Life on an African Housing Estate. Mombasa, Kenya.

Nowhere else in the world is the divide between all that is positive and negative with urban life in general so starkly contrasted as it is in the African City. As the cities have continued to expand at a phenomenal rate, local authorities have been largely unable to cope with the swell of humanity flooding to urban centres.

By focusing on a single housing estate in Mombasa I wanted to explore not only the hardship of life for even the so-called African middle class; Where there is no running water and sparse electricity and other basic amenities, I also wanted to see how African traditional life and the social nature of life on the Continent came to fill that vacuum left behind by the failure of the municipal authorities to provide even the most basic of services: Filled by a life that is in contrast other-worldy to modern urban life - A traditional African existence that has given each city on the Continent its own unique dimension and flavour.