Bamboo Micro-Enterprises in Nairobi City, Kenya : An Assessment of Their Viability and Potential in Environmental Conservation and Poverty Alleviation

Nairobi, Kenya's capital city has undergone rapid urbanization which has been associated with a number of development challenges. Key among these challenges is deterioration in urban environment and urban poverty. Bamboo is a fast growing, renewable, widespread, low cost, environment enhancing resource with great potential in environmental conservation and poverty alleviation. It has been established that bamboo has at least 1500 uses . Bamboo micro-enterprises (BMEs) have recently been put-up in the city,their contribution to livelihood incomes and environment conservation in Nairobi had previously not been established. Therefore, the main objective of the study was to determine the contribution of BMEs to livelihood incomes and to urban environmental conservation. The bamboo sector is fairly new and has many untapped opportunities and the government needs to be more proactive and facilitate its citizens in exploiting the sector. More unemployed women in the city need to be sensitized and recruited into the BMEs so as to start their home businesses such as weaving and making toothpicks and skewers and .