The Gentrification of the Nairobi Dancefloor

At a creative summit earlier this year, my best friend, with whom I run this publication, took a picture that she posted on our Instagram story as part of our #whowhatwhereonsite story series. In it, a picture showing what looked like about 30 people, I could only count 7 black people. So I texted her, asking if she’d accidentally posted something from one of her trips because that didn’t look like Nairobi, or any city in an African country really. And when she confirmed that it indeed was the city, adding that the picture was really nothing in the face of the reality there, I realized that we were completely and utterly fucked.

Before I go any further, I would like to request that you leave me here if you are incapable of nuance. I write this as a curator and organizer whose main mission is to help build structures and systems that allow you to live off of your creativity in East Africa, a writer and editor interested in African realities and stories that allow for modernity, change, and expansion, a cultural archivist that holds one of the alt scene’s biggest digital cultural archives, and, more than anything, a party girl. I make, consume, push, platform, and document our art, help set the tone in creative care, education and entertainment, and love a Tusker cider and a Monzo set with friends who sometimes happen to be European; my perspective is pretty wide.

So there’s something exciting happening in Nairobi, right? I’ve had conversations with a few of my artistic (in that they exist in artistic spaces as creative contributors) friends about it, about how it’s the perfect time to be a creative in this part of the world. There’s global visibility, a more daring approach to art, and structures and systems being put in place to sustain this artistry long-term. I just wonder how accessible these experiences are to the average Nairobian. And when I say accessible, I don’t just mean tickets and drinks. I also mean: where are we gathering? Who is the room built for, whose gaze, consumption and experience are we centering? Whose comfort are we prioritizing, and why is it not our own?

Something’s off about how we currently organize our cultural life, and this is not about a single event or venue, but about the way Nairobi entertainment has moved, almost imperceptibly, toward certain neighborhoods and certain prices and certain kinds of bodies that already know how to move through certain spaces and use a certain language.

Gentrification is complicated. It’s just as cultural as it is structural and usually starts as improvement. In this specific situation, it’s showing its signs in more and more “interesting” and “niche” spots and activities. And I love this city. I love that on any given Thursday I can find myself at a poetry reading, a DJ set, a film screening, an art opening, a listening session, a fashion launch, and then somehow end up at a rooftop in Westlands at 8 a.m. with a producer, a stylist, and my photographer’s ex. There’s just always something happening.

I think it’s boring to talk about Nairobi in negatives. It flattens things and ignores the fact that something genuinely expansive is happening here: more people making work, more visibility for East African artists, more experimentation, more cross-pollination, more language for what was previously informal or unrecognized. Every few months somebody writes a think piece about Nairobi being the next cultural capital of Africa. Every few months another publication discovers our DJs and our fashion designers and our photographers and our parties. Every few months there is another article about how cool Nairobi is becoming. But every time I read one, I can’t help but wonder, cool for who?

When I step into certain spaces, I see the same thing: a dancefloor (just as a general idea of an audience space, btw) that keeps getting increasingly inaccessible even before you can enter or say anything. A room in a neighborhood where matatus don’t reach, where you need to already understand the codes of the space to relax inside it.

I also keep thinking about labour and what it means to a people like me at a time and place like this. ‘Labour’ is a word that freezes my blood, because for centuries, people who looked exactly like me did not get to choose whether or how they worked. Labour was extraction and survival. It was imposed. I can’t ignore that history as I move through spaces designed and built by Kenyans and consumed by Europeans. And when I look at our creative economy, I am always holding that history alongside it. We are told that creativity is freedom and making is liberation, that being an artist is a choice and a privilege and a lifestyle. And in many ways it is. But that same creativity is becoming organized into an economy that still does not fully sustain the people producing it or accept their kin into rooms where they can consume it. And if it keeps going like this, one day artists will wake up and realize that they can no longer afford the ecosystem they helped create.

The thing that scares me isn't that Nairobi is becoming global. I want Nairobi to be global. At FOTA, we only play East African music, and when we tour, that won’t change. I want more of our artists out there touring, our photographers in huge museums, our writers translated, our DJs on international lineups. I’d love for the world to see Nairobi, but what scares me is a future where Nairobi becomes globally before it is locally accessible; where the city becomes increasingly legible to tourists, expats, brands, digital nomads, investors, and international media while becoming more difficult for ordinary Nairobians to participate in.

But, I am not being pessimistic even as I am critical. If I were, I wouldn’t still be here curating, documenting, building, dragging my friends to parties on Thursdays, or insisting that creativity can be a viable way of life in East Africa. I’m not asking that we reject growth, international attention, better infrastructure, or even profit, but we need to be more intentional about who benefits from our creativity. We need to get over our obsession with exclusivity. We need to build beyond the same handful of neighborhoods. We need to pay artists from all over the region properly. We need more free and public-facing cultural programming. We can’t call ourselves a community if participation is determined primarily by purchasing power.

I strongly believe in the radical possibility of strangers sharing a dancefloor, of art creating encounters that would otherwise never happen, and of culture serving as a commons rather than a commodity. But that future will require us to resist the temptation to build scenes that are merely visible and instead build ones that remain accessible, porous, and in service of the people they claim to represent. Otherwise, we’ll end up building a city that is celebrated everywhere except by the people who call it home.