In this article we show how youth groups in Nairobi's poor settlements engage politics and how they try to carve out a political space for themselves and provide a livelihood. In doing so, we challenge dominant neo-patrimonial narratives of youth radicalisation and instrumentalized youth mobilization in relation to electoral processes. Rather, based on longterm ethnographic engagements we argue for a more complex dynamics between local youths and politicians. We employ the emic term kupona (Kiswahili word meaning recovery or healing) to explain the youth's political engagements along lines of participation, recognition, and re-distribution, which all in different ways concern the task of social recovery. Empirically, the article draw on events and examples from the primary elections in 2017, which provide a privileged frame for investigating local politics and responses to the recently initiated devolved government structure i .