case study of a person who lives in kibera

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Rye Barcott (back to camera, right) along a corridor in Kibera’s busy D.C. village. Barcott, along with two Kibera friends, founded Carolina for Kibera, a nonprofit that in July celebrated its 10th anniversary of intertribal soccer, female empowerment, trash collection, reproductive health education, and community medicine.

Photos by Corydon Ireland/Harvard Staff

Lessons from a Kenyan slum

Corydon Ireland

Harvard Staff Writer

Talent is universal, but opportunity is not

NAIROBI, Kenya — From nearly anywhere in this teeming capital city of Kenya, you can see its greatest embarrassment: Kibera , a 1.5-square-mile slum of steel-roof shanties and narrow, undulant alleys of mud, dust, litter, and open sewage. It’s Africa’s largest informal urban settlement, home to upwards of a million people. Most residents live there on less than $2 a day.

But Kibera’s 13 informal villages are also places of vitality, color, and enterprise. A Harvard Business School case study, revised last year and being taught in a November class, captures the slum’s incongruent poverty and vigor.

“Kibera,” wrote co-authors Kathleen L. McGinn and Cailin B. Hammer, “was, at its essence, a vital, overcrowded community where families and friendships thrived alongside hunger and disease.” (McGinn is Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration. Hammer is a freelance writer.)

People find ways to scramble through Kibera’s fragile economy. Roadsides are vibrant workshops, cooking areas, and retail space. Tailors perch outside at pedal-powered sewing machines, women cook cakes of wheat and maize over open fires, bead workers assemble art, and young men crouch over arc welders, making metal work in a blaze of sparks.

More than enterprise is incongruent about Kibera. At one edge of it stand the French embassy and the house of a former Kenyan president. From inside the slum, you can see distant busy roadways glittering with traffic along Kibera’s bowl-like edges. Across a road is Nairobi National Park, a small game reserve where tourists and schoolchildren can glimpse iconic wild Africa.

Kibera represents another iconic Africa — a concentration of urban poverty that most Nairobi residents would rather forget, deny, or at least never visit. “I’ve never been there,” said one cab driver with a shake of his head.

It was to this isolated, ignored Kibera that Rye Barcott, M.B.A./M.P.A. ’09, first traveled in the summer of 2000. He was a 20-year-old student with a smattering of Swahili, in search of both adventure and information for a thesis project at the University of North Carolina.

By the next summer, Barcott had moved his sights from adventure to empathy. He had acquired a bedrock insight: that among the poor talent is universal, but opportunity is not.

With two Kibera friends — unemployed nurse Tabitha Atieno Festo and a former street orphan Salim Mohamed — Barcott founded Carolina for Kibera (CFK), a nonprofit that in July celebrated its 10th anniversary of intertribal soccer, female empowerment, trash collection, reproductive health education, and community medicine. (Its free clinic, started with a $26 investment, now serves 40,000 Kibera residents a year.)

Barcott was a U.S. Marine officer from 2001 to 2006, an experience he views as a variation on his nonprofit work. He described this clash and confluence of two worlds in a memoir, “It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine’s Path to Peace” (Bloomsbury, 2011). One BBC reviewer called the book “an ax for the frozen sea of the heart.”

“Harvard gave me an opportunity few people have, and that few veterans have,” said Barcott this summer in Nairobi, “an extraordinary environment where you have an opportunity for structured reflection on a particularly intense set of life experiences.” With Harvard historian Ernest R. May as a mentor, he set down the military half of his story while it was still “vivid, fresh, and immediate.” (May died the month Barcott graduated.)

CFK was the rest of the story, including its humble beginnings, its ascendant history, and its present challenges. The nonprofit is also the core subject of the Kibera case study being taught Nov. 9 by Amy J.C. Cuddy, an assistant professor at HBS. Barcott will be in class that day.

“The Business School experience was a really powerful way of learning essentially a new language,” he said, “new practices and new tools to apply to complex problems.”

While at Harvard, Barcott held a Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship through the Center for Public Leadership . That gave him an inner sanctum, he said, “a community of diverse, interesting people who are trying to take on problems that matter.”

Part of taking on problems that matter is finding a bigger audience for the big messages. His book tour involved 110 presentations in 40 cities. Next is “our larger call to action,” said Barcott, an Internet CFK challenge started this fall as “the power of 26.”

To him, 26 is a magic number. It was $26 that Barcott donated as a 20-year-old to Festo, the unemployed Kibera nurse who a year later had turned a business selling vegetables into a 24-hour health clinic. Even today, $26 — the price of four beers in America — can go a long way in a Kibera

Then there is the power of the program’s 26 thought-provoking challenges, such as “No. 6: After dark, do everything by candlelight,” and “No. 9: Try to live on $2 a day.” Others are not so severe, but still evoke Kibera’s sense of community. One example: “Tonight, make dinner for a neighbor.”

In Nairobi in July, Barcott dove into the hubbub of CFK’s 10th anniversary party, a day of parades, music, and dancing at a Kibera soccer field. For the occasion, he wore a black T-shirt with CFK’s motto in gold letters: “Be a light.”

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Kibera: a look inside Africa’s largest slum

Situated on the outskirts of Nairobi is the largest informal settlement (slum) in Africa: Kibera. Home to approximately 250,000 people across an area of just 2.5 kilometres, Kibera is a vibrant but densely populated place, where the threat of coronavirus (Covid-19) is developing into something potentially worse than the virus itself.

Living in a slum is the reality for between 900 million and 1.6 billion people across the globe – amounting to about a quarter of the world’s urban population – and 60 per cent of Nairobi’s population live in informal settlements like Kibera. Derived from a Nubian word meaning ‘forest’ or ‘jungle’, Kibera is the continent’s biggest informal settlement.

What is an informal settlement?

Officially, informal settlements are:

• areas where groups of housing units have been constructed on land that the occupants have no legal claim to, or occupy illegally;
• unplanned settlements and areas where housing is not in compliance with current planning and building regulations (unauthorised housing). [ OECD ]

And, according to United Nations OHCHR , they are one of the ‘most pervasive violations of human rights globally’. Living conditions are shocking and residents often live without clean water, sanitation, electricity and healthcare, and in constant fear of eviction.

Population growth and rural-urban migration fuelled by displacement caused by conflict, natural disasters and climate change have meant an increase in the emergence of informal settlements, and they continue to be geographically, economically, socially and politically disengaged from wider urban structures and excluded from urban opportunities. Moreover, many governments refuse to acknowledge the existence of informal settlement.

Informal settlements often sit on the outskirts of cities or towns, lacking access to markets and other important resources. For women, for example, this can heighten barriers they face in accessing livelihood opportunities. Women in informal settlements spend more time and energy accessing basic services than other urban counterparts, limiting their ability and time to earn through paid employment ( GSDRC ).

