Blog - Page 11 of 1265

Home
Blog

Education

Kenya’s CBC Curriculum Reaches Senior School as First Cohort Transitions

Kenya’s education system reached a milestone it has been building towards since 2017: in January 2026, the pioneer cohort of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) formally transitioned into Senior School — the final three-year phase of basic education that replaces the old Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education structure. Approximately 876,000 learners entered Grade Ten across 3,412 public and private Senior Schools gazetted by the Ministry of Education, a moment that Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba described as “the moment theory becomes practice.”

The transition has been years in preparation and months in controversy. Critics ranging from teachers’ unions to university dons have questioned whether the country’s physical infrastructure, teacher capacity, and assessment systems are ready for a model that demands project-based learning, subject specialisation tracks, and continuous assessment rather than the single high-stakes final examination that defined the old Form Four system.

Three Pathways, Many Questions

Senior School under CBC offers learners three broad pathways: Arts and Sports Science, Social Sciences, and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Each pathway contains compulsory and elective subjects, and students are expected to select their pathway at the end of Grade Nine based on aptitude results, parental input, and career interest inventories conducted by school counsellors. The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) has designed a new Senior School Certificate to replace the KCSE, with continuous school-based assessments contributing 40 per cent of the final grade.

In practice, the pathway system has exposed acute resource disparities. A survey by the Kenya Secondary School Heads Association (KESSHA) conducted in March 2026 found that 61 per cent of public Senior Schools lack dedicated science laboratory equipment for STEM learners, and 44 per cent have fewer than three subject teachers per pathway. Schools in arid and semi-arid counties — including Turkana, Wajir, and Mandera — reported particularly severe shortfalls, with some institutions offering only one of the three pathways due to teacher and facility constraints.

“The curriculum on paper is excellent,” said KESSHA Chair Kahi Indimuli. “The curriculum on the ground in Turkana is a different matter. A child’s pathway should not be determined by what their school can afford to offer.”

Government Response and Investments

The Ministry of Education has countered that significant investments are under way. A Sh14 billion Senior School Infrastructure Fund, financed jointly by the national government and the World Bank, is constructing or refurbishing 1,800 science laboratories and 620 arts and sports facilities, with completion targeted for December 2026. An emergency teacher recruitment round in April 2026 added 12,400 specialist subject teachers to the payroll — though the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) acknowledges this represents roughly 60 per cent of the requirement.

The government has also deployed a digital learning package — tablets preloaded with CBC-aligned content from the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) — to 7,200 Senior Schools through an expanded partnership with Safaricom’s education division and Equity Group Foundation. In areas with reliable 5G or 4G connectivity, learners can access supplementary video lessons and peer-assessment tools through the Soma Link platform launched in February 2026.

Parents and Learners Navigate the New Terrain

For the learners themselves — who have grown up as what educators call the “CBC generation” — the Senior School transition brings a mix of excitement and anxiety. Grace Auma, 16, from Olympic Secondary School in Nairobi’s Kibera constituency, told ZaKenya.com she had chosen the Social Sciences pathway after her Grade Nine aptitude results pointed towards law and public policy. “My parents wanted me in STEM because they think it pays more. But the aptitude test showed my strengths, and my teacher helped me explain that to them,” she said.

University admission criteria under the new system remain a subject of active negotiation between the Ministry, KNEC, and the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS). A provisional framework published in May 2026 proposes minimum Senior School Certificate scores per pathway for various degree programmes, but university vice-chancellors have asked for more time to assess how the 40 per cent continuous assessment component will be standardised across schools of vastly different resources before they commit to fixed cut-offs.

The transition, in short, is a work in progress — but a consequential one. How the pioneer CBC class navigates Senior School will shape Kenya’s human capital development for a generation, and will determine whether a reform conceived with genuine ambition delivers on the promise of educating not just the head, but the hand and the heart.

Environment

UNEP Headquarters in Nairobi Launches Global Plastic Waste Treaty Implementation Hub

The United Nations Environment Programme’s Gigiri campus in Nairobi formally inaugurated its Global Plastic Waste Treaty Implementation Hub on 25 June 2026, a specialist unit charged with supporting the 175 signatory nations of the landmark Busan Plastics Treaty as they translate international commitments into domestic law, industry regulation, and waste-management infrastructure.

The hub, housed in a newly refurbished wing of the UNEP complex, brings together 48 technical staff drawn from environmental law, polymer chemistry, waste economics, and development finance. It will serve as the operational nerve centre for treaty monitoring, capacity-building, and dispute resolution — a role that cements Nairobi’s position as the administrative capital of global environmental governance alongside Geneva and New York.

