250 shoddy buildings face demolition

Authorities work to prevent another deadly disaster after 51 die in collapse

Kenya's authorities tore down a badly built residential block in a poor Nairobi district on Tuesday, one of more than 250 shoddy buildings that could now face demolition after a six-story structure collapsed this month killing 51 people.

Nearby, residents of another condemned block in Mathare scrambled to wrap up utensils and other items in bed sheets and stuffed plastic bags with clothes as workers ripped out door and window frames to prepare for machinery to destroy the structure.

The Kenyan authorities have identified 258 buildings considered structurally at risk and which could be pulled down, leaving thousands of people to find new homes in a city already struggling to keep pace with its growing population.

"We have tried to find another place to stay but we've not been able to," said Esther Awinja, carrying an infant on her back and hauling her belongings in a sheet out of the entrance where an X sprayed in red paint indicated the block's fate.

"The only option I have now is to live in another home that is cracking and that is likely to put our lives in danger," she said, as workers moved in to pull out rudimentary fittings.

Kenyan authorities are stepping up evictions of poorly built buildings after a six-storey block in Huruma district - which lies next to Mathare - collapsed on April 29 after days of rain.

Officials said it had been condemned before it crumbled and said it was not clear why it had not been pulled down.

Housing shortage

The death toll of 51 people could have been more if some residents had not seen cracks and fled shortly before it fell.

"For all those buildings that will be found to be defective, the owners will be required to demolish them," Land, Housing and Urban Development Minister Jacob Kaimenyi said in a May 5 statement. If owners failed to comply, the government would carry out the demolition and bill them, he added.

Yet knocking down dangerous buildings also adds to the housing shortage in Nairobi, which is estimated to have a population of more than 4 million, almost double 15 years ago.

Keeping pace with housing for a growing population is a challenge afflicting cities across Africa, where millions of people every year are leaving the fields and pouring into cities to find jobs, spawning spontaneous and ill-planned new suburbs.

In Nigeria's sprawling commercial hub, Lagos, a church hostel collapse in 2014 crushed 115 people. A new agency set up to prevent further collapses shows the scale of the problem of bad construction, urging residents not to build on roads, power cables, pipelines and waterways.

In Cairo, builders often pile new floors onto existing structures with little planning or reinforcement of foundations, making collapses a fairly frequent event.

Of the 10 million people added to Africa's urban population each year, about two thirds end up in slums, according to UN Habitat, which held a meeting in March in Nigeria about ways to improve living conditions in Africa's slums.