Kenya has been hit with a whiplash of extreme weather and government help for recovery has eluded many at the bottom level of the income stream.
Residents watch as excavators and bulldozers bring down homes in the Mathare area of Nairobi, 8 May 2024. The Kenyan government ordered evacuations and the demolition of structures and buildings that had been built illegally within 30 meters of river banks. But many of those affected say they are being carried out in a chaotic and inhumane way. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
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On the night of 24 April 2024, Doreen Achieng and her neighbours woke to water rising rapidly through their homes in Nairobi. “Everything else — the food, our clothes, my small business — was gone in minutes,” Achieng said.
Many families spent the night stranded on rooftops or wading through waist-high water, waiting for help that was slow to arrive. At least 15 of Achieng’s neighbours died that night. Thousands more sought refuge in overcrowded schools and churches, struggling with hunger and disease.
“We were literally fighting for food,” said Edward Okoth, who lost his home and found only temporary refuge in a crowded shelter.
Floods are the most frequent type of natural disaster around the globe, according to the World Health Organization, causing more than $40 billion in damage and affecting more people in more countries than any other environmental event.
For the people in Nairobi, last year’s flood was a cruel twist of fate: After years of desperate prayers for rain to break Kenya’s worst drought in four decades, the long-awaited downpours arrived and brought catastrophe.
Answered prayers
On 14 February 2023, President William Ruto had led the country in its first-ever National Prayer Day for rain at Nyayo National Stadium, celebrating the hope that “God will send us rain” and promising that “Kenya will have food.”
When the rains finally came, Ruto and senior officials publicly celebrated them as a divine answer to those prayers.
But the long-awaited rains, for families like Achieng’s, have become a recurring nightmare. For the city’s poorest. Rain brought not relief but hunger, displacement and loss. It was an experience heartbreakingly familiar on the city’s margins, where every rainy season brings anxiety and disaster.
For decades, Nairobi’s slums, or informal settlements — Mathare, Kibera, Mukuru and Korogocho — have housed more than 60 % of the city’s population. Homes in these areas are often crowded along flood-prone riverbanks and wetlands, balancing daily survival with constant disaster threats.
Settlements are densely packed with makeshift homes of corrugated iron and salvaged materials lining narrow alleys and riverbanks. Most lack formal land tenure and adequate drainage. Residents rely on open ditches and shallow trenches to channel rainwater and waste, often blocked by garbage. This often leads to flooding even after moderate rainfall.
Weather whiplash
With no formal sewage system, stagnant water is common, increasing the risk of waterborne disease.
“We live close to the river because it’s the only place we can afford,” says Achieng. “But every year, when the rains come, we worry.”
Kenya’s drought crisis in early 2023 prompted President Ruto’s national prayers. And when rains returned, the government’s tone was celebratory, overlooking mounting risks flagged by meteorologists. The Kenya Meteorological Department and international agencies issued multiple heavy rainfall advisories in early 2024, explicitly naming Nairobi’s low-lying areas as high-risk.
Senior government officials, including the president, publicly downplayed these warnings, emphasizing answered prayers. Only after weeks of flooding and dozens of deaths did authorities form a multi-agency response team and pledge emergency funds.
Scientists and communities have long understood the abrupt shift from drought to deluge as “climate whiplash,” described as rapid swings between weather extremes, which are becoming more frequent as the planet warms. Dry soil, compacted from drought, cannot absorb water efficiently. Instead, heavy rains trigger flash floods, overwhelming drainage systems.
Consequently, post-drought rains, while replenishing water sources and crops, heighten flood risks, especially in densely populated informal settlements with poor drainage and minimal resources.
Relocation and resettlement
Scientists warn climate whiplash events will grow more common and severe as global warming continues.
There have been 13 major floods in Nairobi’s informal settlements since 1961, the most recent in 2024. Despite these patterns, successive administrations tend not to act decisively, often describing predictable floods as unforeseen.
In the aftermath of the 2024 floods, the government ordered residents near rivers and flood-prone areas to relocate and gave as little as 48 hours notice before bulldozers demolished homes. Many residents were forcibly removed before deadlines expired, losing possessions.
The government promised 10,000 Kenya shillings (about US$74) to assist resettlement, but most residents reported inadequate or no support. Many became homeless, forced into displacement camps, churches or with relatives.
