Recently, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government started slum upgrading in Nairobi slums. The slum dwellers had faced years of neglect from previous governments. Earlier slum upgrading programs did not succeed perhaps because the government had used wrong strategies. For instance, In Kibera slums, the slum upgrading was reduced to housing problems. Slums upgrading for sure is more than just upgrading the housing. Involving the people in the slums has been a better strategy rather than imposing development programs on the dwellers.
Critically looking at this slums upgrading program, politics have come to play. Kibera slums is located in Kibra Constituency of Nairobi County. The Governor of Nairobi is from the opposition party CORD. For many years, Hon. Raila Odinga (Opposition Leader) was the Member of Parliament (MP) of the area. He rose to the level of Prime Minister (second highest office holder after the president) in 2008 after a power sharing agreement following the disputed election the previous year. Kibera has been a turf for the opposition party CORD (Coalition for Reforms and Democracy), for decades.

Mathare Constituency where Mathare slums is located, is another area the current government has rolled out slum upgrading program. Mathare Constituency is one of largest constituency in Nairobi County with close to 200,000 voters. During a recent by-election in the area, CORD (the opposition party), garnered a huge number of votes beating the government party Jubilee.
While the political parties prepare for the next general elections, they are in a rush to consolidate their votes and change voting patterns in areas where they consider their presence as weak. One of the ways the Jubilee government is doing this is to take developmental programs to areas where they have a weak voting pattern. The slum upgrading programs in Mathare and Kibera is just one of the strategies.

In Kibera, where the slum upgrading kicked off earlier, various activities have taken place. The major ones include cleaning up the environment, constructing new sewerage systems, building more toilet facilities, road improvement and lighting up the areas among others. With the help of National Youth Service (NYS) and the local youth groups, this is expected to be the same in Mathare.

The vigor with which the government is carrying out these slum upgrading programs is quite interesting. The government is out there to prove to the residents that it can do a lot within a short period of time. This could also be to make a point to the CORD leader, Raila Odinga that he could have done something similar for his former constituents and when he was the country’s Prime Minister. The slum clean-up is expected to change the voting patterns in such areas. The government is therefore endearing itself to these slum dwellers. The President has led other clean up exercises in Huruma and Muthurwa Market in Nairobi County. It will be interesting to find out if indeed there will be a significant change in voting patterns in 2017 general elections in Kenya.

DirtPol project is about the relationship between politics and dirt. The slum upgrading in Nairobi, which is basically about cleaning the environment, is being used by politicians to change voting patterns. Although the slum dwellers actually benefit from such programs, the hidden motive is to change the voting patterns. Removal of dirt (cleaning) is being used as a driver for political agenda.