The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the socio-economic and health dimensions of many societies across the world. For those in urban informal settlements, direct and indirect negative impacts of the pandemic and the resulting government policies have had devastating consequences on their livelihood. As the virus continues to spread rapidly, the more popular measures such as curfews, lockdown, and working from home have overlooked the fate of slum dwellers, who are left to choose between life and livelihood. This article examines the unique challenges people in informal settlements are facing during the pandemic. It focuses on the city of Nairobi, which has several informal settlements where more than 4 million people reside. The authors note that a combination of systematic marginalization, poor policies, and inadequate planning has left millions of people in Nairobi vulnerable to the direct and indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The article concludes that as the virus continues to spread rapidly and the emerging socio-economic challenges undermine government’s capacity to respond to the crisis, support from other stakeholders such as social workers may have a positive impact.

This paper adopts Leiper’s ([1990]. Tourist attraction systems. Annals of Tourism Research, 17(3), 367–384. https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-7383(90)90004-B) tourism system theory to examine the impact of COVID-19 on Kenya’s tourism sector. The authors argue that tourism remains an important source of national revenue in Kenya and the severe negative effects of the pandemic as well as the resulting government measures to curb the spread of the disease threaten to undermine the gains made in recent years to revive the sector. The paper identifies that while much emphasis has been put on the impact of the disease on countries’ national health systems and its epidemiology, few studies have been conducted to examine the relationship between COVID 19 and the tourism sector, especially in developing countries. The paper provides researchers and practitioners with an analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on the social and economic dimensions of tourism in Kenya and concludes with a set of recommendations that can shape Kenya’s post-pandemic tourism sector recovery plans.