Kenya Research Report 2: Institutions, Education, and Gender

Figure 1.0

Data Source: World Governance Indicators & World Development Indicators

Governance in Kenya had some big oscillations in the passing years, demonstrating great improvements in rule of law and government effectiveness, while others decreased or showed no improvement whatsoever. The two most concerning governance indicators are the violence and political stability, along with the ability to control corruption. Kenya tries to manage all these refugees while dealing with skirmishes of ethnic groups which most oftenly lead to small armed conflicts majorly for public dispute in political parties, similarly to what happened in Rwanda, 1994-95, just on a much smaller scale; some techniques used recently in 2022 to prevent post-poll violence was censoring the media and political figures to prevent them from inducing the population to committing violence. Many groups that take part in the conflicts are mostly the indegenous tribes, which also drives the forceful eviction and the use of non-lethal police repression. In some cases, the forceful eviction is done not only to repress these groups, but also used to evict groups that do not partake in violent actions to benefit certain groups with lands rich in minerals and fossil fuel. Even with the creation of a new constitution to increase trust in the government and decrease corruption, back in 2010, corruption still seems unchecked along government branches and institutions. The police force is often perceived as aggressive and known in the country to execute criminals who should have been brought in and then justified with false allegations of self-defense. If taken in comparison to the United States and assume that it is a pattern in first world countries, most governance indicators remain stable; the only outlier for the United States is low ratings in the absence of violence and terrorism presenting violent fluctuations, due to repeated terrorism threats, involvement in wars and high violence in certain areas of the country, such as: Chicago, Detroit, the Bronx et cetera.

Figure 2.0

Data Source: Country Policy and Institutional Assesment

When looking at Kenya’s Country Policy and Institutions Assessment indicators for Kenya, no outliers have been particularly identified. From 2005 to 2020 most of their policies stand between 3 and 4.5 in a scale from 1 to 6 (by 6 being the ultimate goal), except for 1 presidential period in which land rights and preservation policies fell to 2.5 in 2007 until 2011. Their highest policy rating is in macroeconomic management where it has maintained a stable 4.5 due to a very functional economic management, banking system however has decreased when compared to 2005, as the financial policies are more inefficient than before, even if they peaked at 4, they now place at 3. There are also historical issues regarding Kenya’s legal system as they have always sided more with the employer’s side, oftenly standing with rich classes causing inadequate working conditions, reportedly they have been focusing on developing better labor laws and anti-corruption acts demonstrate a shift in politics since 2015/16.

Figure 3.0

Data Source:Economic Freedom Indicators

For Economic Freedom on the other hand, they all have been pretty stable for both, the United States and Kenya. The United States overall score is 8.24 where Kenya’s is 6.94. Kenya does not have higher scoring indicators then the United States, but when it comes to the freedom of the credit markets Kenya is scoring better than any of their others.

Figure 4.0

Data Source:Economic Freedom Indicators

Figure 5.0

Data Source:Economic Freedom Indicators

This is an indicator that the U.S. performs better in trade and freedom and provides the population with less liabilities than Kenya does, by this indicators being higher in than the other two indicators for Kenya’s Regulation market actually represents inefficiency rather than good performance. This is effectively a market inefficiency because even though credit markets have more public ownership the source of income through employment is hindered by less freedom in the labor market and the alternative where the barriers to starting a business is higher. The increasing development and growth and Kenya has not provided them with better Economic Freedom scores, possibly related to the creation of new protection policies.

The information provided from the datasets from The World Bank have a lot of gaps for Kenya with a lot of missing information. Males in general have higher schooling levels than females in Kenya, in contradiction to the United States where males have low enrollment on the tertiary level of education. However, the data still shows very concerning data for enrollment levels for secondary and tertiary education in Kenya which might affect their long-run development setting them back a few years and making them unable to reach Vision 2030 goals. In 2017, for Kenya, only 13.2% of males and 9.73% of females are enrolled in tertiary education, in opposition to 74% and 102.43% in the United States - referring to Figure 6.0. When it comes to secondary education, there isn’t even data available for after 2009, and they have 59.86% and 53.66% for males and females, respectively. Student attendance rate is over 80% mark, yet, the low enrolment rate demonstrates that many students may be dropping out, which is hard to identify with the absence of data, including no data for teacher attendance rate.

Leaving aside the numbers, there have been few projects to increase education quality in Kenya. The Education Act 2013 provides free education for children with disabilities and the National Pre-Primary Education Policy (2017) which should increase enrollment. The nation is trying to focus on early education with low expectations of them making all the way to tertiary education and trying to fix the problem while focusing on what they already have a performance above 90% for both sexes, which doesn’t seem to be working. The government of Kenya has also been preoccupied with terrorist bombings of schools which destimulates for children to complete their education, making it so that making children have completed their education a more challenging matter than just providing teachers, schools and making the material needed available.

Figure 7.0

Data Source:World Development Indicators

Figure 8.0

Data Source:Education Statistics

Literacy rate when taking in account gender differences, referring to figure 7.0, demonstrates little difference when related to gender. When it comes to age gaps, on the other hand, youth has a much higher literacy than than the adult population, probably resulting from the high scholarization in primary school. When related to unemployment rates, Kenya actually performs better than the United States, having only 3% unemployment for females on a rough average, and 2% for the male population. Now, taking the fact that tertiary enrollment rate is very low along with the percentage of the population unemployed, it is possible to assume that most of the percentage of the population is employed in unqualified jobs that do not require higher education, which probably sets low living standards. The high Economic Freedom, and the ease of doing business, could be a big influence on the low unemployment rate, also meaning that the poorest 40% are capable of opening their own businesses and providing jobs for the uneducated percentage of the population, which is at the moment quite overwhelming. The low unemployment rate also may be able to provide for higher enrollment rates for secondary and tertiary levels of education once the post-poll violence and terrorist bombing issues to schools is taken under control, adding a lot of years of schooling to Kenya’s youth and making for optimal conditions of safety for teachers greatly increasing teacher attendency rate.

Figure 9.0

Data Source:Gender Statistics