Kenya’s Public Problems Are A Luxury We’re Paying For In Blood And Tears

The story begins with a single number: KES 26,000. That’s the term fee at the cheapest autism-specialized school near me, City Primary School in Ngara. It doesn’t cover transport. It doesn’t cover therapy. It doesn’t cover the emotional cost of being told by the government, “We care about all children equally,” when the budget clearly says otherwise.

Now, if you want something “better,” brace yourself. A private autism centre charges KES 100,000 for a day school. KES 155,000 if you dare to board. These are not exaggerated figures. They are receipts. You could buy a second-hand Probox for what it costs to give your autistic child one year in such a school.

The government’s official response to this crisis? Silence so loud you can hear it echoing through the empty corridors of “free basic education.”

When I spoke to an official at the Ministry of Education—let’s call him Mr. Comfortable—he shrugged. “We have public schools. If parents choose private, that is their lifestyle choice,” he said, sipping tea from a mug that looked suspiciously imported. His child, by the way, studies in Canada.

But healthcare is no different. The public system is so neglected that private hospitals are the only realistic option for anyone who values their life. And private hospitals are not charities. They will save your life, but only after they swipe your card.

Dr. Wanjiku, a private pediatrician, told me bluntly: “I have parents selling land to pay for one round of therapy. That’s not healthcare, that’s economic warfare.”

It’s a war we are losing. The 2024 Kenya Economic Survey reported that over 60% of urban households rely on loans for school fees and medical bills. Loans are no longer for emergencies—they are for daily survival.

We have created a dangerous illusion. Because bank apps can send you KES 50,000 in minutes, we pretend we are fine. We are not fine. We are sinking into chronic poverty. You cannot build wealth when every shilling you earn goes to keeping your family afloat.

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This is why over 95% of Kenyans will never create wealth in any meaningful sense. We are trapped in a cycle: earn, pay fees, get sick, take a loan, repeat.

And yet, we still act like this is normal. I asked a parent, Grace, how she manages. “We just adjust,” she said, with the weary smile of someone who has adjusted too much. “We remove meat from the diet. We stop travelling. We pretend the school trip doesn’t matter. Then we pray the child doesn’t get sick.”

This adjustment is killing us. It’s the slow death of ambition. It’s the quiet burial of dreams.

The tragedy is that we pay taxes as if we live in Norway but get services as if we live in a war zone. Our MPs have healthcare in Dubai. We have SHA that sometimes covers, sometimes doesn’t, depending on the moon’s alignment.

The World Bank notes Kenya spends more than 5% of its GDP on education—above average for Africa—but where does it go? The Controller of Budget’s reports show “administration” eating huge chunks. That’s political code for “salaries, allowances, and mysterious retreats at beach resorts.”

Healthcare budgets vanish the same way. Oxygen plants bought at inflated prices, hospital wings built without equipment, and drugs expiring in stores while patients die.

I once asked a county health officer why a brand-new hospital had no beds. He laughed and said, “Our work is to build, not to furnish.” And then he drove off in a government Prado.

These are not random accidents. This is a system built to fail ordinary people and feed the powerful.

And we—the suffering majority—have been tamed by loans, and shylock cheques. We no longer demand better because debt makes misery look manageable.

Our silence is their oxygen.

But we cannot afford silence any longer. Silence will keep us paying privately for public problems until poverty becomes a permanent national identity.

We must be angry. Not social media angry. Not “complain to your neighbour” angry. Real anger—the kind that shows up at town halls, demands audits, and votes like lives depend on it.

Because lives do depend on it. Every mother forced to choose between paying rent and paying for her child’s therapy is a victim of policy failure. Every father skipping the hospital because of fees is a statistic waiting to be counted in the next mortality report.

The joke is that our leaders still dare to campaign on promises of “free education” and “universal healthcare.” They know we’ve been trained to believe words instead of budgets.

I once asked an MP if he thought the education system was fair. He replied, “We are making progress.” I checked his school-fee receipts later. They were from an elite school in South Africa.

Progress for them is comfort. For us, progress is survival.

We cannot create wealth when we are constantly in recovery mode. Recovery from illness. Recovery from school fees. Recovery from debts.

The joke that is Kenya 🇰🇪 writes itself: one day, “universal healthcare” will mean a nurse calling you to say, “We can treat you, but you must bring your own medicine, bed, and drip stand.”

We laugh to keep from crying, but laughter won’t fix the system.

Accountability will. And accountability starts when we decide that a government unable to educate our children or keep us healthy has no right to our taxes.

We can no longer afford to elect people who see public service as a side hustle for private wealth.

This is not about politics; it’s about survival. It’s about deciding that we deserve better than to live one medical emergency away from destitution.

The data is already telling us the truth: chronic poverty is not an accident in Kenya—it’s an industry. And we are its raw material.

If we don’t demand better, nothing will change. And the people who can change it have no reason to act because the system already works for them.

We must rise, speak, organize, and vote with a vengeance.

Otherwise, our children will inherit the same cycle: private solutions to public problems, funded by personal debt, ending in generational poverty.

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