Participatory mapping and food‐centred justice in informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya

Food vendors are pivotal in the local food system of most low‐income informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya, despite being seen as an obstruction and as agents of disease and filth by city authorities. This paper explores the geography of these foodscapes – defined as public sites of food production and consumption – in selected low‐income settlements in Nairobi, focusing on the interaction of food vendors with their surrounding environment and infrastructure services. The research uses participatory geographic information system tools, including food mapping with mobile apps and high‐resolution community aerial views with balloon mapping, to capture and contextualise local knowledge. The community mappers collected data on 660 vendors from 18 villages in Kibera, Mathare, and Mukuru, and situated them on multi‐layered synoptic geographic overviews for each settlement. The resulting data on hazardous areas in relation to food spaces and infrastructure provision allowed local communities to prioritise areas for regular clean‐up activities and assisted advocacy to improve these places in cooperation with local authorities. These multiple visual representations of foodscapes make local food vendors, and the risks they face, visible for the first time. Reframing their “right to safe food and environment” from a social and environmental justice perspective allows local communities to put their experiences, knowledge, and challenges faced at the forefront of urban development planning, policy, and practice

Youth and Nigeria’s Internal Security Management

One of the major challenges confronting Nigeria is insecurity which hinders national development. The problem of insecurity includes menace of ethnic militias across the country, insurgency in the north, militancy in the Niger Delta, kidnapping, armed robbery and cultism all over the country. The government and other partners recognise that national security is a precondition for maintaining the survival, growth and development of a State. It is also well known that the army of unemployed and idle youth population of the country is the major group perpetrating these security problems across the country. Given the realisation of the government that the problem of insecurity needs to be tackled as panacea to the socio-economic development of the country, several solutions have been applied. The option of youth empowerment is believed to possess the capacity of not only keeping the youth busy but putting food on their table and thereby making incentive to engage in actions that promote insecurity unattractive. The youth empowerment programmes including the Amnesty Programme, YouWin and N-Power, among others, were some of the programmes implemented. What is the impact of these programmes as a strategy of managing insecurity in the country? To what extent are these programmes impacting on the socio-political and economic development of the country? What are the challenges in the implementation of these programmes? This chapter attempts to provide answers to these questions. The data used in this chapter were collected largely from documentary materials and analysed using descriptive analysis