You are welcome

Sitting in the cab on the way from Jomo Kenyatta airport I listened to two radio personalities expressing their frustration with Facebook culture and that fine art involving Twitter (I refuse to use the word tweet before my second cup of coffee). The view was derisive; who on earth is interested in what you do at a moment-to-moment basis?! This opinion is shared by many (and some may even extend that opinion to bloggers....). So my curiousity about technology in East Africa's business hub was provoked... our project relies on a certain measure of connectivity and my research focuses on ICT and cities. I take technophobia very personally!

So, I was curious about the relevance of digital technologies as the taxi driver offered to buy me fresh roasted peanuts from the kids on the side of the road while we stalled in the Saturday night traffic jam ('you are welcome'). The nuts are wrapped in paper cones: a basic technology that is cheap and effective enough to provide livelihoods on that global shopping strip: the road verge. Informality is a theme that resonates in a number of ways here. Currently the Nairobi City Council is intent on preserving the cleanliness of the city centre by enforcing by-laws that prohibit spitting, blowing your nose without a hankie and 'behaving like touts and street traders' according to one letter to the editor of the Daily Nation. In the same paper UNHabitat Day is celebrated under the timely theme: 'Planning our Urban Future' where one of the challenges, noted by the agency, in cities in the Global South is dealing with increasing informality... One of the interesting features of unregulated development in Kenya rests in the upper income areas on the edges of Nairobi where whole neighbourhoods are developed outside city regulations. So who exactly is welcome here?

Whilst prowling Nairobi streets, taking care to blow my frequently congested nose in a hankie, I stumble across M-Pesa....everywhere...on billboards, on shop fronts and embedded in cute little kiosks scattered across the city. My waiter (who insists on loading my Kenyan sim card and airtime and ensuring that I now have a Kenyan cell number; 'you are welcome') tells me this is a way of managing your money on a cell phone, bypassing banks. Users are able to buy credits at retailers and then use this credit to transfer funds, buy airtime, shop and buy beer (said waiter's emphasis). Digital technology is alive and well in Nairobi but apparently on Kenyan terms. Now that is my kind of informality!