Kenya’s Strategic Position

The decision to site the hub in Nairobi rather than Geneva or Bonn was itself a diplomatic achievement for Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which lobbied aggressively through the EAC bloc and the Africa Group of Negotiators during the final Busan conference sessions in late 2024. Cabinet Secretary Alfred Mutua, who attended the inauguration alongside Environment CS Soipan Tuya, described the outcome as “proof that Africa is no longer a venue for delivering decisions taken elsewhere — we are now where the decisions are made.”

UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen, speaking via video link from Geneva, credited Kenya’s domestic environmental record — particularly its 2017 single-use plastics ban and subsequent enforcement — as a factor in the selection. “Nations look to Kenya and ask: how did you do it? That practical credibility matters enormously when we are trying to persuade governments that plastics transition is achievable,” she said.

For the local economy, the hub brings an estimated Sh2.8 billion annually in direct expenditure, including salaries, contractor fees, and procurement, according to a Nairobi City County economic assessment. A further multiplier effect is expected in hospitality, transportation, and professional services as the hub draws delegations from signatory nations throughout the year.

What the Hub Will Do

The Implementation Hub has three primary functions. First, it will maintain the treaty’s National Action Plan registry, reviewing and scoring the plans submitted by all 175 signatories against agreed benchmarks on production caps, extended producer responsibility schemes, and recycling-rate targets. Second, it will operate a technical assistance fund — currently capitalised at USD 340 million from contributions by the EU, Japan, and Canada — to help lower-income countries build collection and sorting infrastructure. Third, it will coordinate the treaty’s scientific panel, a body of 60 independent researchers who will report annually on the global plastic mass balance.

“Africa generates 17 per cent of the world’s plastic waste but processes less than four per cent of its own recycling,” said Dr Jacqueline Kimani, the Kenyan scientist appointed as the hub’s inaugural Director. “Our first priority is ensuring the technical assistance fund flows to where the infrastructure gap is widest — and that means sub-Saharan Africa must not be treated as an afterthought.”

Domestic Implications for Kenya

Kenya’s hosting role brings both prestige and scrutiny. Environmental auditors from the hub will be among the first to review Kenya’s own National Action Plan, due for submission by December 2026. Domestic critics have noted persistent challenges: plastic litter remains acute along the coast and in Nairobi’s informal settlements, a deposit-return scheme piloted in Kisumu and Mombasa in 2025 has seen only partial uptake, and plastic recycling capacity nationally stands at roughly 18 per cent of collected waste volumes.

The National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) Director-General Mamo Boru Mamo acknowledged the gaps but framed them as solvable. “Hosting the hub gives us access to technical assistance and financing that Kenya can use to close those gaps faster. We will not exempt ourselves from scrutiny — we will use the scrutiny as an engine,” he told journalists at the Gigiri event.

The inauguration coincided with a broader moment of momentum for Kenya’s environmental diplomacy: the country currently chairs the UNEA Bureau, holds a seat on the Loss and Damage Fund board established after COP28, and has submitted a bid to host the Africa Climate Summit’s permanent secretariat. For President Ruto, who has made climate leadership a signature foreign-policy theme since his speech at COP27, the Plastic Hub opening offers a tangible milestone ahead of what promises to be an intense 2027 electoral season.

Arts & Entertainment

Kenya’s Comedy Scene Explodes Online as YouTube Stars Draw Millions of Views

Kenya’s online comedy scene has entered a phase of explosive growth in 2026 that industry observers are describing as a structural shift in the country’s entertainment landscape — one that is transferring audience power, advertising revenue, and cultural influence from traditional broadcast media to a new generation of digital-native creators who are reaching millions of Kenyans on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram without a television studio, a production budget, or a network gatekeeper in sight.

The numbers tell a striking story. Kenya now has 17 YouTube channels focused primarily on comedy or comedy-adjacent content — sketch, satire, reaction, and lifestyle — that have each surpassed one million subscribers. The top five among them collectively registered 340 million views in the first quarter of 2026 alone. The leading channel, Nairobi-based sketch collective Churchill Show Online — an independent digital spin-off from the long-running NTV programme — crossed 3.2 million subscribers in April, making it one of the ten most-subscribed YouTube channels in all of sub-Saharan Africa.

The Creators Driving the Wave

Several individual creators have emerged as cultural figures in their own right. Makena Njeri, who performs as “Makena Goes Viral” and whose weekly sketch series satirising Nairobi’s middle-class aspirations has drawn comparisons to the early work of US creator Issa Rae, now employs a production team of 11 people and commands brand partnership fees that her management says begin at Ksh 800,000 per integrated video. Her April sketch lampooning the contradictions of the SHA health insurance rollout — a bureaucratic nightmare rendered as a medical drama — received 4.7 million views in its first two weeks.

