From drugs to insecurity: How Nairobi's Eastleigh is being strangled

Eastleigh’s growth is being tested by a growing battle against drugs and insecurity. [Courtesy]

Until the early 1990s, before the fall of President Said Barre of Somalia, Eastleigh was just an ordinary post-colonial settlement boasting of tenement blocks preferred by largely members of the Kikuyu and Swahili communities.

The influx of the two communities had an opposite effect – the exodus of Asians and African elites who lived there during the pre-independence period, when the architecture of the place was characterised by single-story bungalows and detached family houses.