The urban forest

As such, life in Kibera is hard. The settlement is overcrowded and underserviced. Most families living here are packed into windowless one-room 12ft x 12ft shacks, with mud walls, a corrugated tin roof and a dirt or concrete floor, accommodating up to eight people or more with many sleeping on the floor. Many also tend to share the same toilet with as many as 150 other people. To survive, the majority of households rely on casual labour, such as washing clothes, to pay for rent, food and other essentials, with many already living in extreme poverty.

Life expectancy in Kibera is just 30 years old.

Kibera and Covid-19

Initially, when Covid-19 made headlines, fears for those living in informal settlements like Kibera were about the potential rapid spread of the virus due to dense populations, the extensive prevalence of underlying health conditions, and the severe lack of healthcare facilities. While these concerns remain significant throughout the pandemic due to its density and packed residences, another threat is rearing its ugly head: hunger.

When Covid-19 reached Kibera, social distancing restrictions meant that much of the work and casual labour people relied on to survive dried up overnight, leaving people with no income. And, without a daily wage, most families living there cannot buy food. Accordingly, whilst poor sanitation and hygiene and extremely close quarter living provides the perfect possible feeding ground for the virus, for many people living in informal settlement communities, the threat of hunger has become greater than the threat of Covid-19.

What we’re doing about it

Concern has responded to the growing threats in Kibera by providing:

• Vital emergency services to treat malnourished children.
• Cash transfers so families can have access to essentials including rent, electricity and soap to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

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THE SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE PEOPLE LIVING IN KIBERA SLUM IN NAIROBI COUNTY FOLLOWING THE KENYA SLUM UPGRADING PROGRAMME

Housing the growing population in Kenya remains one of the greatest challenges of achieving the Millennium Development Goal 7. The recent proliferation of slums represents the insufficiency of resources and physical planning policies and regulations. Slum redevelopment strategies are often conceived as the solution to stop further growth of slums. Locally one such strategy is Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme (KENSUP) which was launched in 2004 piloted in the Kibera Soweto east Village. Guided by the need to ensure that development interventions place the people first in such strategies the study was therefore designed to answer the following questions: What are the social and economic effects of the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme on the Kibera residents? How are the Kibera slum residents coping with the transformation as a result of the slum upgrading? Accordingly the overall objective of the study was to explore how the lives of the Kibera slum residents have been transformed following the slum upgrading programme. The specific objectives of the study were to investigate the socio-economic effects of the slum upgrading programme and to find out the coping strategies the Kibera slum residents have developed as a response to the slum upgrading programme. The study was guided by the Modernisation Theory as propagated by Walter Rostow (1960). This is a grand theory of development that states that development can be achieved by following the processes followed by what is now the ‘developed world’. This theory is premised on the idea of replication of change. Data were collected using the survey method, focus group discussions and key informant interviews. In total, ninety-two residents were drawn from the Soweto east area and environs and subjected to a structured questionnaire. Four focus group discussions were held comprising of eight to ten participants obtained from the study site. Seven key informants were subjected to in-depth interviews on the topic of the Kenya slum upgrading programme and Kibera residents. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used in the analysis of the quantitative data collected through the survey method. The data were categorized, arranged and summarized and presented using tabulations, pie charts and bar graphs. On the otherhand, qualitative data collected through focus group discussions and key informant interviews were analyzed thematically. Content analysis, direct quotations and selected comments from the informants were used to present the findings. The findings suggest that a majority of the slum residents are indeed aware of KENSUP but the information they have is scanty. As such the residents’ participation in the programme has been minimal remaining as passive beneficiaries of the intervention. Further, the study has revealed that there have been numerous and varied effects of the programme on the lives of the residents of Kibera slum. The effects are numerous ranging from their social status and interaction to loss of livelihoods and displacement from their homes. Some of the residents have developed coping mechanisms to deal with their current social and economic dispositions. They are joining co-operatives, taking part in town hall meetings and seminars in a bid to catch up with the rest of the ‘developed folk’. On the other hand others have become apathetic to any other programmes that set out to uplift their lives. The study recommends that the KENSUP strategy should evolve into a people centred, demand driven process bearing in mind principles of equity, justice and fairness. There is further need to host a local KENSUP office to be a communication and information centre key in this process of change. In addition there need to be studies focusing more on sustainability of financing strategies that would bear in mind the vulnerable and disenfranchised target populations within this area.

Related Papers

Nation and Security (Nemzet és Biztonság)

Daniel Solymári , Czirják Ráhel

The paper examines the largest-scale historical slum development program, that has been running in Kibera, the biggest slum of Kenya, since the turn of the millen-nium: Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme (KENSUP) and its two projects Kibera Integrated Water, Sanitation and Waste Management Project (K-WATSAN) and Kibera Slum Upgrading Initiative (KSUI). The paper synthesises the available litera-ture to examine the extent to which the objectives originally set for 2020 have been achieved. The study found that K-WATSAN was successful both in terms of actively involving the locals and improving their life conditions. However, KSUI did not utilise the experiences gained regarding the significance of community participation. Con-sequently, structural flaws emerge that call into question the actual fulfilment of the programme’s goals, as well as the programme’s sustainability.

AFRIKA TANULMÁNYOK / HUNGARIAN JOURNAL OF AFRICAN STUDIES

István Tarrósy , Daniel Solymári , Czirják Ráhel , Janet Mangera

The goal of this paper is to explore the slum upgrading processes: the implementation of the Kenyan KENSUP project, associated successes and failures, and to draw possible lessons that can be learned from the initiative. The study utilized field work desk reviews to gather relevant information regarding slum upgrade processes in Kenya. The criteria used in the review process entailed exploring the context in which the KENSUP upgrading project was implemented, focusing on the legal frameworks, process of implementation, achievements, results, setbacks and failures in the processes in order to draw lessons for future programmes.

Jane Wambui

Glen Ochieng

There is growing global concern about slums, as manifested in the recent United Nations Millennium Declaration and subsequent identification of new development priorities by the international community. In light o f the increasing numbers of urban slum dwellers, governments have recently adopted a specific target on slums, i.e. Millennium Development Goal 7, Target 11, which aims to significantly improve the lives o f at least 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020. This study investigated factors influencing implementation of the slums upgrading programmes with specific reference to the Kenya slums upgrading programme in Kibera slums. The Kenyan government’s conceptualization of slum upgrading inserts benefits into a highly distorted market, preventing a balanced realization o f the internationally recognized elements of the right to housing, and raising fears of displacement among slum residents. The study established factors influencing slums upgrading programmes along the fo...

