Lessons from a Kenyan slum
NAIROBI, Kenya — From nearly anywhere in this teeming capital city of Kenya, you can see its greatest embarrassment: Kibera, a 1.5-square-mile slum of steel-roof shanties and narrow, undulant alleys of mud, dust, litter, and open sewage. It’s Africa’s largest informal urban settlement, home to upwards of a million people. Most residents live there on less than $2 a day. But Kibera’s 13 informal villages are also places of vitality, color, and enterprise. A Harvard Business School case study, revised last year and being taught in a November class, captures the slum’s incongruent poverty and vigor. “Kibera,” wrote co-authors Kathleen L. McGinn and Cailin B. Hammer, “was, at its essence, a vital, overcrowded community where families and friendships thrived alongside hunger and disease.” (McGinn is Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration. Hammer is a freelance writer.) People find ways to scramble through Kibera’s fragile economy. Roadsides are vibrant workshops, cooking areas, and retail space....