Felix Odhiambo, better known as “Otieno wa Digital” — whose character work around a village elder navigating smartphones, M-Pesa, and 5G with bewildered dignity has made him the most-shared Kenyan comedian on WhatsApp — has leveraged his platform into a merchandise operation, a podcast, and a live touring show that sold out Nairobi’s Carnivore Grounds for three consecutive nights in March. His monthly YouTube revenue, disclosed in a candid interview with the Business Daily, exceeds that of most senior news anchors at established broadcast networks.

The Business Behind the Laughs

The financial architecture of Kenya’s YouTube comedy boom is more sophisticated than it might appear. The most successful creators operate what are effectively small media companies, managing ad revenue, brand deals, merchandise sales, live events, and increasingly, content licensing arrangements with international platforms. Safaricom’s marketing department has become one of the sector’s biggest spenders, recognising that a 90-second integration in a Kenyan comedy video reaching two million viewers delivers measurably better brand recall than a 30-second television spot.

The Kenya Revenue Authority has also noticed. KRA’s digital economy taxation unit, established in 2024, has begun engaging YouTube creators directly — requiring those earning above a monthly threshold to register and remit income tax. The compliance rate among top-tier creators is reported to be higher than sceptics predicted, partly because the creators’ own brand transparency makes concealment difficult, and partly because, as one creator told ZaKenya.com with a wry smile, “after everything the Gen Z movement said about accountability, it would look very bad to dodge your taxes.”

Challenging Traditional Media

The growth of digital comedy is not occurring in a vacuum — it is actively reshaping Kenya’s traditional broadcast landscape. TV ratings for comedy programming have declined on several channels, and at least two major network comedy shows have been cancelled in the past 18 months, with executives privately citing the online competition. Some broadcasters have responded by partnering with digital creators rather than competing with them: Citizen TV’s pilot programme of commissioning YouTube-proven comedians to develop broadcast formats has yielded two new shows in 2026.

For young Kenyans — a demographic that has shown through the 2024 protests that it is capable of organising with extraordinary speed and creativity when motivated — the comedy ecosystem serves a function that goes beyond entertainment. In a political and economic environment characterised by austerity, uncertainty about the 2027 elections, and institutional distrust, laughter has become a legitimate form of public commentary. “Comedy is how Kenyans have always told truth to power,” said media researcher Dr. Njambi Njoroge of the University of Nairobi’s School of Journalism. “The platform has changed. The impulse has not.”

Arts & Entertainment

Nairobi Gallery Week 2026: East African Contemporary Art Takes Centre Stage

Nairobi Gallery Week returned for its fourth edition last week, transforming the city’s Westlands, Kilimani, and CBD gallery corridor into a ten-day showcase of contemporary visual art that drew collectors, curators, and critics from across Africa, Europe, North America, and the Gulf — and which, by most accounts, marked a coming-of-age moment for East Africa’s visual arts ecosystem.

The 2026 edition featured 60 artists from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Ethiopia, exhibiting across 18 venues ranging from the flagship Circle Art Agency on Peponi Road to converted warehouses in Industrial Area and pop-up installations at the Nairobi National Museum. Attendance over the ten days exceeded 28,000 visitors, with international visitors accounting for approximately 35 per cent of the total — a significant increase from the 22 per cent recorded in 2024.

Art That Speaks to the Moment

This year’s theme, Tunaunda Nchi Mpya — Swahili for “We Are Building a New Country” — was chosen before the programme was finalised, but proved uncannily resonant given Kenya’s continuing political ferment in the wake of the 2024 protest movement. Several of the most discussed works engaged directly with that moment, including a monumental textile installation by Nairobi-based Zawadi Aoko that wove together printed M-Pesa transaction receipts — accumulated from the families of protest victims — into a ten-metre hanging that dominated the entrance hall of the Kenya National Theatre annex.

Ugandan painter Ronah Mutebi exhibited a series of large-format oils depicting the bodies of East African lakes shrinking under climate pressure — landscapes that were simultaneously documentary and elegiac. Ethiopian photographer Mekdes Hailu’s series on women small-scale traders in Addis Ababa and Nairobi drew a particular crowd, with two prints selling to European institutional collectors at prices above USD 8,000 on opening night.

Kenyan sculptor Rahab Njoki, whose work in reclaimed urban waste has been quietly developing for a decade, experienced what the arts community tends to call a breakout week: her three pieces at the Paa ya Paa Gallery sold within 24 hours and generated approaches from galleries in Berlin and Dubai. “I have been making work for twelve years,” Njoki told ZaKenya.com. “This week has changed what is possible for the next twelve.”

The Market Dimension

For all its cultural seriousness, Gallery Week is also explicitly a commercial event, and the 2026 edition generated sales that organisers say significantly exceeded previous records. Circle Art Agency Director Kuona Trust confirmed that collective sales across member galleries exceeded Ksh 85 million over the ten days — a figure that includes both primary sales of new work and secondary market transactions brokered through the event’s dedicated collector programme.