Jacqueline Walubwa

Several projects have come up to remedy the plight of informal housing in Kenya, each laudable, but none has so far been successful. In line with the government's mission of providing housing for it's citizens, the Kenya government embarked on this ambitious slum upgrading mission, which used water and sanitation as an entry point to the community. This particular project was used by the KENSUP as the pilot project for purposes of country wide replication. The book outlines the experiences gained from implementing this project together with it's emerging impants;it is useful for both policy makers and scholars who want to gain more insight on the beginnings of K-Watsan

Collins Ouma Agayi

Kibera, a slum in Kenya experiences social, economic, and spatial challenges arising from rapid urbanization and inability of the government to provide affordable housing. Located five kilometers from the city center, Kibera is home to approximately 185.000 people, the majority of whom are low-income earners. Besides housing challenges, Kibera lacks basic facilities like roads and clean water. Kenyan Government in partnership with UN-Habitat and other organizations has initiated Kenya Slum Upgrading Program (KENSUP) for the purpose of upgrading the infrastructure, housing, and supply of basic services. The pilot project was conducted in Soweto East village of Kibera and involved temporary relocation of the residents to a receiving area to provide room for upgrading. This research uses SWOT analysis method and scrutiny of past studies including interviews conducted in Soweto area to evaluate the KENSUP project in Kibera, to identify the gaps in the program implementation, and to make...

Melanie C MacDonald , Dr. Thomas Meredith

Slum upgrading is accepted as a priority for sustainable development. While there are clear challenges to upgrading, local support and community engagement are seen as essential to success. Typical " top-down " approaches led by institutions with power and resources may fail to generate local engagement. Conversely, initiatives led by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations (CBOs) or other self-help groups may garner good community support but may lack institutional and material resources to meet objectives. A hybrid approach that engages the community while mobilizing the resources of governments and large agencies can overcome some of these limitations, but it is not without complications. We examine the process and impact of a slum upgrading pilot project in Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya, that operationalized this hybrid approach by adopting an adaptive management model to promote community engagement. The project was part of the Government of Kenya's Kenya Slum Upgrading Program and involved the Kibera Water and Sanitation Project led by UN-Habitat's Urban Basic Services Branch. The project showed significant early success in building community engagement, but it also encountered significant challenges. We assess the project's success in building community engagement by (a) analyzing documents that reflected the institutional discourse related to the project, (b) examining the record of the implementation of the project, and (c) conducting field surveys and interviews to assess community perception of the project. Survey results show that critical infrastructure in the community has improved over the course of the project and expectations for continued improvement in the future have developed. The study concludes that using an adaptive management approach and strongly promoting community involvement should be the aim of institutions delivering slum-upgrading projects and that this can result in effective, successful development outcomes. While the approach does present significant risks of creating unrealistic expectations, the benefits to project management are clear.

Victoria Cronin

This paper discusses the sustainability of two different approaches to upgrade water and sanitation infrastructure in Kenya's largest informal settlement, Kibera. A background to the urbanisation of poverty is outlined along with approaches to urban slums. Two case studies of completed interventions of infrastructure upgrading have been investigated. In one case study, the upgrading method driven by a non-government organisation uses an integrated livelihoods and partnership technique at community level to create an individual project. In the other case study, the method is a collaboration between the government and a multi-lateral agency to deliver upgraded services as part of a country-wide programme. The ‘bottom-up’ (project) and ‘top-down’ (programme) approaches both seek sustainability and aim to achieve this in the same context using different techniques. This paper investigates the sustainability of each approach. The merits and challenges of the approaches are discussed with the projected future of Kibera. The paper highlights the valuable opportunity for the role of appropriate engineering infrastructure for sustainable urban development, as well as the alleviation of poverty in a developing context.

IFRA Nairobi

PART I: CONCEPTUALIZATION AND PREPARATION Introduction Part I: Conceptualization and Preparation of Slum Upgrading Programmes (Samuel Owuor) Physical and Spatial Characteristics of Slum Territories – Vulnerable to Natural Disasters (Rosa Flores Fernandez) Kibera: The Biggest Slum in Africa? (Amélie Desgroppes – Sophie Staupin) The Slum Shacks Question and the Making of 21st Century Political Citizenship in Postcolonial Nairobi, Kenya and Harare, Zimbabwe (Steve Ouma Akoth) Slum Upgrading: The Muungano Wa Wanavijiji Vision (Ezekiel Rema) Community Voices in Sustainable Slum Upgrading Processes: The Nairobi People Settlement Network (Humphrey Otieno) The Influence of the Tenure System to the Physical Environments in Nairobi’s Human Settlements (Peter Makachia) Land Tenure in Slum Upgrading Projects (Paul Syagga) PART II: TAKING ACTION IN SLUM UPGRADING PROJECTS IN NAIROBI Introduction Part II: Taking Action in Slum Upgrading Projects in Nairobi (Rosa Flores Fernandez) Kenyan Government Initiatives in Slum Upgrading (Leah Muraguri) The Kibera Soweto East Project in Nairobi (Rosa Flores Fernandez and Bernard Calas) Empowering the Urban Poor to Realize the Right to Housing: Community Led Slum Upgrading in Huruma – Nairobi (Kamukam Ettyang’) Korogocho Slum Upgrading Programme (IFRA) Umande Trust Bio-Centre Approach in Slum Upgrading (Aidah Binale) Working with Communities to Improve Dignity: The Case of Improved Bio-Centres in Kenya (Geaorges Wasonga)

Juma Michael

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In this sprawling city within a city, fighting coronavirus requires solidarity

The pandemic is another obstacle the community must tackle together in Kibera, one of the largest informal urban settlements in Kenya.

Ruth Kavana, a single mother of four, inside her house in Kibera. When the coronavirus emerged in Kenya, she closed her business selling eggs, potato chips, and smokies, a popular sausage snack, for a month.

KIBERA, KENYA — When Brian Otieno was 11 years old, living in Kenya’s Kibera urban settlement, he saw something on Easter Sunday that would inspire his life’s profession: a reenactment of Christ’s journey to the cross.

“There was this person who was dressed like Jesus, and the people behind him were pretending to whip him. I wished I could capture that scene forever,” says Otieno, now a 27-year-old photojournalist based in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city.

Easter 2020 in Kibera was altogether different. The coronavirus shut down any pretense of celebration or observance. “It actually passed without people even realizing it was a holiday,” Otieno says. “There were no church celebrations, no holiday activities. People were moving around like it was any day.”

The streets of Kibera, located in Nairobi, are busy before the start of a 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew implemented by the government in March to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Public health workers disinfect a path used by a family suspected to have COVID-19 in Kibera. The family was later put into isolation.

