accumulation of manurefrom the many animals being raised for the local foodmarket.Urban Harvest conducted a study in partnership withInternational Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), WorldAgroforestry Center (WAC), both of which are centersof the Consultative Groups on International AgriculturalResearch (CGIAR), Kenya Agricultural Research Institute(KARI) and Kenya Green Towns Partnership Association(KGTPA), which is an NGO. The study illustrated genderinvolvement in management of municipal organic solidwaste (MOSW) for urban and peri-urban agriculture aswell as the different aspects of waste management aslivelihood strategies. The data was compiled from asurvey conducted in 2003-2004 on management oforganic waste and livestock manure for enhancingagricultural productivity in urban and peri-urbanNairobi. The objectives of the study were to make aninventory of community based organizations involvedin organic waste management for urban and peri-urbanagriculture (UPA), document the existing compostinggroups in Nairobi, analyze composting managementtechniques, model rural-urban nutrient movements andlink stakeholders in UPA.In January 2005 the final stakeholder workshop was heldto discuss the results of the study of waste recycling inNairobi, with a special focus on the use of manure andorganic residues in agriculture. Attending the workshopwere representatives of the implementation team listedabove plus staff from the Nairobi City CouncilDepartments, national government and civil societyorganizations who are involved in and concerned withthe management of urban wastes. It was also a way offamiliarizing them with the specific objectives of theoriginal project, making them aware of thecharacterization of ecological exchanges of nutrientsamong different sectors and geographical areas of thecity and the value chain involved in economic27