Thousands of families living on the edges of Nairobi City’s riparian zones have always been at risk whenever there are heavy rains are reported, for many years now.
The meteorologists have already issued an alert about a protracted El Niño phase extending from October to February, with the Nairobi County Government seeking to change this trajectory.
Appearing before the Senate County Public Investments and Special Funds Committee, Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja laid out an aggressive, multi-agency blueprint designed to shield the capital’s five million residents from the impending floods.
“We are committed to ensuring that there are no more lives lost in the city as we get into the El Nino phase; that is why we are putting every measure in place to ensure that city residents are not negatively affected,” said Sakaja.
He told the Committee chaired by Taita Taveta Senator Johnes Mwaruma that the County Green Army teams have been deployed across all city sub-counties with their assignment being unclogging thousands of kilometres of drainage systems that have been choked by silt and plastic waste.
Sakaja told Senators that from the expansive stretches of Mombasa Road to the tightly packed alleys of Mathare and Mukuru, these workers are clearing the bottlenecks that historically turn brief storms into catastrophic flash floods leading to the loss of lives and property.
Key road agencies, including the Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA), the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA), and the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA)—have been engaged to coordinate their engineering works with the county’s disaster teams.
“We lost several lives early this year when there were heavy rains. Luckily, the heavy rains will come in when schools are closed, which will make it easier because that is normally the biggest challenge we have been having over the years,” said Sakaja.
Previously, drainage maintenance has been reactive, often happening only after vehicles were submerged and businesses ruined; however, this time round the heavy machinery digging out trenches along major transit corridors signals a shift toward proactive survival.
Sakaja said that the County having recognised that engineering alone cannot completely tame El Niño, the county has established a centralised emergency response centre, with the facility serving as the brain of Nairobi’s disaster management during the rainy season.
The Governor told Senators that City Hall has partnered with the Kenya Red Cross to map out and establish rescue centres across the city and operate dedicated hotlines for citizens to report rising water levels or structural collapses in real-time.
“These designated hubs are stocked and ready to provide immediate shelter, clean water and medical care in the event of forced mass evacuations. A significant portion of Nairobi’s population remains precariously settled on riparian land—natural floodplains that become violent torrents during El Niño,” said Sakaja.
Sakaja confirmed that many families have already heeded warnings and voluntarily relocated to safer grounds, with some with a stubborn vulnerability remaining, stating that his administration has issued a stern but empathetic appeal to those still lingering on the riverbanks to move before rains intensify and choices are stripped away.
Nairobi’s relationship with rain has always been a paradox of infrastructural neglect and rapid, uncontrolled urbanisation, with concrete surfaces having replaced open ground, leaving rainwater with nowhere to go but into people's homes.
“By introducing a synchronised, multi-agency command structure, my administration is trying to break a multi-decade cycle of bureaucratic finger-pointing that typically occurs when the city floods are experienced,” said Sakaja.
The true test of Sakaja’s administration preparedness plan on El Nino will not be measured in the depth of the trenches dug or the number of meetings held in Senate corridors but on the safety of children walking home from school in Eastlands during a November downpour.
Sakaja administration preparedness will be tested by whether the informal businesses that drive Nairobi's economy can survive the night without losing their entire inventory to the mud after heavy rains.