A woman sells homemade face masks along a busy street in Kibera after the government mandated the wearing of face masks in public places.

For many residents of one of Africa’s largest informal urban settlements, coronavirus is yet another obstacle in a life of hardship. Most people exert such effort to sustain themselves and their families each day that the threat of COVID-19 pales in comparison. “If you are struggling to get enough food to stay alive, you don’t have much time to worry about this thing called coronavirus.” says Otieno. “People have heard about it, but most of them can’t spare the time to fear it .”

Census numbers vary, but the United Nations Human Settlements Programme estimates that 500,000 to 700,000 people reside in the sprawling, densely populated community within Nairobi. Most dwellings have mud walls and tin roofs. Indoor plumbing and electricity are scarce. The average income is less than $2 a day.

Coronavirus case numbers are currently low on the African continent— Kenya reported 2,474 confirmed cases and 79 deaths as of June 5 . The government imposed a strict 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew in Nairobi to combat the virus’s spread and required all citizens to wear face masks in public. People are still able to enter and leave Kibera, though officials could call for a total lockdown if COVID-19 cases rise dramatically in the coming days.

Children stand near the banks of a river on the southern edge of Kibera in April. Kibera is one of Africa’s largest informal urban settlements, home to an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 people.

Local artists and organizations have painted murals on walls around the community to remind people to socially distance and wash their hands.

Public health officials are quickly realizing that prevention strategies must be adapted for realities on the ground. Many large African cities have huge day labor employment sectors; this informal structure means that people have fewer resources to navigate public health emergencies.

For Hungry Minds

Self-isolation and quarantining are simply not realistic in a huge settlement with high poverty rates and poor infrastructure, says Edwine Barasa, director of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Nairobi, which recently analyzed the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 prevention measures.

“People in these communities have too much to lose by staying in place,” Barasa says. “Asking them to do this in that kind of environment can put them at greater risk.”

“They live in one-roomed houses. They do not have access to piped water or toilets. They rely on informal supply chains to access basic necessities like food, and they’re likely daily wage-earners,” says Barasa. “Self-isolation presumes there is a spare room that someone can go to when they suspect they have COVID symptoms. It’s impossible to do that if you have many people living in one room.”

Health workers take down the details of Kibera residents who came for COVID-19 testing.

Eighteen-year-old Stephen Onyango, center, teaches his brothers Collins and Gavan while their sister, Genevieve Akinyi, watches at their home in Kibera. They haven’t been to class since the government closed schools in mid-March to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Closing down informal markets in Kibera, which has no grocery stores, would leave people without access to basic staples. Lockdown would mean job loss and an inability to feed the family or pay rent. A recent survey conducted by the Nairobi-based TIFA market research firm found that 90 percent of low-income respondents said COVID-19 had completely eliminated their family income.

Locals have taken measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 themselves. As information about prevention emerged in Kibera, says Otieno, tailors started producing affordable face masks long before public health officials offered them.

“Most of the initiatives were started by individuals and implemented by the people from the community, people who know the needs of the community and are also part of it,” Otieno says. “The people of Kibera didn’t wait for humanitarian aid or outsiders to come and intervene or help. In the beginning, they took it on all by themselves.”

Since then, various NGOs have set up handwashing stations and facilities where residents, most of whom have no running water, can shower and use toilets. Public transportation—a lifeline for Kibera residents who can’t afford cars—is sanitized daily. When a case of coronavirus is confirmed, public health workers sanitize the surrounding area. Local artists have painted vivid murals on walls and other surfaces throughout the community to remind people to wear masks and socially distance.

Girls wait in line to take a shower at a facility in Kibera, Kenya set up by a local organization trying to combat the spread of coronavirus by helping locals maintain personal hygiene. Most Kibera residents do not have access to indoor plumbing in their homes.

Kibera residents fill their jerry cans with free water distributed by the Kenyan government.

Joakim Kwaru, an artist from a Nairobi art collective, paints a mural reminding people to wear masks. “Even children, when they see this they know what it means,” he says.

Residents maintain social distancing while waiting to have their samples taken during mass COVID-19 testing at a school in Kibera.

Memories of hunger

When Asha Jaffar was 15, Kenya erupted in violence. After former President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of the December 2007 presidential election, his opponent claimed electoral fraud. Mass protests turned violent and several tribes were targeted in ethnic attacks. The destruction and crime shuttered businesses in an already unstable economy. People were unable to leave their communities to find work due to the police and military presence. Up to 3,000 people were killed over a two-month period, according to official estimates.

The eldest of six children born to two day laborers in Kibera, Jaffar was used to struggling. But months after the violence ended, hunger still stalked her family. She watched her parents rise each morning and pass through the smoke-filled streets seeking work, her mother as a domestic worker in one of Nairobi’s affluent suburbs, her father as a self-trained electrician.

Asha Jaffar, a freelance journalist and social activist from Kibera, started the Kibera Food Drive to provide food for the poor and elderly during the pandemic. She hopes to raise enough money to start a permanent food bank.

Now a 27-year-old freelance writer and social activist, Jaffar remembers what it was like to go hungry. Those memories have led her to start the Kibera Food Drive , to provide for families suffering under government quarantines and curfew orders.

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“We thought of this plan where we could support people who wanted to self-isolate and obey the quarantine orders but feared that they would not be able to eat if they did,” Jaffar says. Volunteers now deliver food packages to 200 families each week, and Jaffar hopes to raise enough money to establish a permanent food bank in Kibera, where she still lives.

“I understand what sleeping hungry is like. I understand that for most people in Kibera, you walk to work, you earn maybe 200 shillings [$2] that day, you buy some food, and you eat so you can get up and do it again tomorrow,” she says. “It is my desire to make sure that no kid in Kibera has to go through what we went through.”

A volunteer with Kibera Food Drive prepares packages of food and other basic goods to be distributed to the poor and elderly of Kibera who are staying home due to the coronavirus.

Commuters wearing face masks stand in the morning train that stops at Kibera every day en route to and from the Nairobi city center. Those without face masks will be fined.

Otieno remembers how hard his father, an informal carpenter, and his mother, a hairdresser, worked to keep him and his two younger siblings supported and safe. He hopes young people today will be able to view their community with pride because of how it coped with COVID-19.

“There is so much strength there,” Otieno says. “I witnessed how people mobilized and used what was within their powers to help their own.”

