Mapping and mobilization for public transport advocacy in African cities

Quick overview of why paratransit mapping/data collection matters Example of mapping effort (Digital Matatus in Nairobi) Brief look at the spread of mapping in African cities and implications Challenges/opportunities moving forwar

The electric vehicle transition: a blessing or a curse for improving extractive industries and mineral supply chains?

Concern is growing that new mineral demand pressures associated with transport electrification will exacerbate existing supply chain sustainability and resiliency risks and escalate global environmental injustices. In response, private and public actors in the extractive sector have signaled that they are retooling mineral production, sourcing and stewardship governance systems, practices, and processes to meet the sustainability demands of the electric vehicle (EV) transition. Currently, however, the specific components of many of these initiatives remain less well known, with little scholarly review of their potential to address the longstanding systemic deficiencies in mineral supply chains. Instead, research and policy conversations are oriented largely towards what can be described as a demand-reduction approach, focused on minimizing the intensity of metal mining as a strategy for ensuring the sustainability imperatives of the transition. This Perspective argues that 1) the EV transition offers a critical impetus for tackling head-on longstanding systemic deficiencies in responsible global mineral production, sourcing, and stewardship 2) addressing the deficiencies will also better position mineral demand-reduction measures to yield their intended sustainability outcomes and 3) historically, new initiatives introduced to reform the extractive sector rarely address the root problems that first gave impetus to the initiatives. Accordingly, questions about retooling existing mineral procurement governance systems, practices and processes should be an integral part of EV transition research. It recommends moving research, policy, action, and investment towards prioritizing addressing persisting systemic deficiencies in global mineral supply chains as part of strategies for ensuring ethical transport decarbonization

Accessibility across transport modes and residential developments in Nairobi

A key goal of urban transportation planning is to provide people with access to a greater number of opportunities for interaction with people and places. Measures of accessibility are gaining attention globally for use in planning, yet few studies measure accessibility in cities in low-income countries, and even fewer incorporate semi-formal bus systems, also called paratransit. Drawing on rich datasets available for Nairobi, Kenya this analysis quantifies place-based accessibility for walking, paratransit, and driving using three different measures: a mobility measure quantifying how many other locations in Nairobi can be reached in 60 min, a contour measure quantifying the number of health facilities that can be reached in 60 min, and a gravity measure quantifying the number of health facilities weighted by a time-decay function. Health facilities are used because they are an essential service that people need physical access to and as a representation of the spatial distribution of activities more broadly. The findings show that place-based accessibility is highest for driving, then paratransit, then walking, and that there are high levels of access to health facilities near the Central Business District (CBD) for all modes. Additionally, paratransit accessibility is comparatively better in the contour and gravity measures, which may mean that paratransit is efficiently providing access based on the spatial distribution of services. The contour measure results are also compared across different residential levels, which are grouped based on neighborhood characteristics and ordered by income. Counterintuitively, the wealthiest areas have very low levels of place-based accessibility for all modes, while poor areas have comparatively better walking access to health facilities. Interestingly, the medium low residential level, characterized in part by tenement apartment buildings, has significantly higher accessibility than other residential types. One way to reduce inequality in access across income groups is to increase spatial accessibility for the modes used by low- and middle-income households, for example with policies that prioritize public transport and non-motorized travel, integrate paratransit with land use development, and provide safe, efficient, and affordable options

Land politics under Kenya's new constitution: counties, devolution, and the National Land Commission

Kenya's new constitution, inaugurated in August 2010, altered the institutional structure of the state in complex ways. The general motivation behind reform was to enhance the political representation of ordinary citizens in general and that of marginalized ethno-regional groups in particular, and to devolve control over resources to the county level. In the land domain, reform objectives were as explicit and hard-hitting as they were anywhere else. Reform of land law and land administration explicitly aimed at putting an end to the bad old days of overcentralization of power in the hands of an executive branch considered by many to be corrupt, manipulative, and self-serving. Kenya's 2010 Constitution and the 2012 Land Acts produced three types of institutional restructuring that were designed to touch directly on land rights and land administration: devolution to 47 new county governments would be more accountable and responsive to local interests, and directly responsible for administration of community (ex-Trust) land; separation of powers at the pinnacle of the national political system to extinguish the president's arbitrary authority to allocate land while placing oversight and regulatory authority in the hands of a non-partisan, transparent, and law-governed National Land Commission (NLC); and deconcentration of the NLC to give this nonpartisan, independent agency a strong watchdog, advocacy, and decision-making role at the local (ie., county) level. This research asks how these significant reforms are changing land control and governance in rural Kenya. The question is of acute importance for the economic and political future of both Kenya and East Africa as a region. In 2005, approximately 70% of all Kenyans lived in the rural areas, and 60% of all employment is in agriculture (WB 2009: 2, 6 [2005 data]). Today, an estimated 65% live in the rural areas, and agriculture accounts for 30% of GDP. Land pressure is acute for smallholders and pastoralists, due to a vector of forces that includes a long history land grabbing on the part of the rich and powerful, starting with colonial expropriations in the early 20th century and continuing under successive postcolonial regimes, demographic pressure on the land, rising land values, forest destruction and conservation, wildlife conservation efforts, and the slow growth of non-farm rural livelihoods and jobs. Since the 1980s, the process of land accumulation on the part of the ruling elite has been matched by progressive immiseration of the ordinary farmers, pastoralists, the rural landless, and the urban poor. There is much in Kenya's new constitution and the Land Acts that aimed to have a direct impact on the land interests of ordinary citizens. Constitutional reforms gave devolved county governments and the NLC new powers over untitled land (over 60% of all land in Kenya), land held under title by family farmers, public land in rural areas, and pastoralists' land, as well as powers aimed to curb rural "land grabbing" and even recover land grabbed in the past. The Constitution and the Land Acts thus set the stage for a contentious politics of institution-building and reform that would be shaped by conflicts of interest and powerstruggles. Struggles unleashed in the implementation of these progressive reforms could answer questions -- and raise new ones -- about the politics of devolution, and land politics, in Kenya. The study adopts a subnational perspective, leveraging in-county variation in an attempt to understand how struggles around the supposedly non-partisan powers of the NLC and the CLMBs would be shaped by the partisan, center-periphery, and ethnic factors that previous scholars have identified as salient in understanding the politics of devolution in Kenya. Focusing on eight counties that capture much of the partisan, ethno-regional, and economic diversity of Kenya's new counties, we sought to probe the explanatory power of existing arguments (theories) of the politics of devolution. The passing of key implementing legislation was stalled, the NLC and the executive branch were locked in bitter turf-wars, the NLC was under court challenge, and powerful groups had introduced new legislation to undo key provisions of the new land dispensation. The county-level case studies show how the old and new land powers of government were being used in a context of open conflict over both institutional structure and process. Part I reviews existing scholarly work on devolution in Kenya to extract four distinct (but notmutually exclusive) hypotheses about how devolution could transform the nexus between land and politics. Part II shows that the NLC 's powers have been reduced by bureaucratic obstructionism and executive branch claw-back. In Part III, the county cases show that the history of land use/politics/tenure in each county goes far in determining the salience of land issues in defining political alliances/cleavages between the county government, the national government, and the NLC. The case studies show that the use of the NLC's powers at the county level have been largely subordinated to larger political logics. Part IV returns to the four hypotheses outlined in the first part of the paper. The conclusion summarizes and draws implications for devolution