The growing presence of Gulf collectors — particularly from the UAE and Saudi Arabia, where newly established art institutions are actively building collections of contemporary African work — was a notable feature of this year’s edition. Representatives from the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the newly established Riyadh Contemporary Museum attended as registered collectors, and at least one major institutional purchase by a Gulf museum was confirmed on the event’s final day, though the gallery declined to disclose the specific work or price.

Infrastructure, Policy, and the Road Ahead

The success of Gallery Week has reignited debate about the need for dedicated arts infrastructure in Nairobi. Kenya currently has no public contemporary art museum of international standing — a gap that advocates argue places the city at a disadvantage relative to Lagos, with its burgeoning private museum scene, and Kigali, which has made arts infrastructure a deliberate pillar of its urban development strategy.

Nairobi County Governor Johnson Sakaja attended the opening night and committed to engaging with the arts sector on a proposed Cultural Precinct concept that would cluster galleries, artist studios, and performance venues in a designated zone within the CBD. The proposal has been before county government for three years and has yet to move beyond a feasibility study. Gallery Week organisers expressed cautious optimism while making clear they have heard similar commitments before.

“Nairobi is already the de facto art capital of East Africa,” said Circle Art Agency founder Marko Magni. “The question is whether the infrastructure will catch up with the reality before the opportunity moves elsewhere.”

Arts & Entertainment

Kenyan Novelist Wanjiku Kamau Wins Commonwealth Literature Prize 2026

Wanjiku Kamau, a 34-year-old Nairobi-born novelist and former secondary school teacher, has been awarded the Commonwealth Literature Prize 2026 for her debut novel The Weight of Waiting — a multi-generational saga set across Nairobi’s Eastlands, rural Murang’a, and the Kenyan diaspora in Manchester that the prize judges described as “a masterwork of contemporary African fiction, written with the precision of a poet and the moral seriousness of a great humanist.”

The announcement was made in London during a ceremony attended by literary figures from across the 56 Commonwealth member states. Kamau, who was in Nairobi at the time, received the news at her home in Ruiru before joining the ceremony virtually to deliver a brief but widely shared acceptance speech in which she spoke in both English and Kikuyu. The prize carries a cash award of £25,000 and is widely regarded as among the most prestigious in English-language literature outside the Man Booker Prize.

The Novel and Its Themes

The Weight of Waiting, published by Nairobi-based Kwani? Press in partnership with Penguin Random House Africa in September 2025, follows three generations of the Waweru family from the Emergency period of the 1950s through to the aftermath of Kenya’s 2024 youth-led protests. Critics have particularly praised Kamau’s structural ambition — the novel moves between timelines and continents with remarkable control — and her unflinching examination of how political violence, migration, and economic precarity reshape family bonds across generations.

The novel’s closing section, set during the 2024 Finance Bill protests, has drawn particular attention for its portrayal of a young woman who must decide between leaving for the UK on a visa her family has spent years saving for, or remaining in Nairobi to join the movement that feels, for the first time, like it might change something. The passage has been widely shared on Kenyan social media and is taught in at least two Nairobi universities.

“I wrote this book because I kept seeing the same story told about Kenya from outside — the corruption, the poverty, the violence — without the interior life, without the love and the wit and the extraordinary ordinary endurance,” Kamau said in her acceptance speech. “I wanted to write the Kenya I grew up in. I hope readers everywhere find something in it that belongs to them too.”

A Rising Literary Voice

Kamau studied literature at the University of Nairobi before completing a master’s degree at the University of Edinburgh on a Commonwealth scholarship. She returned to Nairobi in 2017 and spent six years teaching English and Literature at a public secondary school in Mathare — an experience she has described in interviews as fundamental to her understanding of language and storytelling. She began writing The Weight of Waiting on weekends and during school holidays, completing the first draft in 2022.

Her win continues a rich tradition of Kenyan literary achievement on the international stage that stretches from Ngugi wa Thiong’o through Grace Ogot and, more recently, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, whose novel Dust brought Kenya sustained global critical attention a decade ago. Kenya’s literary community has rallied with characteristic warmth around Kamau’s win: Kwani? Trust Director Billy Kahora called it “the most exciting moment for Kenyan literature in a decade.”

Impact and Recognition at Home

The Kenyan government moved quickly to associate itself with the achievement. President Ruto’s office released a congratulatory statement within hours of the announcement, and Cabinet Secretary for Arts, Culture and Heritage Stella Ndung’u confirmed that Kamau would be awarded the Presidential Order of Cultural Achievement — a distinction that, somewhat embarrassingly for the government, had not been conferred on any artist since 2021.

