Education chiefs have right to eat extra donor money

Free primary education will never die. This is despite the many people who wish it ill because of their individual and even national jealousies towards the Kenyan success story that is a shining world example.

Even if donors withhold all their funding to it, free primary education will go on without a burp. Prof Karega Mutahi, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education, being a man schooled in education, knew at once that he needed to call the bluff on the British for daring to withhold their measly Sh1.2 billion for textbooks and building classrooms.

The British are withholding only funding for free primary education out of jealousy because Kenyan children now speak better English than the natives of Middlesex, where children are born crying in the language.

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT’S MONEY — which is doled out like medicine over a period of five years — is not the lifeblood of the free primary education programme in Kenya. In fact, the British could keep their dole and the children would not miss a step to school.

Then there are the Americans, getting all dramatic over their Sh0.5 billion donation, again spread over five years. Free primary education can never be shaken by traditional American meanness.

First, much of the money the so-called donors provide does not provide education per se. It builds classrooms and buys wood and metals. Kenyan pupils are quite capable of studying in the wind, come rain or shine.

Secondly, textbooks are so yesterday, seeing that everybody is going into e-books, the Internet, computers and all that.

In fact, the government has restrained itself from shaming the donors for shouldering so little of the education budget, seeing that Britain, America, Canada, the Netherlands and Sweden have a primary responsibility to educate Kenyans. If Kenyan children turn into morons and torment the world, Kenya will not suffer. It is the donors’ loss.

In the financial year 2007/8 alone, when the government was forking out Sh15.1 billion for education, all the so-called donors hanging around Nairobi were bringing in a miserable Sh5.9 billion.

That same year, the donors were giving Kenya a miserable Sh1.4 billion for instructional materials in primary schools while the government was paying out Sh6.9 billion on that item alone.

For that, they want to lecture the ministry of Education staff about how not to take imprest, hold imaginary workshops or turn the whole free education thing into a profitable private enterprise.

Yet, the Government of Kenya foots 95 per cent of the total cost of education for 8.6 million Kenyan children. Prof Mutahi should have the donors know that what they bring is only baksheesh — the additional that in the time-honoured tradition of the Egyptians who invented the practice, is supposed to be eaten by the recipient.

When the donors bring their 5 per cent and a poor official uses it for poverty eradication in his house — that is still development. It is the reason donors are also called development partners. They bring partnership, and Kenyans do the self-development.

Any donor who allocates Sh130 million for capacity building — as the education sector did in 2007/8 — should not pretend to be shocked when they see high-rise buildings, new cars and acres of land suddenly in the possession of lowly individuals.

What capacity did they expect to build if not this, which allows people to secure their future for generations? Were it that there was no such incentive in working at the Ministry of Education, the place would be packed with empty desks and notices in the papers begging people to apply for jobs.

Kenyan officials have over time been careful to only develop themselves with the extra money donors provide, leaving the core funding for free primary education to do its work. A body of no less stature than the Parliamentary Public Accounts committee acknowledged this genius: As soon as the free primary education programme began, officials parcelled off some Sh622 million in 2004.

The following year, they upped the stakes and took away Sh1.2 billion, and then to Sh2.9 billion in 2006. The sated pecuniary appetites could only accommodate Sh415 million in 2007 and Sh420 million in 2008. It only lost Sh5.5 billion out of Sh100 billion in five years. That is a humble sum. Businesses generally allow for 10 per cent as contingency.

The pattern of consumption shows a striking level of honesty and repressed fiduciary appetites — where officials only take what they need without affecting the base. In fact, the donor ambitions of building more schools, providing more textbooks and suchlike are not what Kenyan children expect out of free primary education.

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