Nairobi Industrial Area: Materials

Part of a four-part series on Gikomba: Intro Products Tools Materials

Essential to the Industrial Area’s thriving activity, and indeed a critical differentiator from rural jua kali, is an equally thriving materials infrastructure. To sustain the manufacturing of so many diverse products, a separate industry has emerged for raw materials, both recycled and new.

One of the first things you see as you enter the area, a mountain of oil drums left over from local factories. Middlemen regularly deliver waste and scrap, as well as new materials, directly from factories.

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Nairobi Industrial Area: Tools

Part of a four-part series on Gikomba: Intro Products Tools Materials

To build their sometimes intricate products, jua kali use a range of tools, from blunt edges to complex machinery. Many of the tools are impressively manufactured by jua kali themselves. In areas with power, welding equipment and power carpentry tools are hugely important.

What we might think of as esoteric building materials, I-beams are an essential component to the jua kali toolkit, used as an edge for bending.

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Nairobi Industrial Area: Products

Part of a four-part series on Gikomba: Intro Products Tools Materials

The products sold in the Industrial Area seem at first to vary widely. In fact, dramatically so when compared to the rural jua kali, who are perpetually stuck on doors and windows. Eventually, you begin to see quite a bit of repetition, and while the diversity of products may be somewhat greater than it was 20 years ago (though not much), it is clear that even jua kali here are still stuck in a pattern of making what everyone else is making.

Our guides specialize in trunks of all sizes, down to tin school bags. It is striking how similar the designs of products like these are to their formally manufactured counterparts, sold at the local Nakumatt supermarket. The jua kali haven’t necessarily gotten creative with the design itself, but very much so in terms of replication. They improvise until the fabrication process becomes efficient and scalable.

Customers have come to know jua kali as a low-cost alternative to formal markets with a very similar product selection. Perhaps this expectation is one of the many factors preventing jua kali from developing unique designs.

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Nairobi Industrial Area

Part of a four-part series on Gikomba: Intro Products Tools Materials

As soon as I stepped foot in Nairobi’s Industrial Area, which encompasses three of the most dynamic concentrations of informal sector activity in the world (Gikomba, Kamukunji, and Burmah Market), a stupid grin emerged on my face. I knew this was exactly what I came to Kenya for. The area is the heart of the country’s jua kali (“hot sun”) industry of informal artisans and feels (and indeed functions) like its own world. It is an impressive world that has emerged gradually from the grass roots over the last half a century, filling gaps in the formal sector in terms of employment and manufacturing. It remains dynamic and uniquely Kenyan to this day.

As you roll up to the Industrial Area outskirts, you first come across stands selling clothing sent from abroad, some of which bear the names of losing championship teams (for every major sporting event, enough shirts are printed for both outcomes). Deliverymen pass by with new and scrap materials from local factories.

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