The bustling neighborhood of Eastleigh in Nairobi.
NAIROBI, KENYA – Ahmed Sheikh, 34, ushers customers into his small, packed shop in Eastleigh, a booming Nairobi suburb, while humming a traditional Somali song.
His shop is tucked inside the Garissa Lodge mall, the oldest of the many buildings that have sprung up almost overnight in the fast-growing suburb. Most of the shops sell similar merchandise – women’s shoes and handbags – but Sheikh seems confident he will ring in huge sales by the end of the day.
The bearded and robe-clad Sheikh says he is confident because, unlike most of the traders from Somalia here, he speaks Swahili, the local language, so he can converse with his customers better than his competition can.
Most of his fellow traders came to Kenya after fleeing war-torn Somalia during the past decade and speak neither Swahili nor English. The majority of them broke out of refugee camps in northern Kenya and made their way to Nairobi by evading several immigration and police checks. Now, they are driving the roaring business in Eastleigh, located to the east of Nairobi’s Central Business District.
As Sheikh moves through the many shopping malls, he must dodge several porters to avoid being hit by the heavy loads they carry menacingly on their shoulders from the Somali malls to customers’ cars. Streets and alleys in the estate have disappeared, replaced by makeshift stalls where locals sell their goods at retail price after buying them wholesale in the Somali malls. Groups of traders squeeze into the remaining space, hawking their merchandise from wheelbarrows.
“My family and I fled Somalia when I was 14,” Sheikh says, jumping over several pools of water in the estate’s main road.
This was in 1991, immediately after rebels overthrew the government of Somali President Siad Barre, throwing the country into anarchy, he says.
“The only memories I have about my former home is unending sounds of gunshots,” Sheikh says. “We crossed the border to Kenya and found our way to Eastleigh. My mother started a small textile business in the estate, which has expanded to make enough money for my three brothers and I.”
During his stay, Sheikh has been able to acquire Kenyan nationality and even has a passport.
“Kenya is like a second home to me,” he says. “It is a great country. People here are very peaceful.”
After fleeing war in their country in the 1990s, many Somalis have found their way to Eastleigh, where they have fueled a rapidly expanding marketplace that attracts traders from across Eastern Africa. But locals say the Somalis are buying up their property, driving up rent and engaging in piracy. Somalis here maintain that they are honest, hardworking, collaborative and enterprising. They say they are also positively influencing the development of infrastructure in the suburb, which they say was formerly neglected by the city government.
Somalia has been without a central government since Barre was overthrown, according to Reuters. Rebels control much of the capital, Mogadishu. More than 21,000 Somalis have been killed since the insurgency began in 1991, and 1.5 million have been uprooted from their homes. Nearly half a million are living in other countries, including Kenya.
Those who found their way to Eastleigh, sometimes called “Small Mogadishu,” seem to have also found their way to prosperity.
Danson Mungai, 58, a Kenyan native who has lived in the estate for 30 years, says he has witnessed the suburb develop throughout the years into what it is today.
He says the Somalis first started selling goods from a room in Garissa Lodge, which originally housed travelers, in 1991, when war broke out in their country.
“They would convert the rooms into shops during the day and lodgings during the night,” he says. “They later bought the hotel and converted it into a shopping mall before going into [the] real estate business.”
Eastleigh is now among the only places in East Africa where pure gold jewelry is traded in the open air and various hard currencies change hands on its street for an array of goods.
“Eastleigh is the only place where you can buy everything from a pair of socks to a lethal firearm at a reasonable price,” says David Rukwaro, one of Sheikh’s customers who has traveled from Kampala, Uganda, to buy goods for his shop. “The only thing you can’t buy here is human life.”
The impressive cash flows here have attracted sizeable investment in the estate.
Eastleigh now has 10 banks and numerous forex bureaus, or foreign exchange markets. No other area in Nairobi has so many financial services providers. Some banks have more than one branch and operate even on Sundays. Thanks to the large Muslim population, most of them also now offer Islamic banking, which prohibits interest. Shipping agencies and airlines have also opened offices in the estate.