Publishers are reporting a sharp surge in demand for The Weight of Waiting across East Africa following the announcement. The Nairobi-based Books First chain confirmed that all 14 of its branches had sold out within 24 hours of the prize being announced, and Kwani? Press has ordered a second print run of 50,000 copies — the largest in the publisher’s 20-year history. International rights, previously sold to publishers in France and Germany, are now under negotiation in 11 further territories.

Arts & Entertainment

Nairobi Jazz Festival 2026 Draws 80,000 Attendees Over Three Days

The Nairobi Jazz Festival concluded its 2026 edition at Uhuru Gardens last weekend having drawn a record 80,000 attendees across three days of performances that ranged from contemporary American jazz to Congolese rumba, Ethiopian azmari fusion, and homegrown Kenyan benga-jazz crossover — cementing the event’s status as the premier live music festival in East and Central Africa.

The attendance figure, confirmed by festival organisers Herbal Music Kenya on Monday, represents a 23 per cent increase over the 65,000 who attended the 2024 edition — the previous record — and comfortably exceeds the 75,000 target that the festival’s backers had set at the start of the year. The event sold out its Ksh 3,500 three-day passes within 48 hours of going on sale in March, with single-day tickets for the Saturday headliner programme selling out within six hours.

The Performances: World Class Meets Nairobi’s Own

This year’s headlining international acts included US saxophonist Kamasi Washington, whose extended set on Friday evening has already generated extensive social media discussion for its intensity and the rapport he built with what he described from the stage as “the most alive festival audience I have ever played for.” South African pianist Nduduzo Makhathini anchored the Saturday afternoon programme, followed by Mali’s Fatoumata Diawara in a performance that drew the largest single-set crowd of the weekend. Cuban ensemble Chucho Valdés & Afro-Cuban Messengers closed Saturday with a two-hour set that had the front third of the audience dancing continuously for the final 45 minutes.

But for many attendees, the most memorable performances of the weekend were homegrown. The Nairobi Horns Project, who opened the festival on Friday morning to an audience of perhaps 3,000 early arrivals, had grown to a crowd of over 12,000 by the end of their 70-minute set — a word-of-mouth surge that veterans of Nairobi’s live music scene described as unprecedented. Afro-jazz vocalist Asha Bhosle Ochieng, performing under her stage name Simply Asha, debuted new material from her forthcoming album Mtoni wa Moyoni to a rapturous response.

Economic Impact and Cultural Significance

The festival’s economic footprint extended well beyond ticket sales. Nairobi County’s Culture and Events Office estimated that the three-day event generated approximately Ksh 2.8 billion in direct economic activity, accounting for hotel bookings, restaurant spending, transport, and retail sales in the Langata and Kibera neighbourhoods surrounding Uhuru Gardens. Visitors from Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Ethiopia accounted for a notable share of premium ticket buyers, highlighting the festival’s growing role as a driver of cultural tourism in the EAC region.

For Kenya’s creative economy advocates, the figures carry significance beyond the commercial: they represent a counter-narrative to the austerity discourse that has dominated public conversation since Kenya’s IMF programme was confirmed in 2024. “When 80,000 people spend their weekends at Uhuru Gardens listening to jazz, that is an economic sector the government should be nurturing with the same seriousness it applies to tea and tourism,” said festival co-founder Muthoni Drummer Queen, whose vision for Nairobi as a serious live music capital has been the driving force behind the event since its inaugural edition in 2012.

Organisation and Infrastructure

The 2026 edition also saw improvements in logistics that addressed complaints from previous years. The introduction of a cashless payment system — run exclusively through M-Pesa’s tap-to-pay infrastructure — significantly reduced queuing at food and merchandise vendors. A dedicated shuttle service from Nairobi CBD, Westlands, and Eastlands reduced private vehicle congestion, with an estimated 18,000 festival-goers using the shuttle option. Medical teams from the Kenya Red Cross and the newly operational SHA (Social Health Authority) rapid-response unit were stationed across the venue, and festival organisers reported zero medical emergencies requiring hospitalisation over the three-day run.

Planning for the 2027 edition is already under way, with festival organisers and the Nairobi County government in discussions about whether to expand to a four-day format and add a second stage to accommodate demand that this year’s venue configuration could not meet. An application has also been submitted to UNESCO’s Creative Cities of Music network, which organisers hope will further elevate Nairobi’s international profile as a music destination.

Arts & Entertainment

Kenya’s Film Industry Booms as Netflix Commissions Six New Kenyan Productions

Netflix has commissioned six new Kenyan productions in the first half of 2026 — its largest single-country content investment in East Africa to date — in a move that industry insiders say marks a decisive turning point for a local film and television sector that has been gathering momentum for several years but has historically struggled to attract international capital at scale.

The six commissions span two feature films, two limited drama series, and two documentary projects, with a combined production budget estimated by industry sources at over USD 18 million — a figure that dwarfs previous international streaming investment in Kenyan content and is expected to generate employment for hundreds of writers, directors, cinematographers, actors, set designers, and technical crew across a 24-month production cycle.