According to a survey sponsored by the Kenya Human Rights Commission, thousands of public toilets and sewer lines were destroyed, worsening public health crises. The report was blunt: the government’s disaster response was inadequate.
“There was a glaring absence of a well-structured disaster response and coordination framework,” leaving local leaders to make it up as they go. The report added that “ad-hoc responses based on trial and error had proven insufficient in addressing these disasters.”
Inequity in relief
Residents reported that only the homes and businesses of low-income residents were demolished, while nearby, those owned by the affluent nearby remained untouched.
The government argued demolitions prevented further deaths, but some critics noted that the absence of resettlement plans intensified suffering and injustice.
Schools and health clinics, already stretched thin, were flooded or repurposed as emergency shelters. Children missed weeks of classes, with many informal schools shutting down entirely. Health centres struggled with waterborne disease outbreaks; mothers and children waited hours for basic care.
President Ruto visited flood-hit areas, pledging 10,000 Kenyan shillings (US$77) per displaced household and 1 billion Kenyan shillings (about US$7.4 million) to rebuild schools. He announced plans for 20,000 affordable homes to move residents out of flood-prone zones, ordered evacuations near dams and urged residents downstream along the Tana River to higher ground.
Yet many residents report the promised funds never arrived. Local NGOs raised concerns about response adequacy and transparency.
“There is supposed to be a budgetary allocation and contingency plans, such as emergency shelters,” said Easter Okech, executive director of the Kenya Female Advisory Organization. “But instead they are constantly caught off-guard,”
Inadequate preparation
Politico reported that Environment Cabinet Secretary Soipan Tuya said he didn’t believe anyone could have been prepared for the weather extremes and that some parts of this country had never seen floods before. Yet, the Kenya Meteorological Department had issued multiple warnings months in advance.
Despite its own agencies’ warning, officials publicly downplayed risk, instead celebrating rains as answered prayers. But while affluent neighbourhoods such as Kilimani and Kileleshwa were inconvenienced but protected, slum residents were left to fend for themselves.
“Imagine if you had thousands of people becoming homeless overnight in Kilimani or Kileleshwa,” said Okoth, a Mathare resident, referring to the wealthy neighbourhoods. “The government would respond immediately. But because we are poor people in the slums, they have left us all here to die.”
Over the last five years, Kenya has dramatically increased infrastructure budgets. Nairobi saw 66 km of new roads completed in 2023-24 at a cost of 20.8 billion Kenyan shillings (about US$154 million).
Yet, drainage and sanitation upgrades in informal settlements remain sporadic, underfunded and largely donor-dependent.
Self-reliance
Historical neglect of these areas had created a situation that even a US$150 million investment by the World Bank’s Kenya Informal Settlements Improvement Project Phase 2, which specifically made investments into infrastructure within informal settlements in Kenya, was not enough to prevent large-scale destruction.
After the floods, Nairobi’s informal settlement residents, having nowhere else to turn, relied on themselves. Communities organized clean-up efforts, makeshift drainage channels and mutual aid. NGOs provided limited support, but recovery was largely resident-driven, knowing government responses are typically delayed or insufficient.
In total, the March–May 2024 floods killed 294 people nationwide, displaced more than 55,000 households and forced 260,000 Kenyans from their homes. Nearly 27% of Nairobi is flood-prone particularly in the poorer neighborhoods.
Mary Njeri Mwangi, a Mathare activist, noted that Kenya has had independence for 60 years
“And we still have the majority of this city living in abject poverty, without basic services and without decent housing,” she said. “Now, the waters are also killing them.”
Three questions to consider:
1. What was on way the Kenyan government responded to the floods of 2024?
2. In what ways were rich areas and poor areas treated differently in Kenya’s response to flood damage?
3. Do you think people should be able to live in flood-prone areas? Why?
Frank Burkybile is a freelance journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya, who covers human rights, international development and humanitarian affairs. Prior to journalism, Frank served as a global health diplomat for the U.S. government, where he spent his career partnering with UN organizations, donors, foundations and government ministries to build and manage paradigm-shifting HIV/AIDS and malaria programs worldwide. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana Fellowship in Journalism & Health Impact.