Urban Poverty: An Advocacy Issue

Prepared by MD/023/08 Course Code MDS 509 Course Name Advocacy and Networking Advocacy Issue HIGH LEVELS OF URBAN POVERTY AS A RESULT OF UNPLANNED SLUMS SQUATTER SETTLEMENTS NAIROBI NOVEMBER 2009 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Kenya has set itself a target of eradicating poverty by 2015.In Vision 2030 it outlines its roadmap to economic lift off as a newly industrialised country. Like many African countries, the burden of poverty has been on steep decline exacerbated by ambivalent policies, which rather than spur economic policies have fostered deprivation. According to UN Development Programme, 70 of people who lie in poverty are women and children (Kwayera, Sunday Standard 25/10/09, pg 17). Kenya has made strides on paper to reducing at least alleviating urban poverty although the effect is yet or slowly being felt. Such responses include Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper and PRSP Action Plan, National Poverty Reduction Plan 1999-2015 and in this context the Nairobi District Development Plan. This paper highlights some of the contributive factors to urban poverty in the context of mushrooming of slums and squatter settlements as poor governance, greed, irresponsibility, and lack of accounatabiliy, illiteracy, laziness and the high rate of rural to urban migration. Real lasting urban poverty alleviation in