The Commissions and Their Creators

Netflix confirmed three of the projects publicly at a Nairobi press briefing attended by ZaKenya.com. The most anticipated is Mathare, a six-part drama series written and directed by filmmaker Likarion Wainaina — whose debut feature Supa Modo was Kenya’s first submission to the Academy Awards — set against the backdrop of a Nairobi informal settlement navigating the aftermath of political unrest. A feature film tentatively titled The Lake Crossers, examining migration and identity through the lens of the East African Rift Valley’s communities, is being co-produced with a South African studio. The third confirmed project is a feature documentary on Kenya’s preparation for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, following three athletes — a marathon runner, a 400m hurdler, and a wrestler — over the next two years.

Netflix’s Vice President for Sub-Saharan Africa, Adaeze Nwosu, said Kenya’s growing storytelling infrastructure had made it a natural focus for expanded investment. “Kenyan writers rooms, Kenyan directors, Kenyan cinematographers — there is a depth of talent here that was always present but is now visible to global audiences because the distribution platform has arrived,” Nwosu told reporters. “These six commissions are the beginning of a much longer partnership.”

The Ecosystem Behind the Boom

The Netflix commissions reflect — and will further accelerate — an ecosystem that has been quietly maturing over the past decade. The Kenya Film Commission (KFC) reports that registered film production companies grew from 312 in 2020 to 847 in 2025. Three new professional-grade studios have opened in Nairobi since 2023, including the KFC’s own Eastlands Production Hub, built with government funding and equipped with post-production facilities that previously required Kenyan filmmakers to travel to South Africa or Egypt.

The growth of digital platforms — Showmax, Netflix, Prime Video, and local streaming service Buni Media — has created an insatiable appetite for African-language content. Kenya’s multilingual landscape, with productions possible in Swahili, Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya, and English, gives it a uniquely broad market reach across East and Central Africa.

The Kenya Revenue Authority has also been drawn into the picture: KRA’s film desk, established in 2024, provides tax incentive certificates to international productions shooting in Kenya that employ at least 60 per cent Kenyan crew — a structure credited with attracting five major international productions in 2025 alone, including a BBC nature documentary series filmed in the Maasai Mara.

Young Talent and the Gen Z Creative Wave

Industry observers note that Kenya’s Gen Z generation — politically awakened by the 2024 Finance Bill protests — has channelled significant creative energy into film, animation, and digital content. Several of the writers attached to the new Netflix commissions are under 30, many of them self-taught through YouTube tutorials and online courses before gaining professional credits through short film circuits.

“The protest generation did not just go to parliament,” said film producer Judy Kibinge, one of Kenya’s most respected industry veterans. “They also went into edit suites and writers’ rooms. The urgency and the anger and the hope you see in the best new Kenyan scripts right now — it comes from that same place.”

With Nollywood’s dominance of African screen culture increasingly challenged by output from Kenya, South Africa, and Ethiopia, the industry’s centre of gravity on the continent appears to be shifting. Kenya’s six Netflix commissions are the clearest signal yet that the country is staking a serious claim to be a leading voice in that reshaping.

Education

Girl Child Education Drive: Kenya Achieves Gender Parity in Secondary School Enrolment

Kenya has achieved a landmark milestone in its pursuit of educational equity: for the first time since independence, the country’s secondary school enrolment figures show an equal proportion of girls and boys — a parity index of 1.00 recorded in the 2025/2026 academic year, according to official data released by the Ministry of Education last month.

The figure, confirmed in the Ministry’s Annual Education Statistics Report, shows 2.87 million girls enrolled in Forms One through Four alongside 2.86 million boys — a reversal of a gap that as recently as 2015 showed girls trailing boys in secondary enrolment by nearly 12 percentage points. The shift places Kenya among only a handful of sub-Saharan African nations to have achieved this benchmark, alongside Rwanda, Namibia, and South Africa.

A Decade of Deliberate Policy

Education analysts are careful to note that parity in enrolment does not automatically translate into equality in outcomes — completion rates, quality of learning, and post-secondary transition figures tell a more complex story. But they equally acknowledge that reaching this enrolment milestone required a sustained, multi-faceted policy effort that many observers doubted was achievable within a decade.

The interventions credited with driving the shift include the abolition of secondary school examination fees for girls in 2019, the expansion of the sanitary towel programme to cover all public secondary schools from 2021, the construction of dedicated girls’ dormitories in 1,200 schools in ASAL counties between 2020 and 2024, and — critically — sustained government messaging through the Inua Msichana campaign that framed girls’ education as a family economic investment rather than a charity.

“We did not get here by accident,” said Education CS Julius Ogamba, announcing the figures at a ceremony marking the International Day of the Girl. “We got here because successive governments made this a priority and because communities across Kenya changed their minds about what girls deserve.”

