The road ahead and what to learn from students destruction

Painful and worrisome as it is, the wave of student destruction of secondary schools which already runs into hundreds of millions if not billions already lost, should force a think through and planning for the future. Of course this wave has its deep foundation in a multiplicity of causes .One frequently mentioned is the exam cheating systems and cartels, something that seem to have been perfected and the game played in a Mafia style. It seems that we have a country which many systems which include fight against corruption under siege of ruthless cartels. That’s for another day. What these students’ criminal activities should do is give a very strong early warning signal.

Look at it this way. The numbers in schools say even at the secondary level alone is not small. The number of Kenyans below 18 years who are a critical segment of the country population that will influence so much in the next few years is a huge chunk of the total population. This is a group any country that is focused on sound economic growth and sustained political influence and security would be proud of. The context of this unrest is a bit unsettling. Yet still this is a generation growing in the fourth industrial revolution where technology more so communication type is driving and shifting the economies dynamics in a fundamental way. That the group in secondary school is expressing their displeasure in a manner that looks viral and violently for that matter, it’s a statement that all is not well.