Though locals are happy with the growth of the business hub, many have voiced concern that they may soon have nowhere to call home as Somalis are taking over the neighborhood.
“They have bought every available space, including the chief’s camp and the council market to put up shopping malls,” says Mungai, a disgruntled charcoal dealer who says he now has to move from his current location because a Somali businessman bought the land. “Local traders now have no place to do business. Where do we go now?”
Bishop William Tuimising, whose Deliverance Church is the biggest in the area, says the Somali businessmen have been asking him to sell the church’s land to them and relocate, but he has refused.
“They tell me to quote any amount of money for the land, but I will not sell it,” the bishop says.
The business boom and the influx of moneyed Somalis has also driven the cost of living up, raising concern among locals.
“A few years ago, a one-bedroom house used to cost 6,000 shillings [$70 USD a month],” says James Mwangi, a local who has been forced to move from his home because of rising rent. “The rents have now doubled. That is why I have decided to move.”
Eastleigh natives, who declined to go on record with their accusations, also say that Somalis use proceeds from piracy to fuel their business. Last year, under a similar assumption, the Kenyan government ordered an audit of the businesses to establish the source of the money, a move that was so strongly opposed by the business community that the audit was never conducted.
In the neighborhood, the business community strongly rejects the accusation. Ibrahim Ahmed, one of the few Kenyan-Somalis in the Somali business community, attributes the community’s success to hard work and unity.
“Piracy in the Gulf of Eden started only two years ago,” Ahmed says. “Business in Eastleigh has been booming since [the] early 1990s, so it is not possible that it is fired by piracy proceeds.”
Born in Eastleigh, Ahmed says his parents moved here three decades ago and that the community is tight-knit.
“What is driving the growth is the cooperative movement among the community, which is based on trust,” he says. “Sometimes more than a dozen people come together to ship in a single container of shoes. When the consignment arrives, they divide it amongst themselves.”
Ahmed Ugas, editor of Somali National Post, a newspaper formerly located in Mogadishu, Somalia, but now in Eastleigh because of militia hostility, says that Eastleigh has become an inland port of sorts as containers are opened here and traders from all over East Africa come to buy the goods. He attributes the community’s success to its entrepreneurial nature.
“Somalis are a very enterprising group,” says Ugas, who moved to Eastleigh five years ago. “They also don’t seek large profits. They believe in selling large quantities of goods at cheap prices than selling few items at high prices.”
Abdulahi Sheik Yusuf, who is from Somalia but now has Kenyan citizenship, says that traders get goods cheaply because shipping charges are regulated by the Eastleigh Cargo Business Price Control committee, where he works as an auditor.
This translates to low prices, which attract traders from all over the region.
“Most goods sold here are shipped from Dubai, China, Bangkok and Thailand,” Yusuf says. “They range from electronics to cosmetics. Since we deal with cheaper cargo services providers, our goods are a bit cheaper than those in Nairobi’s Central Business District.”
Ugas says that Somalis also receive money from relatives who live in other countries.
“The people also get a lot of money from their relatives in the Diaspora, and this gives them an edge over Kenyan traders,” he says.
Despite being one of Kenya’s economic hubs, residents say Eastleigh has been neglected in the development of infrastructure. Ahmed and other local residents say that there are hardly any good roads in the area. Many main roadways have big craters that become pools of water when it rains. They say that the drainage system is also in poor shape and that sewage from neighboring areas sometimes pours into the area, posing a major health threat.
Last year, the Somali business community sued the Nairobi City Council in an attempt to block it from collecting taxes from its members until it improved social amenities in the area.
After agreeing to settle the matter out of court, the council has diverted the sewage that used to drain into the estate and has issued tenders for the construction of the roads. Streetlights have also been installed, lighting up the once-dark alleys where residents say violence was common.
“We used to wonder if we were part of Kenya,” says Ahmed, who is vying for the area’s parliamentary seat in May. “But we now have hope, especially after Prime Minister Raila Odinga formed a task force to look into the issues of the Somali community. By the end of this year, Eastleigh will have a new look.”
