Tayiana Chao on Archives in Nairobi

With regards to identifying archives around the city, I think some of the collections that are generally not talked about are parastatal archives. This [would include] Kenya Railways, Kenya Posta, Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, etc. Because they are both private and public institutions, the question of whether their archives should be accessible [to the public] is not clearly defined. Some of them contain excellent research sources spanning decades, regions and generations but access is often stone walled, too bureaucratic or too expensive...For instance, I recently spoke to a lady doing a PhD on the colonial representation of the Kenya-Uganda railway and she wasn't even aware that the railway museum has an archive of nearly 30,000 photographs, numerous maps, records and audiovisual materials. Despite having visited the railway museum a number of times...So information on such spaces or rather collections is really nowhere to be found…