JULIA HOPE: You are an activist, and organiser, whose work spans planning, urban policy, and gender rights. Let’s start there.

REGINA OPONDO: I don’t think it is possible to separate these things because at the heart of everything, even when the context or challenge at any given point might be different, you’re talking about people, and often, it’s the same people. I have always been interested in joining the dots across all the things I do. Coming into the urban space and specifically joining Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), I was very clear I wanted to be able to continue some of my activism in other spaces, while bringing it into the organisation’s work. I’m lucky that I’m still able to engage in work around election integrity, anti-torture, and addressing current and historical injustices.

JH: You do a lot of work on gender issues. What are the specific challenges that women face in Nairobi—where
you are, and more broadly, in all the various spaces and places you work in. How does this intersect with your urban activism and organising?

RO: The challenges women face are everywhere. We live in a patriarchal system. Women face challenges around free movement and having a voice, which affects our ability to lead in most spaces that are male-dominated.

As KDI, we’re challenging gender roles by creating spaces for women to work in construction, which has always been a male-dominated industry. We are working to assist women to confidently play a role as decision-makers in matters concerning their neighbourhoods, creating and promoting nature-based solutions, and planning. It has been the tradition that a lot of planning decisions are made without their full participation, and we are working with many women to address these sorts of challenges. Similar challenges are experienced across the board in our society, but more and more opportunities are opening up for women.

[And that] space is opening up because of the work that has been done by women and other feminists before us—and I say “feminists” deliberately, because they are not always women. So, we are working and growing out of the spaces created by others in the past. I see our responsibility as one to keep pushing and widening those spaces, and making sure they are available for future generations of women, girls, and other marginalised groups.

Dismantling the patriarchy is a lifelong mission. It’s ever-present. It’s in our homes, thrives across our communities, and is embedded in a lot of the systems we operate in.

I can give you examples of KDI’s policies to address these issues. It starts at the Kenyan Constitution, which clearly specifies that in anything, it’s not legal to have one gender take up more than two-thirds of jobs, positions, whatever. So, that gives us solid ground to anchor ourselves on. As an organisation, we aim for a 50/50 split. So, in all our work—from convenings, how our office and our staffing is structured, the teams that we have in the office, and communities we engage, in our co-design workshops, co-construction, in research—the target is that split.

Another thing worth mentioning here is that over the years, we have been very deliberate about applying a human rights-based approach in all our projects, programmes, and work. We do not think about women as a homogenous block, and carefully consider their diversity—young girls, youth, women of all ages, disabilities, etc. Unfortunately, we often find that the majority of the women are in the unskilled labour category in industries like construction, for example, so we try to ensure that the women we work with can advance to becoming part of the skilled labour force. Sometimes that means starting from scratch, so in the past, we invested in a Carpentry Academy, again working on the 50/50 principle, and that contributed towards having a pool of skilled female carpenters.

We also run a Sustainable Design Academy, which is growing a cohort of women working with their male peers in sustainable design at community level with the competencies to understand things like nature-based solutions, implementing them, and maintenance of public spaces.

These are very male-dominated spaces, and women in these roles are unusual. So, while attitudes are starting to change, there are moments when we have experienced intense pushback. KDI’s construction manager is female, and there are always women working alongside men on our sites. This might not shock people in the same way it would have in the past, but where pushback happens, we have a zero-tolerance policy on discrimination. So, pushback is there, but we’re also pushing back against the pushback. We are not alone in this. Other organisations are working along similar principles in multiple sectors.

Initiative, specifically to facilitate having more women working in the transport sector—in the matatu industry, public transport, driving trailers, that sort of thing. Flone is one of many.

In many communities, citizens are organising themselves on these issues, and professionals like me have to take note and think about how we can expand this conversation, which is core to how we rethink our city.

JH: How has the government responded to these initiatives?

RO: There are multiple, different levels to that. On one level, we have tokenistic, kneejerk responses on certain issues,
and a failure to really grasp what is required of them. A good example of this: we have had a massive wave of gender-based violence in Kenya in the last few years, and the President established a 34-member taskforce to “look into the matter”. In the public interview process, it became very clear that one of the women shortlisted was just the wrong person to even consider. She made some quite shocking comments in parliament about femicide. Just because someone is female does not mean they make a good advocate for women. That’s one layer. On the other level, the 2010 Constitution has created an infrastructure that enables the government to respond a lot better on these issues. We have oversight offices, the two-thirds gender principle I mentioned earlier, and these are good starting points that give us something to work from.

We have independent offices like the National Gender and Equality Commission, established by an act of parliament in 2011. If it broadens its thinking, it could be an important instrument in ensuring that some of what I’m talking about is embedded in the system. To be fair, we are seeing many government development programmes seriously making attempts to fulfil the two-thirds gender requirement in ways that are not just tokenistic. So it’s not all doom and gloom, but we have to continue drumming, insisting, and pushing, to change and influence the system. Sometimes we have to force it to change.

Another aspect I need to mention is the importance of hope. It’s essential, and is a strong part of what has brought us where we are today. In a lot of my work, hope is what created room for the women who came into the Assembly as nominated members before, and eventually became the elected officials who fought for the legislation I’ve been talking about against Sex and Gender Based Violence, against sexual offences, human trafficking, and so on. Hope is what enabled all these things which, honestly, do not only benefit women but everybody. Gender equality benefits everybody. Young men have also been very good allies in some of those battles. The Human Rights Caucus in parliament consists mostly of younger people— male and female—and the male members have been very strong allies.

JH: Let’s end with hope. How do we rethink and ensure that we are building up cities that work for everyone?

RO: There seems to be this assumption that citizens are generally not engaged, that young people are not engaged. In 2023, I got to a point where I almost threw my hands up in despair that we had been doing all these things for years and years, but still, nothing was as good as we thought it would be by now. I was doing a little bit of work around that year’s elections, in which the largest number of people who did not vote or participate were young people. But, those same young people are out on the streets as we speak. So, something has shifted. They care enough to be out on the streets protesting against national budget measures, and they are well informed. They have taken the time to learn, some are developing apps, bringing their skills to the organising table, and bringing their energy to contest how Nairobi is run, how the city works, and to push for it being more responsive to everyone’s needs—and especially for young people.

That’s why I feel a lot of hope that to truly, truly engage people, we need to go beyond consultation. We need more and better participatory planning, civic education, all those things, and young people are the ones who will and are taking this forward. They are the majority. They are the ones who are going to give us a liveable city, and they will define what “a liveable” city is for themselves and fight for it. For a very long time, we’ve been talking about “liveable” in terms of basics: access to water, shelter, public space, mobility, safety from violence and flooding. But, for these young people, a liveable city is all that and more. It’s one in which you can fully express yourself.

Young people made Nairobi’s city government change its mind about the fees it was levying on anybody who wanted to film in the city centre, because they are on social media—on TikTok—and are making videos all the time. The simple act of making a video was too expensive and they pushed back and forced the county government to remove those fees because they were making it even more difficult for young people to make money. Nowadays, traditional jobs are not the only way to make money. People are making a living on social media.

What I’m saying is, they’re redefining what “liveable” means, what a “just city” means, beyond the basic, outdated,
traditional definitions of the terms. It’s an exciting thing to watch and to be part of. And for me, those are the hopeful signs of change.

Beyond gender, political affiliation, or other factors that separate us, young people are defining new ways to be involved in the governance of the city. We are beyond the type of traditional public participation that takes place in community halls. The new participation is informed, it is digital, it is hybrid, it is in our language. For me, this is an exciting thing.

*Edited for clarity and length