Nairobi, KenyaDriving through Kenya’s capital city during the time of coronavirus is like moving between two disconnected realities. Neighborhoods such as Muthaiga and Karen are silent—their streets deserted, their occupants invisible inside lush compounds, their houses well stocked with food and other necessities. A few miles southwest of downtown is Kibera, home to a quarter of a million people surviving together beneath tin roofs. Kibera is the largest of the more than a hundred informal settlements in Nairobi, where the vast majority of people scrape by on no more than a few dollars a day.

Kenya is one of the world’s most unequal societies. Less than 0.1 percent of the country’s 53 million people own more wealth than the