Michael Mundia Kamau P

Michael Mundia Kamau P.O. Box 58972 00200 City Square Nairobi Kenya 5th January 2005 THE POWER TO READ, AND ALL THAT APPERTAINS……. The results of the 2004 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (K.C.P.E.), released by Education Minister George Saitoti on 29th December 2004, further disclose vicious disparities in the education sector in Kenya, and the nation at large. Debate so far has revolved around the sterling performance of the minority privately owned and privately funded schools vis a vis the dismal performance of the bulk publicly owned and publicly funded schools. Justifiably, the effect of free primary education and it’s impact on declining standards in public schools over the past two years, has also been addressed. No regard whatsoever has however been given to the numerous individuals who will fail to secure further academic and training opportunities. 657,747 candidates sat the K.C.P.E. examination in 2004, out of which roughly 200,000 will proceed on to secondary school and other levels of formal and informal training. This means that roughly 450,000 individuals across the nation are about to be cast into obscurity. Out of the 200,000 that are about to proceed to higher levels of education and training, a sizeable number of roughly 50,000 will either not commence at all, or drop out in between, because of lack of funds. President Mwai Kibaki’s government therefore has the immediate task of engaging or employing 500,000 youth. Unfortunately, many of the remaining 150,000 youth proceeding to higher levels of education, face the grim prospect of attaining sub standard accreditation from an education system that has stalled, having failed to adopt to fast changing times. The issues afflicting our fragile nation clearly go beyond and are about much more than passionate calls for free primary school education and/or free secondary school education. Equally unsettling and disturbing is the fact that majority school leavers face grim prospects, whether or not ours is a free education system. Small impoverished nations like ours cannot afford the luxury of implementing a free education curriculum. It is a Herculean demand that is morally, ethically and economically untenable. Education and training can and never will be free. To suggest that education be free is to scorn, completely disrespect and completely disregard all breakthroughs made by mankind upto this point. Numerous distinguished generations of mankind have paid an enormous price over thousands of years, that have enabled modern day conveniences in medicine, health, engineering, science, economics, commerce, communication and travel, inter alia. To suggest that this knowledge be imparted free on current generations of mankind, is to among other things, suggest that we recede back to the days when surgeries were manual, clumsy, painful and rudimentary in the extreme. In the first instance, the average primary school child in the developed world is privileged, with access to basic necessities. Secondly, in addition to conventional facilities of education and learning, the average primary school child in the developed world has easy access to a wide array of modern electronic gadgets of learning and communication, including television, personal computers and the internet. The developing world is ages away from attaining these levels, and the average primary school child in Kenya is severely handicapped when compared to the average primary school child in the developed world. State funds and resources in Kenya as elsewhere, are stretched and cannot suitably and favourably fund a free primary school education scheme that will be able to effectively compete with the module in the first world. Politics and populist decisions aside, Kenyan society will fund the transformation of the entire education sector in Kenya in partnership with the government, if we genuinely care about this country, it’s youth and it’s future. In previous years, the government periodically issued 5 year, 10 year and 25 year development plans. Transformation in the Kenyan education sector clearly falls within a 25 year development scheme, initially. Even then we would only have covered a small fraction of a long journey. Oxford University, Cambridge University and Harvard University, institutions that many Kenyans glorify and regularly make reference to, are 909 years old, 796 years old and 369 years old, respectively. The majority of us have adopted a laid back, convenient and detached approach to change in this country, and this must cease. Our continued generous funding and generous support of fringe activities, is regrettable and deplorable, in the face of general nationwide decline, including alarming declines in the education sector. On the 26th of August 2004 East African Breweries Limited announced record profits and a record dividend payment for it’s financial year ended 30th June 2004. No less than President Mwai Kibaki himself, has made a passionate public plea to Kenyans to reduce their alcohol intake. Leading local cell phone provider, Safaricom, announced a record half year net profit of approximately US $ 28.75 million, as it’s customer base fast approaches the 2 million mark. A 1988 article on Mercedes Benz in the reputed “Economist” magazine mentioned Mercedes as the status symbol vehicle in Frankfurt, London and Nairobi, a situation that still prevails in Nairobi, 17 years later. Nairobi is currently reputed to have a grater density of Mercedes Benz vehicles per square kilometre, than London. Many more Kenyans in general own a wide variety of classy vehicles of one kind of another, than they did 17 years ago. There has also been rapid growth in hawking in this country over the last 11 years. Products ranging from clothing, brand new or used, to electronics, are readily retailed, a sound indication of high impulsive consumer expenditure. This consumerism and it’s preference for foreign products, has been the regrettable cause of the collapse of local manufacturing concerns such as Kisumu Cotton Mills (KICOMI) and Rift Valley Textiles (RIVATEX), over the years. The massive consumer expenditure in Kenya, which has no long term benefit, requires to be converted to development expenditure for the long term benefit of this country. The highly risky and successful rescue mission of Israeli hostages from Uganda’s Entebbe airport by Israeli commandoes in 1976, ignited fierce gratitude, nationalism and patriotism, to the extent that Israelis reached into their pockets to contribute $ 3 million to a voluntary defense fund. The exchange rate in 1976 was seven Kenya shillings to one US dollar, which means that US $ 3 million in 1976, roughly equates to US $ 34 million in 2005, a figure marginally above the US $ 28.75 million we have helped Safaricom make in half a year. Were we to follow the Israeli example and reach into our pockets to contribute US $ 34 million to voluntarily revamp the education sector, infrastructure and the economy at large, this country would transform favourably remarkably. Michael Mundia Kamau