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Slum Digitisation, Its Opponents and Allies in Developing Smart Cities: The Case of Kibera, Nairobi

• First Online: 27 September 2019

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• Bitange Ndemo 4  

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This chapter explores how emerging information and communication technologies (ICT) and geographic information systems (GIS) can be used to map informal settlements, and by openly providing spatial maps, lead to improved conditions for people living in slums. Furthermore the chapter demonstrates that ICTs and GIS can prompt policymakers to apply much-needed changes of urban renewal, by helping those living in informal settlements to identify the slum assets that are essential to their livelihood and to ensure their own security. An inductive qualitative case study approach is used in the Kibera slums of Nairobi to develop theoretical explanations of the patterns that emerged. The findings show that, whereas slums have complex situations, increased transparency from open mapping can provide a platform for sustainable renewal.

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Abbreviations

Geographic Information Systems

Global Systems for Mobile Communications Association

Information Communications Technologies

Non-Governmental Organizations

United Nations

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Christopher Pettit

Questionnaire

Respondent Consent

Recently some young men asked me to officiate the launch of Map Kibera, which I suspect you know about. I was intrigued by their work and I have decided to look into the project in a more detailed way. My goal in this interview is to capture this important exercise and hope someone else in a similar situation will utilise the knowledge of using GIS Mapping to improve productivity of those living in informal settlements. Please let me know if you are in a position to help me understand, first your role in it and its usefulness to the people. You can withdraw anytime you feel that it is not relevant to your aspirations towards informal settlement. I also want your consent to quote you or else I will keep your contribution anonymous.

What role if any did your organisation play in the development of Map Kibera?

What direct or indirect assistance did you provide to the project?

Did you participate in the process of gathering data for the project? If so, please explain in detail what you did.

If you participated in the development of the project, who were your collaborators?

When gathering the data, what were key areas of focus?

Did you have any challenges? If so, what were they?

Do you see any potential opportunities that the project presents?

Do you know any other person or organisation that you can recommend to us to talk to?

Who financed Map Kibera project?

How will this project impact the people of Kibera?

What are the take away lessons from this project?

Do you have any question for me?

Please once more, let me know if you have any concerns to this interview.

Focus Group Discussion Guide

The aims of this focus group (I have selected four of you on the basis of your earlier position taken while conducting individual interviews to anonymously discuss freely on the opposing views) is to dive deeper into Map Kibera Project and discern your differences and the issues that matter to help me to validate earlier information and make generalisations that can be helpful in replicating this study elsewhere. Once more you are free to withdraw from this discussion if you are not comfortable with it.

For all intent and purpose, this project could be very useful to the people of Kibera. What in your view is the root cause of the resistance to its implementation?

How can we overcome these resistances and enable the residents to benefit from its applications?

How do we move forward?

Level 3 Interviews

The purpose of visiting your office today is to ask you to help me understand your role if any with respect to the ongoing digitisation of Kibera slums. I must add that you are at liberty to withdraw from this interview. I have two simple questions with respect to this matter.

I want to know if you are aware of Map Kibera and how it integrates to your wider plans in the city.

Could you share any materials, plans and documents with respect to city planning? I will appreciate it if you can provide any specific plans you have for Kibera.

Appendix II

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Ndemo, B. (2020). Slum Digitisation, Its Opponents and Allies in Developing Smart Cities: The Case of Kibera, Nairobi. In: Hawken, S., Han, H., Pettit, C. (eds) Open Cities | Open Data. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6605-5_6

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Kibera Facts & Information

There are approximatly 2.5 million slum dwellers in about 200 settlements in Nairobi representing 60% of the Nairobi population and occupying just 6% of the land. Kibera houses about 250,000 of these people. Kibera is the biggest slum in Africa and one of the biggest in the world.

Land Ownership The Government owns all the land. 10% of people are shack owners and many of these people own many other shacks and let them out to tenants. The remaining 90% of residents are tenants with no rights.

Housing The average size of shack in this area is 12ft x 12ft built with mud walls, a corrugated tin roof with a dirt or concrete floor. The cost is about KES 700 per Month (£6). These shacks often house up to 8 or more with many sleeping on the floor.

The population The original settlers were the Nubian people from the Kenyan/Sudanese border – they now occupy about 15% of Kibera, are mostly Muslim and are also mostly shack owners. The other shack owners are mostly Kikuyu (the majority tribe in Nairobi) – although in most cases they do not live there but are absentee landlords. The majority of the tenants are Luo, Luhya and some Kamba – these people are from the west of Kenya. There are many tensions in Kibera, particularly tribal tensions between the Luo & Kikuyu, but also between landlord and tenant and those with and without jobs.

Electricity Only about 20% of Kibera has electricity. UN-Habitat is in the process of providing it to some parts of Kibera – this will include street lighting, security lighting and connection to shacks (this costs KES 900 per shack, which in most cases is not affordable).

Water Until recently Kibera had no water and it had to be collected from the Nairobi dam. The dam water is not clean and causes typhoid and cholera. Now there are two mains water pipes into Kibera, one from the municipal council and one from the World Bank. Residents collect water at KES 3 per 20 litres.

Sewage In most of Kibera there are no toilet facilities. One latrine (hole in the ground) is shared by up to 50 shacks. Once full, young boys are employed to empty the latrine and they take the contents to the river. UN-Habitat and a few other agencies are trying to help and improve this situation but it is painfully slow.

Medical facilities and HIV/AIDS Clinics In Kibera there are no government clinics or hospitals. The providers are the charitable organisations: AMREF, MSF, churches plus some others. They do a great job. All people are encouraged to have a free HIV test and if positive to take free generic ARV medicine.

Changaa This is cheap alcoholic brew. It is widely available, very strong (over 50% alcohol) and made incorrectly, so is usually very high in Methanol. The cost is only KES 10 per glass and after a couple of glasses people become very drunk. With over 50% unemployment in Kibera many start drinking early in the morning leading to problems of violence, crime, rapes etc. Several charities are trying to help by showing the Changaa makers how to make the drink less dangerous.

Drugs Cheap drugs and glue sniffing are an increasing problem. Initially taken to alleviate boredom but then people find themselves hooked. A big challenge to the charities!

Abortion Due to many men still not using condoms and the availability of Changaa, many girls become pregnant, at any one time about 50% of 16 to 25 yr old girls are pregnant. Most of these pregnancies are unwanted, resulting in many cases of abortion. This can be very dangerous, particularly in such a poor area as Kibera. Many charities are working on this problem.

Unemployment Kibera is near the industrial area of Nairobi where up to 50% of the available workforce are employed (usually in fairly unskilled jobs). However, there is still an unemployment rate of 50%. This is why the training and teaching of skills is very important.

Sport Most young people in Kibera have nothing to do, obviously it is better for them to have the opportunity to take part in sport and several organisations are working on this.

