Education
One of Ruto and his ministers’ favourite tropes was education funding.
- In January, his then education minister said: “The government spends over 30% of its total revenue of the entire budget on matters education.”
- In February Ruto was in Japan and in April he was in Ghana, where he claimed that Kenya spent “KSh650 billion” (US$5 billion) every year on education.
- He also echoed his minister that “30% of our budget is in education”, claiming it was the “single largest” budget line.
- In June, he was in Garissa, north-east Kenya where he said: “We are providing KSh660 billion to cover for the education of all our children in Kenya.”
Let us set the record straight.
“The budget in its entirety includes county allocations, debt, consolidated fund services, the three arms of government …,” said Dr Moses Ngware, a senior researcher at the African Population and Health Research Center. He has a doctorate degree in the economics of education.
The Controller of Budget publishes annual reports on budget allocation and expenditure in Kenya.
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Education funding in Kenya (2021 – 2023) |
|||
|
Financial year |
2021/22 |
2022/23 |
2023/24 |
|
Education budget (KSh billion) |
527.29 |
568.22 |
689.4 |
|
Expenditure (KSh billion) |
508.17 |
499.6 |
666.08 |
|
Total national budget (KSh billion) |
3462.1 |
3671.56 |
4431.76 |
|
Education budget as a portion of Kenya’s budget |
15.23% |
15.48% |
15.56% |
Source: Controller of Budget report 2023/24
These are the facts:
- Education doesn’t take up 30% or a third of the budget – just 15.6%.
- Education is not the largest single item in the national budget. Kenya spent KSh1.597 trillion ($12.5 billion) on public debt in 2023/24.
- Education is the largest item in the budgets of ministries, departments and agencies, not the total national budget, which also includes debt servicing and county allocations.
- Yes, Kenya spent KSh666.08 billion ($4.76 billion) on education in the 2023/24 financial year.
Jobs
In September 2024, Ruto was in Germany, where he signed a labour agreement with the government.
He then spoke with the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, claiming: “… the agreement will unlock 250,000 job opportunities for young people from Kenya.”
The news was widely reported. It was a talking point that the president first used in May 2023 when he hosted German chancellor Olaf Scholz in Nairobi.
But Germany’s interior ministry swiftly dismissed the report.
“This information is clearly false. The agreement between Germany and Kenya does not include any numbers or quotas of skilled workers who will have the opportunity to work in Germany,’’ the ministry said on X.
‘’All applicants must fulfill the strict requirements of the German Skilled Immigration Act,’’ it added.
The spin on the figures and the rebuttal from the German government forced the BBC, the British broadcaster, to correct its widely shared story.
But the government wasn’t done with its spin. On 17 September, diaspora affairs principal secretary Roseline Njogu said: “The debate over whether the number is 250,000 or 300,000 or 10,000 is moot, because it is as many as can qualify.”
Quick facts:
- It was wrong for the president to attach a figure to an agreement that didn’t have one.
- 250,000 is the total number of foreign workers needed in Germany, not just from Kenya. Spinning may work for some time, but it can quickly get embarrassing.
‘Worst’ or ‘best’ stock market?
In April, Ruto said in Ghana that the Nairobi Securities Exchange was “the top-performing stock exchange in Africa today”.
The information appeared to have come from a news report by Bloomberg, a US business publisher. The report said that “Kenyan stocks… [had] gone from the world’s worst performers in 2023 to the best this year”.
The same publication had ranked the Kenyan stock market as “the world’s worst performer” in October 2023.
What changed between October 2023 and April 2024?
The untold story was that in the months to October 2023, there were foreign outflows from the Kenyan bourse, and the shilling lost value. The downward slide continued until January 2024 as the country hurtled towards a debt repayment deadline. Then the debt was paid, and the shilling recovered, and the market rebounded.
It was smart politics for Ruto to latch on to the stock market performance to signal progress, but there’s a catch. It is risky governance rhetoric, because stock market movements are often influenced by speculation, global events, and short-term trends, making them an unreliable gauge of broader economic well-being.
The market ignores real issues such as unemployment, inequality and living standards, and risks putting the interests of investors ahead of the well-being of ordinary citizens.
In terms of messaging, if the tide turns and performance falls, it will be difficult for Ruto to avoid taking the blame for the market crash. It will be hard for him to talk his way out of something for which he has taken credit but over which he has little control.