The African nation of Kenya has had tremendous fundamental problems in pursuing its goal of producing an educated populace ever since the first day the country achieved full independence from British colonialism in 1963. The challenges of modernizing a diverse tribal and desperately rural society, governmental corruption, war, natural disasters and disease, poor foresight in educational policies, lack of domestic and foreign money to invest in the infrastructure for educational institutions all have played critical roles in severely hindering Kenya’s stated goal of an educated population prepared for government service, industry and commerce.

Kenya is an east-central African country which lies on the equator, at the Indian Ocean coast. The country borders Sudan to the northwest and Ethiopia to the north. Somalia and the Indian Ocean lay to the east, Tanzania borders to the south, and Uganda lies to the west. The world famous Lake Victoria also lies to the west.

Societal Issues

Kenyan society is traditionally a rural, “African-style” economy and tribal society where eighty percent of the country’s agriculture is small-scale and third world villages have and continue to be the norm. The capitol city of Nairobi is filled with modern buildings and skyscrapers surrounded by shantytowns in the outlying areas.

The social attitudes and cultural practices of the villagers with regard to their daughters have hindered educational development. Educated girls and women have not been a priority as it has been assumed by many rural people that they will only get married, have children, and not need an education. There are still instances where young, teenaged girls are wed to old men.

Many of the pastoral tribes send their young boys to school only if they are of little practical use in tending cattle. Also, nomadic tribes, such as the Maasai, have no permanent settlement from which to send their children to become educated.

Corruption

After Mwai Kibaki became Kenyan president in 2002, he promised to end the government’s culture of corruption which had paralyzed any honest attempt to improve the country. He initiated some reforms to that end which had only minimal impact. He had corrupt judges removed from the bench and fired corrupt law enforcement officers. But he also instituted the policy of free primary education for all Kenyans, a policy which should have been enacted decades earlier by former government officials.

War

Ethnic violence erupted in the late twentieth century between the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin in the area of the Rift Valley. The United State’s embassy in Nairobi was bombed. The incidents killed hundreds and injured over a thousand people. Violence followed the 2007 presidential election.

When it was all said and done, over one thousand Kenyans were killed due to the ethnic violence.

Disasters And Disease

Natural disasters also hit Kenya in the late twentieth century, resulting in severe flooding, crop devastation, malarial and choleral epidemics. In 2002, a horrible drought placed over three million people at risk for starvation. As many Kenyan farmers use traditional farming methods, their crops are totally dependent on seasonable rainfall and catastrophe befalls the farmers when there is a drought. Some places in the country have not seen rain for years.

AIDS has killed over 200,000 Kenyans and nearly every family has been affected, creating an increasing number of orphans.

The end result of the natural and manmade disasters is that families are displaced or broken apart. Many children drop from the school system in order to care for family members either sick or left behind by parents who have died of AIDS.

Educational Policies

Recently, universally free education for all citizens has been enacted for all primary and secondary education students because the poverty stricken Kenyans could not afford to pay even the minimal $16.00 annual fee for education. Due to this, suddenly millions of new students have shown up at schools to be educated. The classrooms were ill-prepared to deal with the strain on the system. Classes are now overcrowded with many attempting to deal with a student/teacher ratio of one instructor for every 100 students. Students must share supplies and sit on the ground.

Now, experts are warning that merely herding children into classrooms does not constitute an education.

Investment In Education

The World Bank has long conditioned its educationally targeted loans to nations on user (student) fees. This practice has finally ended and a large burden has been removed from the recipient governments, like Kenya.

Missionaries who introduced reading in the middle nineteenth century in order to spread Christianity are credited with the foundation of modern education in Kenya. But the nation’s crusade toward the goal of a literate and educated citizenry has not always followed the Golden Rule. Let us hope that the future of education for all Kenyans will be better than its history.