Nairobi Slum Survey The African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) produced a report which provides many different statistics relating to the slums of Nairobi, including facts about Kibera. You can download the 212 page here: * ‘ Report of the Nairobi Cross-sectional Slums Survey ‘

SUMMARY FINDINGS

Kibera needs land/tenancy rights, housing, water, electricity, health clinics, education, employment, security plus much more. All these issues are being addressed to a lesser or greater extent by many organizations including the Churches, UN-Habitat, MSF and AMREF etc. Money is finding its way through from many international organizations including Gates Foundation, Bill Clinton Foundation, all the well known charities and of course the churches both in Africa and internationally. However, money cannot help without people to direct it – all the organizations require assistance. They all need intelligent, keen, willing, and compassionate people to help.

In the western world it has become common for many students to take a Gap Year out before or after university. More mature people are also now taking a year out, away from their everyday life. Many could work in Kibera where they would achieve a real sense of doing some good. Kibera is crying out for people to help.

Citation * African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC). 2014. Population and Health Dynamics in Nairobi’s Informal Settlements: Report of the Nairobi Cross-sectional Slums Survey. (NCSS) 2012. Nairobi: APHRC.

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This densely populated region is famously known as the largest urban slum in Africa, although this claim is not easy to verify. Still, there’s a lot more to this community than you might imagine.

The number of people living in Kibera is unknown and quoted as anywhere between 170,000 and 1.2 million.

Kibera is a 2.5 square kilometre region that lies 7km from central Nairobi and is closely bounded by more affluent areas.

Kibera is a British creation dating back to 1899. It was designated as an unauthorised settlement following Kenya’s independence in 1963. The consequence is that the Kenyan government have no obligation to provide basic services and infrastructure, and the residents have no rights over their property.

The government is in the process of ‘slum upgrading’, although the development is a long way behind schedule and fraught with difficulties..

The people of Kibera are some of the most creative, enterprising, and passionate people you could ever hope to meet.

Average life expectancy is 30 years of age, skewed by high infant mortality rates with 19% of children dying before their 5th birthday.

HIV infection rates are extremely high and are a large contributory factor in the number of orphans living in Kibera.

Only around 40% of Kibera’s children attend school on any given day.

Electricity is scarce and often illegally tapped from power lines..

Drop toilets and open sewers are the norm with many using plastic bags when it is unsafe to use public facilities after dark.

The average home measures just 12 foot by 12 foot and can accommodate more than 8 people.

Kibera is a thriving community filled with people who want nothing more than to be respected and to improve their quality of life through access to opportunities for progress, education, and employment., how many people.

Figures quoted include:

1.2 million quoted by the International Medical Corps in 2006 (3)

Over 1 million quoted in Karl Grobl’s 2010 photoessay (15)

500,000 estimated by the Kenya Water for Health Organisation (1)

235,000-275,000 estimated by the Map Kibera Project (2)

170,070 the official figure from the 2009 Kenya Census (4)

So why the HUGE differences?

Kibera is a fluid society. Inflow and outflow of residents is constant and significant.

There is huge variation in the definitions of Kibera’s boundaries used for the estimates.

Politics and other underlying bias appear whenever statistics are compiled.

The official numbers don’t include children, who form over 60% of Kibera’s population.

Where is it?

Approximately 7km south-west of Nairobi City Centre, in the peri-urban zone. and covers an areas of 256 hectares (2.5 square 2 kilometres) although there is an element of fluidity at the borders.

What surrounds the slum?

 To the south lies the Nairobi River, Dam, and the Southern Nairobi Highway/Bypass. To the west is Ngong Forest and a campus of the University of Nairobi. To the north-east you will find the Royal Nairobi Golf Club (the rich get very close to the poor here).

How is it organised?

The Kibera slum area is made up of ‘villages’. The most widely accepted definition of Kibera’s boundaries includes 12 villages:

*Gatwekera *Soweto *Makina *Kisumu Ndogo *Kicchinjio *Laini Saba *Silanga *Lindi *Kianda *Mashimoni *Raila *Kambi Muru

Kibera is a British creation. Its origins lie in Colonial times, when Nairobi was founded to house British Colonial offices and the headquarters of the new Uganda Railway line in 1899.

Nairobi was intended only for Europeans, with non-Europeans required by law to live in ‘native reserves’ on the outskirts of the city. Kibera appeared as the settlement allocated to the Nubian soldiers serving the military interests of the British Colonial army. Kibera translates as forest in the Nubian language and references its original state as a forest settlement (the trees have long since disappeared)(5).

“Kibera translates as forest in the Nubian language”

Following Kenya’s successful transition to independence in 1963, the government designated Kibera as an unauthorised settlement. This gave the tenants no rights to their homes or land and absolved the government of any responsibility to provide basic infrastructure.

Kibera became a place for those who could not afford legal housing. Many came from the rural villages, dreaming of making it big in the city. As such, Kibera is full of ambitious and entrepreneurial people as well as a much greater mix of origins than anywhere else in Kenya (6).

On September 16th 2009, the Kenyan government began the process of ‘clearing the slum’. The intention was to rehouse Kibera’s residents in newly built apartment blocks, within 2-5 years (7).

In reality, the project has barely begun. In fact, at the current rate of progress, it will not be complete until the year 3130.

The project is fraught with difficulties, from legal objections that need to be processed through the courts, to logistical problems and the considerations of Kibera’s residents. For example: Constructing adequate foundations on land that consists mainly of refuse and rubbish is a huge challenge. Access to the land is awkward with no vehicular access in most places, and the steep sloping terrain causes logistical challenges.

The deposit on one of the new 2-bedroom homes is around 100,000 shillings (8). Rent then continues at around 6000 shillings a month. For a Kiberan earning 200 shillings a day, the challenge is obvious. Kiberans are regularly resorting to sub-letting the new apartments to middle-class tenants, and moving back into the slum. This is ‘against the rules’ but is certainly a widespread problem (9).

So, the future of Kibera remains uncertain.

COMMUNITY OF KIBERA 

When you speak with most Kiberans, you discover that they really love their home. It may seem strange that many people don’t want to leave the slum, but they will explain that the sense of community here is second to none. Everyone knows everyone, and families help other families in need. What people want is simply the opportunity to work, to have enough to eat, and the chance to improve the standard of living within Kibera.

The people of Kibera have hopes and fears and dreams just like anyone else in any location around the world. There are actors, artists, dancers, craftsmen, and thousands of other talented and passionate residents. Kibera is a real community with some of the friendliest people you could ever hope to meet. Surely they deserve the same dignity and opportunity as those of us lucky enough to be born outside the slum. Yet most of these people will never leave Kibera and will continue to face, head-on, the challenges that life in this community provides.

