Kenya has been experiencing intense rains for several weeks, which have killed at least 277 people and damaged numerous homes and infrastructure. On May 14, 2024, a building collapsed in Nairobi. For several civil society organizations, these incidents demonstrate the incompetence of the Kenyan authorities in the management of infrastructure.
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With our correspondent in Nairobi, Gaëlle Laleix
At Kenya, the consequences of the floods continue to be felt: on May 14, 2024, a building collapsed in Nairobi. In the evening, a landslide occurred in the Kimende escarpments, in Kiambu County, just north of the capital.
Read alsoFloods in Kenya: nearly 200 schools will not reopen until further notice
So far, no casualties have been reported in the two accidents. But in Kiambu, Kenyan Red Cross teams were still on the scene yesterday evening, sifting through the rubble amid fears people might be trapped under the mud. The perimeter was cordoned off by the NGO and declared a “danger zone”. And the neighboring road, the Kimende-Matathia axis, remains blocked.
Fifty-eight other roads in the country have been damaged by rains since the start of the wet season.
Among them, crucial axes like that between Nakuru and Eldoret, which then leads to Rwanda or Uganda. “ Poor maintenance of key infrastructure and drainage systems, as well as disregard for environmental laws on flood-prone land, have contributed to this situation. “, writes Timothy Njagi Njeru, an economist at Egerton University in Kenya, in the online publication, The Conversation.
According to a study by the Kenyan Public Policy Research Institute published in 2021, during the last floods in 2018, repairs to roads alone cost the authorities $120 million: almost a quarter of the country’s budget. the previous year.