NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

By Sara Jerving

Early Friday morning, people in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi’s informal settlement Kibera began queuing for a food distribution. Residents said they had been waiting for it for over a week — the community elders had gathered their names, ID, and telephone numbers, initially promising a door-to-door delivery. The food was intended as a stopgap measure to help the many daily wage laborers living in the settlement that have been struggling as their work dried up in response to efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19.

But instead, the food was allocated in person on Friday. It wasn’t until late afternoon that the food finally arrived. As the national curfew approached, which prohibits the movement of people after 7 p.m. in efforts to stop the spread of the virus, it became clear that not everyone would be going home with food.

Photo courtesy of Internews Europe.