LIFE AND DEATH

The average life expectancy in Kibera is just 30 years of age. However, this does not mean there are no elderly people living here. Sadly, the statistics are skewed by high infant and youth mortality.

There are many diseases endemic within Kibera. Many of them are killers and others permanently disabling. Infectious diseases spread easily when people are living in such close proximity to one another. Open sewers and lack of easy access to hand washing facilities exacerbate the problem. If those aren’t challenges enough, factor in the difficulties encountered when trying to access appropriate healthcare.

Common diseases include malaria, tuberculosis, ringworm, cholera, typhoid, dysentery, meningitis, measles, intestinal worms, and HIV/AIDS (13 /14/ 15).

19% of those born in Kibera will not live to see their 5th birthday, with 40% of these tragic deaths due to diarrheal diseases (13).

With clean water expensive and difficult to access, illegal tapping of water pipes is not uncommon. Whilst this gives people access to water, these tapping points are typically poorly constructed and allow sewage to seep into the pipes. Obviously, this then also contaminates the water available at the official distribution locations (13).

As desperate young women can be found trading their bodies for the price of a meal (about 20p – less than the price of a condom (16) ), HIV infection rates are high. An AMREF clinic found that 50% of those being treated for TB were also HIV+. And a Médecins Sans Frontières clinic claims that many refuse to take antiretroviral medication because they know they will be unable to access/afford it consistently, or afford the quality nutrition needed to accompany it (14).

Malaria is a problem in Kibera and particularly deadly to the very young, pregnant women, and the elderly. Those who survive a severe case of malaria often find themselves disabled, particularly with learning impairments and brain damage (15). Due to the relatively high altitude, there should be no malaria in Kibera but the community’s fluid nature means cases find their way to the slum from other parts of Kenya.

Whilst education is likely the #1 way to improve a child’s prospects, it’s certainly not easy to access. It’s difficult to find any official figures, but estimates predict that only around 40% of children in Kibera will be attending school on any given day.

There are many barriers to accessing education:

* Cost – schools usually require basic fees plus a uniform, books, stationary, food contribution, exam fees, soap, toilet paper… With an average employed parent with 4 children having an income of around 3000-9000 shillings per month, paying school fees totalling 7700 shillings per month (average primary class 5 costs) is obviously not possible(11).

* Female illiteracy in particular remains high due to ingrained gender inequality. Where there is not enough money to educate every child, a family will often prioritise the male children and encourage the girls into early marriage or employment(12).  

* The need to earn money – older children find themselves pushed out of education in order to contribute to the family income.

* Menstruation – girls often miss school due to lacking the appropriate provisions to manage their monthly menses.

Find out what Chaffinch is doing to help children receive the education that could take them out of extreme poverty.

Over 50% of Kibera’s eligible workforce is unemployed(10). Many of those with formal employment work in the city, mainly performing unskilled manual tasks. The average wage for these workers is just 1 USD per day(12).

Other Kiberans use their fantastic entrepreneurial instincts to set up their own businesses within the slum. These ventures range from small shops (dukani), where you can buy a packet of biscuits or a ‘top-up’ for your mobile phone, to hair salons, music stores, repair shops, eateries, and pharmacies. Others wash the cars of the middle-classes on the outskirts of Kibera.

Many women can be seen each day sitting on the ground selling food items. Some spend the entire day cooking chapati, which sell for 5 shillings each (around 4p/5 cents). Others sell smoked and salted fish – earning an average of 10 USD per month(12).

For the majority of Kiberans, employment is informal, irregular, and extremely low paid. This creates a population living hand-to-mouth and vulnerable to any unexpected difficulties such as ill health, bad weather, and food price increases.

Homes, buildings and infrastructure

The average home in Kibera measures just 12ft x 12ft. The walls are built of mud supported by rough wooden poles, often no more than sticks. The floor will usually be dirt, although some residents are able to add a layer of concrete. The building will be roofed with corrugated iron sheets. 10 These quickly rust and turn brown, giving Kibera its nickname of Chocolate City.

In one of these small homes, you regularly find 8 or more people living, cooking, and sleeping. The average rent for one of these structures is 1,500 shillings/month (about £8) and has no water supply or electricity.

The population density (bearing in mind the difficulties measuring the population) is easily 80 times greater than in the City of London.

Of course, in addition to homes, there are many other similarly constructed ‘buildings’. Almost everything can be found in Kibera, from shops, hair salons, and shoe cleaning enterprises, to schools, clinics, repair shops, and banking points. There are also a huge number of churches, mosques, and other places of worship.

Despite the limitations of their home, the people of Kibera continue to create a diverse and comprehensive range of community services.

Water: Whilst some residents still rely on ‘unoffical’ water supplies, with the constant risk of typhoid and cholera, there are now two pipelines into Kibera. Water can be purchased at points around the slum for around 3 shillings/20 litres (10). The supply can be extremely restricted when water is scarce eg. when the rains are late.

Electricity: Only around 20% of Kibera has an electricity supply. Much of the power is illegally tapped from the city grid and can be both unreliable and dangerous (6).

Roads: Vehicular access to Kibera is extremely limited. Where roads exist, they are narrow, rocky, and turn to deep mud in the rains. The National Youth Service have begun improvements including adding hard surfaces to some of the ‘major’ roads (11).

Sanitation: Overflowing drop toilets and open sewers paint a bleak picture. The public toilets charge for use and are unsafe after dark. Many residents use ‘flying toilets’ – defecating into a plastic bag and throwing it into the street (6).

Further Reading

There are some superb pieces of journalism available online for those who want to know more about life in Kibera. Many have tried their hand at describing the lives of those living in the slum.

Andrew Harding’s 4-part series ‘Nairobi Slum Life’ written for BBC News.

A photoessay about an amazing project ‘Kenya’s Slum Ballet School’ published by The Guardian.

And one other piece, published by Channel 4 – ‘On tour with the slum tourists in Kenya’, which provides an excellent reminder that Kibera is a home, not a tourist attraction.

