Education chiefs have right to eat extra donor money

EDUCATION IS SUPPOSED TO BE A struggle through hardships — learning without classrooms, sitting on the floor and scribbling exercises in the sand. Building too many classrooms and buying too many textbooks could make the children’s brain soft. It is the main reason the government — until 2003 — was allocating as much as 4.4 per cent of its entire budget to development to the Ministry of Education. The figure has never exceeded 10 per cent.

Now donors believe that they can come and turn classrooms into replicas of what they have back home. It is called neo-colonialism, and it must be resisted at all costs. As for the investigations the donors are demanding, Kenya can teach them a thing or two about investigations.

Form a commission of inquiry, set up public hearings at which sizzling dramas are played out, and then shelve the report. Let us see if that makes anyone happy.

kwamchetsi@formandcontent.co.ke