The Role of Bursaries and Mentorship

The government’s constituency bursary system, reformed in 2023 to ring-fence 50 per cent of allocations for female beneficiaries, is widely cited as a critical financial lever. In counties such as Kilifi, Kwale, and Marsabit — where early marriage and the cost of school fees historically drove girls out of the system — the bursary reforms coincided with measurable jumps in female enrolment of between 15 and 19 per cent in a single academic year.

Equally significant has been the proliferation of peer mentorship programmes run by organisations including Educate!, Girl Effect, and the Kenyan government’s own Vijana na Elimu initiative, which pairs female secondary students with professional mentors — predominantly young women who have navigated higher education and entered professional careers. Program evaluations suggest that girls with a mentor are 31 per cent less likely to drop out before sitting KCSE.

Grace Akinyi, a Form Three student at Siaya Girls’ High School, told ZaKenya.com that her mentor — a software developer based in Nairobi — had fundamentally changed her perception of what was possible. “She calls me every two weeks. She was the first person I knew personally who had gone to university from a village like mine,” Grace said. “Before I met her, secondary school felt like a destination. Now it feels like a departure point.”

The Next Frontier: Retention and Quality

The achievement is tempered by data showing that while girls are entering secondary school in equal numbers to boys, their completion rates remain lower. The Ministry’s own figures show that girls account for 49.2 per cent of KCSE candidates — slightly below the 50 per cent enrolment share — indicating that a meaningful proportion drop out before sitting the final examination, disproportionately in counties where teenage pregnancy rates remain elevated.

Advocacy groups are pressing the government to extend its re-admission policy — which theoretically allows girls who fall pregnant to return to school after delivery — with real enforcement and stigma-reduction support at the school level. “Parity in enrolment is a headline,” said Daisy Amdany, Executive Director of the Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW). “Our headline should be parity in KCSE completion. We are not there yet, and the 2027 election cycle should not let politicians rest on this milestone before that work is done.”

The Ministry says a dedicated retention strategy — including expanded school-based counselling and revised teacher training guidelines on handling pregnant students and young mothers — will be piloted in 10 counties from January 2027.

Education

Kenya’s School Feeding Programme Expanded to Reach 4 Million Primary Students

Kenya’s National School Meals Programme has received its largest expansion since its inception, with the government committing to feed four million primary school pupils across 47 counties by the end of December 2026 — a scale-up that education officials say will directly address stubbornly high absenteeism rates in food-insecure regions and help consolidate enrolment gains made over the past decade.

The expanded programme, announced jointly by the Ministry of Education and the State Department for Agriculture in Nairobi last month, comes with a revised Ksh 18.7 billion budget for the 2026/2027 financial year, representing a 34 per cent increase over the previous allocation. Crucially, at least 65 per cent of the food commodities — including maize, beans, vegetable oil, and fresh produce — will be sourced directly from smallholder farmers registered with the Kenya National Farmers’ Federation, replacing a model that relied heavily on imported or centrally procured staples.

From Imported to Home-Grown

The shift to local sourcing is the programme’s most significant structural change and reflects both a practical response to currency volatility — the shilling’s weakness made imported commodities increasingly expensive — and a deliberate policy choice to create market linkages for Kenya’s 3.6 million smallholder farming households.

“Every meal served in a Kenyan school should be grown by a Kenyan farmer,” said Agriculture CS Mutahi Kagwe at the launch event held at Kiambogo Primary School in Nyeri County. “This is not charity to children. It is a supply contract to farmers, a nutrition investment in students, and a school enrolment driver all at once.”

The World Food Programme (WFP), which has partnered with the Kenyan government on school meals since 2009, praised the home-grown model. WFP Kenya Representative Honora Blake said the agency had committed technical support for the procurement and logistics system over a three-year period. “The evidence from similar programmes in Ghana and Senegal shows that home-grown school feeding raises local farm incomes by between 20 and 30 per cent in the first two years,” Blake told reporters. “Kenya is now building one of the most ambitious versions of this model on the continent.”

Impact on Attendance and Learning

Independent evaluations of earlier phases of Kenya’s school feeding programme have consistently demonstrated its impact on attendance. A 2025 study by the African Population and Health Research Centre found that schools in the programme’s coverage zone recorded 22 per cent lower chronic absenteeism than comparable schools outside it, with the gap most pronounced among girls in arid and semi-arid counties — areas still recovering from the extended drought that preceded the El Nino rains of 2023 and 2024.

Head teacher at Turkana’s Lodwar Township Primary, John Ekeno, said the feeding programme had been transformative for his school. “Before the feeding programme, I had children who would walk four kilometres to school and then sit unable to concentrate because they had eaten nothing since the previous afternoon,” he said. “Now attendance on days when food is served is nearly 100 per cent. On days when supplies are delayed, you can see the difference immediately.”