Land law reform in Kenya: devolution, veto players, and the limits of an institutional fix

Much of the promise of the good governance agenda in African countries since the 1990s rested on reforms aimed at 'getting the institutions right', sometimes by creating regulatory agencies that would be above the fray of partisan politics. Such 'institutional fix' strategies are often frustrated because the new institutions themselves are embedded in existing state structures and power relations. The article argues that implementing Kenya's land law reforms in the 2012-2016 period illustrates this dynamic. In Kenya, democratic structures and the 2010 constitutional devolution of power to county governments created a complex institutional playing field, the contours of which shaped the course of reform. Diverse actors in both administrative and representative institutions of the state, at both the national and county levels, were empowered as 'veto players' whose consent and cooperation was required to realize the reform mandate. An analysis of land administration reform in eight Kenyan counties shows how veto players were able to slow or curtail the implementation of the new land laws. Theories of African politics that focus on informal power networks and state incapacity may miss the extent to which formal state structures and the actors empowered within them can shape the course of reform, either by thwarting the reformist thrust of new laws or by trying to harness their reformist potential

Spatial variation of fine particulate matter levels in Nairobi before and during the COVID-19 curfew: implications for environmental justice

Abstract: The temporary decrease of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations in many parts of the world due to the COVID-19 lockdown spurred discussions on urban air pollution and health. However there has been little focus on sub-Saharan Africa, as few African cities have air quality monitors and if they do, these data are often not publicly available. Spatial differentials of changes in PM2.5 concentrations as a result of COVID also remain largely unstudied. To address this gap, we use a serendipitous mobile air quality monitoring deployment of eight Sensirion SPS 30 sensors on motorbikes in the city of Nairobi starting on 16 March 2020, before a COVID-19 curfew was imposed on 25 March and continuing until 5 May 2020. We developed a random-forest model to estimate PM2.5 surfaces for the entire city of Nairobi before and during the COVID-19 curfew. The highest PM2.5 concentrations during both periods were observed in the poor neighborhoods of Kariobangi, Mathare, Umoja, and Dandora, located to the east of the city center. Changes in PM2.5 were heterogeneous over space. PM2.5 concentrations increased during the curfew in rapidly urbanizing, the lower-middle-class neighborhoods of Kahawa, Kasarani, and Ruaraka, likely because residents switched from LPG to biomass fuels due to loss of income. Our results indicate that COVID-19 and policies to address it may have exacerbated existing air pollution inequalities in the city of Nairobi. The quantitative results are preliminary, due to sampling limitations and measurement uncertainties, as the available data came exclusively from low-cost sensors. This research serves to highlight that spatial data that is essential for understanding structural inequalities reflected in uneven air pollution burdens and differential impacts of events like the COVID pandemic. With the help of carefully deployed low-cost sensors with improved spatial sampling and at least one reference-quality monitor for calibration, we can collect data that is critical for developing targeted interventions that address environmental injustice in the African context

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies from the CHARGE consortium identifies common variants associated with carotid intima media thickness and plaque

Carotid intima media thickness (cIMT) and plaque determined by ultrasonography are established measures of subclinical atherosclerosis that each predicts future cardiovascular disease events. We conducted a meta-analysis of genome-wide association data in 31,211 participants of European ancestry from nine large studies in the setting of the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium. We then sought additional evidence to support our findings among 11,273 individuals using data from seven additional studies. In the combined meta-analysis, we identified three genomic regions associated with common carotid intima media thickness and two different regions associated with the presence of carotid plaque (P < 5 × 10 -8). The associated SNPs mapped in or near genes related to cellular signaling, lipid metabolism and blood pressure homeostasis, and two of the regions were associated with coronary artery disease (P < 0.006) in the Coronary Artery Disease Genome-Wide Replication and Meta-Analysis (CARDIoGRAM) consortium. Our findings may provide new insight into pathways leading to subclinical atherosclerosis and subsequent cardiovascular events