Author Archives: Alice Yeung

The spirit of innovation that prompted the first “pirate-taxis” matatus did not end there, but persists in many efforts to better the industry today.  A team of students from the University of Nairobi set out in 2015 to create the first comprehensive map of matatu routes in order to make access to buses easier forContinue reading “Looking to the future..”

Have you ever wondered what the day to day operations of a matatu vehicle is like? The new anchor begins the segment with “they have been vilified either with good reasons or maybe even because of the stereotypes, these are the matatu touts: the men we love to hate.” This brief feature into how aContinue reading “In the eyes of the public: the Matatu Industry”

BETWEEN PASSENGERS & MATATU OPERATORS, Beyond simple inconveniences, the post-1980s relationship between passengers and manambas, another word for a matatu tout, became strained as personal accounts of verbally or physically abusive matatu workers circulated in the Kenyan public consciousness  [Mungai and Samper 53]. Two academics, Mbugua Wa Mungai and David A. Samper published a collectionContinue reading “The Role of Matatu Cartels, focus on the Mungiki (1980s-early 2000s)”

Historically, the Kenyan government under British colonial rule had built its major city infrastructure and designed its public services with the primary good of Kenya’s then European elites in mind; as sociologist Jacob Rasmussen found: “few public services were provided for the African population.” Even after achieving independence in 1963, the transportation needs for urbanContinue reading “From colonial beginnings..”

The evershifting role of the Matatu Industry in urban Kenyan culture What had arisen by urban Kenya’s need for accessible and affordable transport had been fed by the spirit of Kenyan entrepreneurship from the 1950s to the 1970s. Despite the lack of licensing or regulation, the matatu bus’s “untiring efforts to ferry mwanaichi [the KenyanContinue reading “De-regulation, re-regulation..”