The new expansion specifically targets 22 counties in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) category where both food insecurity and school dropout rates are highest. In these counties, the programme will operate five days a week throughout the academic year, with a supplementary take-home ration for girls from the most vulnerable households — a component designed in consultation with gender advocacy groups and widely credited in similar programmes with reducing the burden on families who might otherwise keep daughters home to assist with domestic labour.

Logistics and Accountability

Delivering fresh produce to remote schools has historically been the programme’s Achilles heel. The government is addressing this with a network of 94 county-level aggregation hubs that will store, inspect, and distribute commodities, monitored through a real-time digital dashboard accessible to parents and school management committees. Payment to farmers will be processed through M-Pesa within 14 days of delivery verification — a system designed with Safaricom’s enterprise unit to cut the delays that previously discouraged smallholders from participating.

Civil society organisations have welcomed the expansion but are watching the accountability mechanisms closely. “The vision is excellent,” said Haki Elimu Executive Director Jane Mugo. “The test will be whether the Ksh 18.7 billion reaches the plate of children in Mandera and Samburu or gets consumed by the procurement chain along the way.”

Education

Private School Fees Crisis: Parents Demand Cap as Costs Exceed Ksh 600,000 per Year

The cost of private secondary education in Kenya has spiralled to levels that even well-paid professionals describe as unsustainable, with fees at the country’s most prestigious institutions now exceeding Ksh 600,000 per academic year — a figure that surpasses the annual gross earnings of many civil servants and teachers whose children these schools once served.

A survey conducted by the Kenya Parents Association (KPA) across 45 private schools in Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu between April and June 2026 found that average boarding fees at top-tier private secondary schools rose by 18 per cent in 2025 alone, outpacing Kenya’s official inflation rate of 6.4 per cent by a wide margin. At the upper end of the market — schools offering the British A-Level, International Baccalaureate, or the American AP curriculum — annual fees routinely exceed Ksh 700,000 when activity fees, uniform costs, and compulsory levies are included.

The Middle Class Squeeze

KPA Chairperson Nicholas Maiyo has written to Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba demanding that the Ministry of Education invoke Section 34 of the Basic Education Act to gazette a fee review framework for private schools. “We are not asking the government to run private schools,” Maiyo said at a press conference held outside parliament buildings in Nairobi. “We are asking it to ensure that the private education sector does not operate as an unregulated cartel that extracts rents from families who have no alternative.”

The KPA’s data reveals a troubling pattern: fees at the top 20 private schools have more than doubled in real terms since 2019, driven by a combination of post-pandemic infrastructure investment, the cost of recruiting internationally certified teachers, currency depreciation making imported learning materials more expensive, and, critics argue, simple market exploitation of a captive clientele.

For many families, the calculation has become brutal. David Kariuki, a senior manager at a Nairobi-based logistics firm earning Ksh 180,000 a month, told ZaKenya.com that he and his wife collectively spend Ksh 1.2 million a year to keep two children in private school. “We have stopped saving for retirement. We have stopped taking family holidays. We are essentially living to pay school fees,” he said. “And the school has just announced a further 12 per cent increase for January 2027.”

Schools Defend Costs, Cite Global Standards

Private school proprietors counter that the figures reflect genuine operational costs rather than profiteering. The Kenya Association of Private Schools (KAPS) argues that rising teacher salaries — necessary to retain staff who could otherwise seek positions in the Gulf or British independent sector — along with technology upgrades mandated by the CBC transition and the cost of maintaining the kind of sporting and creative facilities that parents demand, leave little room for fee reductions.

“Our parents choose us because we offer results and an environment that public schools cannot currently match,” said the principal of one prominent Nairobi school, who asked not to be named. “If the government wants fees to come down, the fastest route is to invest in public schools so that parents have a genuine alternative.”

That argument cuts little ice with parents who feel trapped. Several families ZaKenya.com spoke to had pulled children from private schools in the past 18 months, only to find that nearby national schools were overcrowded following the influx of the CBC Junior Secondary cohort and operating under significant resource pressure due to the government’s IMF-linked austerity commitments.

Political Pressure Mounts

The fees crisis has acquired a political dimension as the 2027 general election approaches. Several opposition MPs have tabled a Private Educational Institutions (Fee Regulation) Bill that would require all private schools to publish audited fee justifications and obtain Ministry approval for any annual increase exceeding five per cent above the consumer price index. The bill is currently before the Education Committee.

Cabinet Secretary Ogamba has been non-committal, saying only that “the Ministry is studying all legislative options” while insisting that the government’s primary focus remains strengthening the public school system. For the thousands of parents currently receiving fee increment notices for the 2027 academic year, that answer is unlikely to suffice.

Page 1 of 8

First

Last