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.

Various types of jikos (ovens). The ones with ceramic inserts absorb more heat and save energy.

You can also buy this jiko at Nakumatt, but here it’s just 100 KSH (a little over a dollar)!

A wide selection of kitchen utensils, almost indistinguishable from the ones at Nakumatt.

Some, like these tin lamp-makers, earn income from adding value to recycled materials. The lamps use kerosene and are made from used cans.

These boxes are made from uncut sheets of bottlecaps.

A makeshift sprayer, which can be used to disburse chemicals on a farm.

Joining together pipes to form a gutter.

Apparently this is why they are called irons.

A cement mixer. Clarice is super excited at the prospect that this might thresh amaranth grain. I, on the other hand, am obviously not interested. Only a nerd would care about that.

Getting more advanced now, this spring-loaded gadget cuts potatoes into chips (fries).

My favorite design, a grill whose grate can be raised and lowered in accordance with the flame through an ingeniously simple mechanism.

The granddaddy of jua kali machines, a zero-grazer which shreds maize stalks and napier grass. Check out that sweet flywheel.