Kenya's three-year experiment in directing university funding toward its most vulnerable students is being abandoned — not because the principle was wrong, but because the machinery built to carry it out was rushed, underfunded, and ultimately untrustworthy. President Ruto's announcement of a shift to universal student funding marks a quiet admission that good intentions, without adequate resources and careful implementation, can cause as much harm as the inequalities they set out to correct. The deeper question Kenya now faces is not which funding model is fairest, but whether the nation is p
Kenya's needs-based university funding model stumbles on implementation, not principle
Students from disadvantaged backgrounds were locked out of higher education due to misclassification in financial need bands, preventing access to deserved educational opportunities.