Modelling geographical accessibility to urban centres in Kenya in 2019

Macharia, Peter M. and Mumo, Eda and Okiro, Emelda A. (2021) Modelling geographical accessibility to urban centres in Kenya in 2019. PLoS ONE, 16 (5): e0251624. ISSN 1932-6203

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Abstract

Background Access to major services, often located in urban centres, is key to the realisation of numerous Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In Kenya, there are no up-to-date and localised estimates of spatial access to urban centres. We estimate the travel time to urban centres and identify marginalised populations for prioritisation and targeting. Methods Urban centres were mapped from the 2019 Kenya population census and combined with spatial databases of road networks, elevation, land use and travel barriers within a cost-friction algorithm to compute travel time. Seven travel scenarios were considered: i) walking only (least optimistic), ii) bicycle only, iii) motorcycle only, iv) vehicle only (most optimistic), v) walking followed by motorcycle transport, vi) walking followed by vehicle transport, and vii) walking followed by motorcycle and then vehicle transport (most pragmatic). Mean travel time, and proportion of the population within 1-hour and 2-hours of the urban centres were summarized at sub-national units (counties) used for devolved planning. Inequities were explored and correlations between the proportion of the population within 1-hour of an urban centre and ten SDG indicators were computed. Results A total of 307 urban centres were digitised. Nationally, the mean travel time was 4.5-hours for the walking-only scenario, 1.0-hours for the vehicle only (most optimistic) scenario and 1.5-hours for the walking-motorcycle-vehicle (most pragmatic) scenario. Forty-five per cent (21.3 million people) and 87% (41.6 million people) of Kenya’s population resided within 1-hour of the nearest urban centre for the least optimistic and most pragmatic scenarios respectively. Over 3.2 million people were considered marginalised or living outside the 2-hour threshold in the pragmatic scenario, 16.0 million Kenyans for walking only, and 2.2 million for the most optimistic scenario. County-level spatial access was highly heterogeneous ranging between 8%-100% and 32%-100% of people within the 1-hour threshold for the least and most optimistic scenarios, respectively. Counties in northern and eastern parts of Kenya were generally most marginalised. The correlation coefficients for nine SDG indicators ranged between 0.45 to 0.78 and were statistically significant. Conclusion Travel time to urban centres in Kenya is heterogeneous. Therefore, marginalised populations should be prioritised during resource allocation and policies should be formulated to enhance equitable access to public services and opportunities in urban areas.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
PLoS ONE
Additional Information:
Funding Information: PMM is funded under the IDeAL’s Project, DELTAS Africa Initiative [DEL-15-003]. The DELTAS Africa Initiative is an independent funding scheme of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS)’s Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) and supported by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development Planning and Coordinating Agency (NEPAD Agency) with funding from the Wellcome Trust [number 107769/Z/10/Z] and the UK government. PMM and EM are supported by funds provided under Professor RW Snow’s Wellcome Trust Principal Fellowship (numbers’ 103602 & 212176). EAO is supported as a Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellow (number 201866); PMM, EM and EAO, acknowledge the support of the Wellcome Trust to the Kenya Major Overseas Programme (# 203077). The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of AAS, NEPAD Agency, Wellcome Trust or the UK government. The funder of the study had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or writing of the report. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Macharia et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1000
Subjects:
?? generalgeneral agricultural and biological sciencesgeneral biochemistry,genetics and molecular biologygeneral medicineagricultural and biological sciences(all)biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology(all)medicine(all) ??
ID Code:
173850
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
23 Aug 2022 14:05
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
16 Jul 2024 11:52