References:

• Kenya Water for Health Organisation. (2014). Description of the Project Location. Available: https://kwaho.org/loc-d-kibera.html . Last accessed 16th March 2017.
• Map Kibera Project. Maps and Statistics. Available: https://mapkiberaproject.yolasite.com/maps-and-statistics.php . Last accessed 16th March 2017.
• International Medical Corps. (2006). A Trip Through Kenya’s Kibera Slum. Available: https://internationalmedicalcorps.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=1561 . Last accessed 17th March 2017.
• Daily Nation. (2010). Myth shattered: Kibera numbers fail to add up. Available: https://www.nation.co.ke/News/Kibera%20numbers%20fail%20to%20add%20up/-/1056/1003404/-/13ga38xz/-/index.html . Last accessed 17th March 2017.
• Furedi, F (1973). The African Crowd in Nairobi: Population Movements and Elite Politics. 275-290.
• The Economist. (2012). Boomtown Slum. Available: https://www.economist.com/news/christmas/21568592-day-economic-life-africas-biggest-shanty-town-boomtown-slum . Last accessed 20th March 2017.
• BBC News. (2009). Kenya begins huge slum clearance. Available: https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8258417.stm . Last accessed 20th March 2017.
• Standard Media. (2016). Slum upgrading: Kibera residents to get new homes at last. Available: https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/business/article/2000196642/slum-upgrading-kibera-residents-to-get-new-homes-at-last . Last accessed 20th March 2017.
• Augustine Oduor. (2011). Kibera residents rent out houses, move to slum. Available: https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/business/article/2000034968/kibera-residents-rent-out-houses-move-to-slum . Last accessed 20th March 2017.
• Kibera.org.uk. (Undated). Kibera Facts and Information. Available: https://www.kibera.org.uk/facts-info/ . Last accessed 20th March 2017.
• UWEZA Aid Foundation. (Undated). Estimated Costs of Education in Kibera. Available: https://www.uwezakenya.org/our-work/sponsorship/estimated-costs-of-education-in-kibera/ . Last accessed 21st March 2017.
• Cunico, A. (2011). Dispatch from Kibera, East Africa’s Largest Slum. Available: https://www.ips.org/blog/mdg3/2011/08/dispatch-from-kibera-east-africas-largest-slum/ . Last accessed 21st March 2017.
• Power of Hope Kibera. (Undated). About Kibera. Available: https://pohk.org/about/kibera/ . Last accessed 30th March 2017.
• IRIN. (2006). Treating more than just HIV/AIDS in Nairobi’s Kibera slum. Available: https://www.irinnews.org/feature/2006/03/17/treating-more-just-hivaids-nairobis-kibera-slum . Last accessed 30th March 2017.
• Grobl, K.. (2010). Kibera Slum, Nairobi, Kenya. Available: https://karlgrobl.com/blog/2010/07/nairobi-kenya-kibera-slum/ . Last accessed 30th March 2017.
• Jumia Supermarket Kenya. (2017). Condom Prices. Available: https://www.jumia.co.ke/durex/ . Last accessed 30th March 2017.

If you would like to see some great photographs of life in Kibera, here is a selection of the best Instagram accounts we’ve found

• Stories from Kibera
• SlumPhotography
• Kibera Ni Kwetu
• Bryan Jaybee @storitellah

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When Is the Best Time to Work Out?

It’s an age-old question. But a few recent studies have brought us closer to an answer.

By Alexander Nazaryan

What is the best time of day to exercise?

It’s a straightforward question with a frustrating number of answers, based on research results that can be downright contradictory.

The latest piece of evidence came last month from a group of Australian researchers, who argued that evening was the healthiest time to break a sweat, at least for those who are overweight. Their study looked at 30,000 middle-aged people with obesity and found that evening exercisers were 28 percent less likely to die of any cause than those who worked out in the morning or afternoon.

“We were surprised by the gap,” said Angelo Sabag, an exercise physiologist at the University of Sydney who led the study. The team expected to see a benefit from evening workouts, but “we didn’t think the risk reduction would be as pronounced as it was.”

So does that mean that evening swimmers and night runners had the right idea all along?

“It’s not settled,” said Juleen Zierath, a physiologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. “It’s an emerging area of research. We haven’t done all the experiments. We’re learning a lot every month.”

No single study can dictate when you should exercise. For many people, the choice comes down to fitness goals, work schedules and plain old preferences. That said, certain times of day may offer slight advantages, depending on what you hope to achieve.

The case for morning exercise

According to a 2022 study , morning exercise may be especially beneficial for heart health. It may also lead to better sleep .

And when it comes to weight loss, there have been good arguments made for morning workouts. Last year, a study published in the journal Obesity found that people who exercised between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. had a lower body mass index than counterparts who exercised in the afternoon or at night, though it did not track them over time, unlike the Australian study, which followed participants for an average of eight years.

Of course, the biggest argument for morning exercise may be purely practical. “For a lot of people, the morning is more convenient,” said Shawn Youngstedt, an exercise science professor at Arizona State University. Even if rising early to work out can be challenging at first , morning exercise won’t get in the way of Zoom meetings, play dates or your latest Netflix binge.

The case for afternoon exercise

A few small studies suggest that the best workout time, at least for elite athletes, might be the least convenient for many of us.

Body temperature, which is lower in the morning but peaks in late afternoon, plays a role in athletic performance. Several recent small studies with competitive athletes suggest that lower body temperature reduces performance (though warm-ups exercises help counter that) and afternoon workouts help them play better and sleep longer .

If you have the luxury of ample time, one small New Zealand study found that it can help to nap first. As far as the rest of us are concerned, a Chinese study of 92,000 people found that the best time to exercise for your heart was between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.

“The main difference is our population,” Dr. Sabag said. While his study was restricted to obese people, the Chinese study was not. “Individuals with obesity may be more sensitive to the time-of-day effects of exercise,” he said.

The case for evening exercise

This latest study may not settle the debate, but it certainly suggests that those struggling with obesity might benefit from a later workout.

Exercise makes insulin more effective at lowering blood sugar levels, which in turn fends off weight gain and Type 2 diabetes, a common and devastating consequence of obesity.

“In the evening, you are most insulin resistant,” Dr. Sabag said. “So if you can compensate for that natural change in insulin sensitivity by doing exercise,” he explained, you can lower your blood glucose levels, and thus help keep diabetes and cardiovascular disease at bay.

One persistent concern about evening exercise is that vigorous activity can disturb sleep. However, some experts have argued that these concerns have been overstated.

The case that it may not matter

While many of these studies are fascinating, none of them is definitive. For one thing, most are simply showing a correlation between exercise times and health benefits, not identifying them as the cause.

“The definitive study would be to actually randomize people to different times,” Dr. Youngstedt said, which would be phenomenally expensive and difficult for academics.

One thing public health experts do agree on is that most Americans are far too sedentary. And that any movement is good movement.

“Whenever you can exercise,” Dr. Sabag urged. “That is the answer.”

In a recent edition of his newsletter that discussed the Australian study, Arnold Schwarzenegger — bodybuilder, actor, former governor — seemed to agree. He cited a 2023 study suggesting that there really isn’t any difference in outcomes based on which time of day you exercise. In which case, it’s all about what works best for you.

“I will continue to train in the morning,” the former Mr. Universe wrote. “It’s automatic for me.”

Alexander Nazaryan is a science and culture writer who prefers to run in the early evening.

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