An Alternative New Town Paradigm: Towards an Inclusive New Town in Kenya

Sub-Saharan Africa is often regarded as the world’s fasted urbanizing region. This implies the high demand for urban housing, infrastructure developments and services. In many cases, because the government is unable to provide solutions, it shifts the approach from “providing to enabling”, encouraging the private sector to invest in the built...

Adapt to scale: A framework to scale Inuka to new contexts

One in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives (WHO, 2001). Around 450 million people currently suffer from such conditions, placing mental disorders among the leading causes of ill- health and disability worldwide, in particular in low-income countries, where many barriers to...

Barriers to availability of surgical equipment in Kenya

Background & Objective: The need for surgery is currently not met in Sub-Saharan Africa, requiring both extra workforce and surgical equipment. Currently, there is a gap in the availability of surgical equipment which, among others, limits the provision of safe surgery. To design strategies to increase availability, the use of surgical...

Becoming Nairobi: Codifying Public Space for an Arrivals' City

Drawing back on my experience of living in Nairobi, this thesis explores the city’s dynamic system of public space and tries to improve its legibility by establishing a framework for its use and design. Exploring Nairobi as a city of arrival, my personal process in the development of this project was quite similar to that of coming to Nairobi as...

Lead Market Potential of Developing Countries: The Succes of Mobile Money in Kenya

Mobile money has just started to emerge in Western countries; however Kenyans have already been using phones for transactions for 10 years mainly through the mobile money system MPesa. This hints towards a largely ignored innovation potential residing in developing countries that can even allow them to lead the path of innovation for specific...

Pavilions for Okana: From landscape to roofscape

Pavilions for Okana is a Design-Build-Studio that combines a theoretical and a practical part. The design consists of pilot pavilions for multifunctional public use in the rural areas around Lake Victoria, whereby the first one will be build in Okana (West-Kenya) and act as community centre.

Pavilions for Okana: From landscape to roofscape

The goals of the Design & Build project were to design a prototypical pavilion structure for multifunctional public use in the rural areas around Lake Victoria and build the first one as community centre in Okana (West-Kenya). The community centre will be a place for educational and entrepreneurial activities, for sharing knowledge and connect...

MAFURIKO: Design of Nzoia Basin location based flood game

Every 2 to 7 years, Kenya experiences a reoccurrence of El-Niño rains leading to loss of life and massive damage to property. The 1997/98 El-Niño floods affected 1.5 million persons and led to an estimated USD 1.2 billion infrastructural damage, USD 236 million agricultural damage and USD 9 million on other losses (property, soil erosion,...

“Design of a solution for the preservation of breast milk in sub-Saharan Africa”

This is the report of my final master graduation project, which describes the design process and final product proposal; “Zoe”. Since the beginning of this graduation project, the objective was to create suitable conditions for working mothers in Kenya which will enable them to feed their babies with breast milk. To be more specific, the aim was...

Sediment transport modelling: Determination of the main areas contributing to the suspended sediment load in the Mara River, Kenya

The Mara River originates in Kenya in the Mau Escarpment and flows through the Serengeti ecosystem into Lake Victoria in Tanzania; in total it is about 395 km long. In this river, human interventions have led to increased of agricultural areas. As a result, increased fast runoff and top soil erosion is expected. Consequently, more sediments is...

The Humanure Carrousel, a biogas latrine system for Kenyan boarding schools

The summary of the problem: Boarding school compounds in Kenya have organic resources, subdivided in humanure, kitchen leftovers and manure. Focus is on the humanure (faeces and the urine), which turns out to be the biggest resource stream. In current waste disposal systems energy potential and soil nutrients are spoiled. An example is a...

Towards Kenya’s Profile of the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM)

The application of computer technology in land administration is touted as one way of ensuring efficient and transparent land administration. Although this true, one major concern is not only how to create a computerized land information system that is interoperable across different government departments responsible for different land...

Making a living out of the wind: A practical approach for RIWIK to enter the rural MSE market in Kenya

In rural areas in Kenya, only 6% of the rural population has access to electricity. Hence there is a large market for electricity solutions such as solar and wind power. RIWIK is Dutch start-up that produces and sells Small Wind Turbines (SWTs) in Kenya. An SWT can produce enough electricity for one family or business. RIWIK’s business is based...

Financial Sustainability of Rural Water Supplies in Western Kenya: Comparing technology types and management models

Introduction In order to improve people’s health worldwide, many efforts have been made in order to meet Millennium Development Goal 7c: reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Kenya is in the top ten of countries with the largest population without access to safe drinking water...

PAMOJA: Oral Health Education within Kenyan Vulnerable Communities

“Pamoja” is a Swahili word that stands for “oneness” and it exactly refers to a state of being unified or whole under different circumstances. The meaning of this word offers a rich overview of people living in a country like Kenya, where a community-based society is predominant and crucial for their everyday life. Even if this graduation...

Agriculture in Kenya: Design of a small-scale irrigation system to stimulate agricultural activities in Kilole.

This thesis presents the results of a research done on the agricultural situation of Kilole. Kilole is a small Kenyan village located between Mombasa and the Tanzanian border. Looking at the annual rainfall, it can not be said that there is a lack of it in Kilole. However, because of its poor distribution the year is diverted in two rain seasons...

From LADM/STDM to a Spatially Enabled Society: A Vision for 2025

The Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) is a draft International Standard (ISO 19152). LADM is partly based on ‘Cadastre 2014’. A prototype of a software tool, the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM), is in its turn based on LADM. It supports the security of tenure of people in developing countries. With LADM and STDM, information-related...