Nai Ni Who?: Exploring Urban Identity, Place, and Social (Re)construction in Nairobi

Abstract

Nairobi was defined as a municipal township over a hundred years ago. Historically excluded from city development, the majority of Africans here continue to inhabit its peripheries and interstices, ambivalent about identity and belonging within it. Most are strongly compelled by ethnic and rural cultural frames. Although city born and bred, a younger generation curiously carries both old, and new concerns. The enduring tension between belonging and identity, as well as that between rural and urban space compelled the GoDown Arts Centre, in 2013, to initiate a project to explore these anxieties through the framework of a festival. Now an annual citywide event, Nai Ni Who? (Who is Nairobi?) is a sequence of week-long mini-festivals in the “hoods,” largely curated by local residents. Against the backdrop of an uneven historical development, this article focuses on how 21st century creative people shape place and notions of urban identity, as well as being in the city.