Is there hope for a dying river in Nairobi?
As clean water runs short, a fast-growing city struggles to balance industry and conservation.
NAIROBI — Vultures scavenge for dead animals along a river-turned-sewerconduit in Kenya’s capital. Its waters turn from clear to black as it traverses informal settlements and industrial hubs.
The river and its tributaries cross Kibera — known as Africa’s largest slum, with close to 200,000 residents — and other informal settlements around Nairobi. It skirts dozens of factories that manufacture textiles, liquor and building materials. Many have been accused by environmentalists of discharging into the water raw sewage and other pollutants, including oil, plastic and glass.
Now the new national government, installed after the August election, says it’s on a mission to clean up the Nairobi River. One of Africa’s fastest-growing cities, Nairobi is struggling to balance the needs of creating jobs and protecting the environment from pollution.
The government has formed a commission whose mandate is to clean up and restore the river basin. Neither a budget nor a deadline has been announced. The commission has yet to meet.
Experts and locals fear the water is harming plants in farms that feed residents. Some community-based organizations are working to clean the river, but families in the rapidly growing downstream suburb of Athi River say they can no longer rely on the water for basic needs.
Anne Nduta, 25, uses the water to wash her babies’ clothes by hand.
“When it rains, the Athi River water is usually full of garbage, and when it clears a bit, we use it to wash clothes,” said the mother of two. “But as the dry season continues, the water becomes darker in color, and we have to start buying expensive borehole water.”
A 5-gallon jerrycan of borehole water sells for 20 shillings (16 cents), and Nduta would need four to wash her babies’ clothes every three days.
Her problems start upstream, where informal settlements have directed sewer lines straight into the Nairobi River.
Ecologist Stephen Obiero said sewage in a river used to irrigate farmland can cause “contamination of the plant products with bacteria, viruses, protozoa ... if not properly handled by the end users.”
The region is the source of many vegetables sold in Nairobi markets.
Morris Mutunga grows kale, spinach and amaranth on his five-acre farm in the Athi River area but has watched crops like French beans wither when irrigated with water from the river.
“I wish those polluting this river upstream in Nairobi could stop for the sake of food security in our country,” he said.
Upstream, some residents of informal settlements, like 36-year-old Violet Ahuga in Korogocho, cannot afford to pay to use modern toilets, so they defecate in bags and throw them in the river. Toilets in the slum — which has more than 35,000 adults, according to the 2019 national census — are privately run by individuals and organizations.
“My children are too young to go to the bushes alone, so I usually tell them to poop in a bag, and I toss it into the river,” said the mother of four. “I know what I’m doing is pollution, but there’s no other way, because I cannot afford the 850-shilling [$6.82] monthly toilet fee.”
Most informal settlements, which house laborers and their families, are not connected to sewer lines and have open trenches into which residents pour dirty water that flows into the river. But Ahuga also relies on the river’s water for her income: She uses it to wash plastic bags, which she sells to traders who use them to make reusable baskets.
As she splashes the black water on the bags and scrubs them with her feet, she remembers fondly how, as a child, she used to swim in the river.
The National Environment Management Authority, which is responsible for managing the river’s water quality and issuing discharge licenses, has been accused by some members of Kenya’s parliament of laxity that has let industries get away with polluting.
Businesses along the river include paint manufacturers, dairy factories and solar or lead acid battery producers. Some have been closed down in the past for discharging raw sewage into the river.
Heavy metals like lead, barium, iron, aluminum, zinc and copper have been found in high levels at sampling points along the river by research organizations, including the University of Nairobi’s public health and toxicology department.
Alex Okaru, a public health expert at the University of Nairobi, said high levels of heavy metals, particularly lead and barium, can cause health effects such as liver and kidney damage if consumed.
“It is important to take necessary steps to minimize the release of these two metals into the environment,” Okaru said.
In a parliament committee hearing in 2021, NEMA was accused of not taking action against a distillery that, according to residents, was releasing waste in the Athi River area.
In an interview with the Associated Press, NEMA Director David Ongare acknowledged that few entities are being prosecuted but said that’s because the government has changed its approach to encourage collaboration instead of being combative. He said that since the changes were introduced, businesses are coming forward to ask for assistance in complying with the body’s directives.
“The cost of noncompliance is becoming very costly, because if your enterprise is shut down, by the time you come back to production, you’ve lost customers and your market share,” Ongare said.
He asserted that the environmental body has been monitoring companies with past noncompliance issues. The agency also said it acts on all incidents of pollution that are reported by whistleblowers through various platforms.
Locals and community organizations say another approach to cleaning up the river would be to provide modern toilets at little or no cost. The NEMA boss said he hopes the national government’s program to build affordable housing will reduce the number of people living in areas without appropriate sanitation.
In Kibera, a communitybased organization called Mazingira Yetu (Swahili for “Our Environment”) is trying to address the problem by building 19 modern toilet blocks in collaboration with a government agency, Athi Water.
The organization’s cofounder, Sam Dindi, said it also wants to prevent plastic and other waste from being dumped in the river.
“The waste is collected and sorted into plastic waste, which is sold to recyclers or upcycled into baskets, and organic waste, which is transformed into compost manure,” Dindi said.
The manure is sold to people who have gardens, and some is used to grow tree seedlings that the organization sells. Money generated from Mazingira Yetu projects is distributed to the youth who work with the organization.
“The idea of introducing a circular economy has worked here,” Dindi said, referring to the group’s smallscale but successful reuse of waste products. “It just needs to be replicated.”