Nairobi Today

Edited by Hélène Charton-Bigot and Deyssi Rodriguez-Torres. Despite being a large capital city in Africa, Nairobi is an unrecognised entity. For the majority of its inhabitants, the capital of Kenya is a transit point rather than a dwelling place. Since its origins, Nairobi has been a city of migrants, more predisposed to their rural roots than to their current city status. It is a non-conforming town that conceals its urbanity more than it claims it, and whose identity remains evasive. The racial segregation that stratified the colonial city has disappeared but has given way to a form of social segregation. One must seek not a unique identity in Nairobi, but several identities, those of different communities whose dynamics are seen at the village and residential estate level. Nairobi is also contradictory, associated with slums and crime whose growth stigmatises the failure of urban policies. The thirteen contributory articles reveal the city through its cracks and fringes. Internationally distributed by African Books Collective.