Kenya blog: A trip to Kibera

WDM campaigners James O’Nions and Caroline Griffin are in Kenya to research the effects of food price rises on ordinary Kenyans. James reports on their first visit to Kibera, the huge slum on the outskirts of Nairobi.

Today Caroline and I visited a part of Kibera. We were there to meet a group of women from Kibera Women for Peace and Fairness. The group, which comprises hundreds of women, was formed during Kenya’s post-election violence in 2007, which had its epicentre in Kibera. Women and children were being caught up in the violence, including the police response, and being hit by teargas and worse.

Kibera Women for Peace and Fairness, Kibera

When the food crisis hit in 2008, the women mobilised again. The daily wage that one person in Kibera is likely to be able to earn is about 50-150 Kenyan Shillings (around 40 pence). Before the price rises, a 2kg bag of maize meal, or unga, the basic staple, was around 50 Shillings. In order to make it into a meal for a family, they also need paraffin, cooking oil, salt, and ideally some vegetables as well. Yet when the price of maize on world markets shot up, maize meal in Kenya reached as high as 120 Shillings. Levels of hunger in Kibera, quite obviously, reached crisis proportions.

So the women organised a peaceful march to demand their right to affordable food. Despite being attacked by police, the march formed the basis of a campaign which forced the government introduce a subsidy to bring the price of maize down again. The women’s campaign is continuing, even if the price of maize meal has stabilised for now. They want their original demand, that a 2kg bag of maize meal should be 30 Shillings, to be met, and also for the government to take action to raise the wage level in Kibera.

But with the price of their basic staple still subject to the price of food commodities on world markets, the women we met, and all the hundreds of thousands of residents of Kibera, remain in a very precarious position. Its for them and many like them around the world that WDM is campaigning to limit food speculation, and put the right to food before the profits of multinational investment banks.