National Cohesion and Intergration by 2030

The year is 2030 but I remember it as if it were yesterday. The day that Kenya as a nation put its foot on the neck of tribalism, the day we gave new meaning to the words cohesion and integration in relation to tribalism and divisive politics. It was a day that saw a united front in the fight against tribalism, a day that brought an inter-agency approach to a wasting culture that had eaten at many a society especially in Africa. In Kenya all one had to do was hint at a conspiracy, prick our insecurities or tickle our illusions of grandiose over our neighbors. And we would fill our homes with whispers of the besieged, talks of historic injustice and songs of triumph over imaginary foes.  But on this day the mainstream media fraternity, national cession and integration commission and the office of public prosecution spoke with one voice. 

These three institutions after a week of intensive consultation called a major press conference that shook the nation in its conclusive agenda, the finality of its recommendation and the ultimatum issued to Kenyans. It emerged during this week of consultation that if our televisions, radio and newspapers are the godfathers of tribalism, then social media can be said to be the godmother, our politicians the fathers, our intolerant past the mothers and our Kenyan youths the children of tribalism. That tribalism was neither genetic nor divisive politics hereditary. We are not born with our prejudices but we are born into it. We are born into discord, we learn to crawl in the filth of intolerance, we take our first steps supported by the structures of our tribal cocoons. So it’s not a surprise that the first words we learn to utter are panga instead of papa and murder instead of mama. The best we know of our neighbors culture goes no further than the negative and unfounded stereotypical accusations. Enslaved by ghostly masters of fear and hate. Though we are not really sure why we ought to fear or hate each other any more, we carry on, we slave away, under burdens we might as well put down. 

Mainstream media was singled out for its inherent property of mass communication and ability to shape attitudes. In a world of tribalism, mainstream media can be said to be the bomb that kills thousands and the best that social media can be in comparison is a machine gun and this is when it is wielded by someone of influence in the social media scene . Otherwise social media is nothing more than a pistol in a bomb fight. Mainstream media can reach millions in a single information relay while a tweet or facebook update is being consumed by a few thousand. A news item by mainstream media has already been repeated through word of mouth by millions before it has reached trending status on social media. Information through mainstream media is also automatically believed as gospel truth across different divides while information on social media is as believable as the clout behind the individual sharing the message. Its only mainstream media that can run a hateful message communicated to a few hundred people in a village baraza at one corner of the country and spread it to millions of people across the entire country in a matter of minutes.  

The blame game and hiding behind shifting posts had to stop. We could blame politicians all we want but it’s the media that amplified their mediocrity and clothed their selfish ambitions as news items. We could form all the commission of cohesion and integration but without responsible use of mediums of mass communication, we would be fighting a losing battle. So in this press conference an ultimatum was issued. A seven day ultimatum for all hostility to stop, yes we did not need a lifetime to tolerate each other. These seven days would be enough to pass a law in parliament to give national cohesion and integration commission power s of prosecution. This period also allowed the NCIC time to rally support for the changes that they planned to institute. 

At the press conference mainstream media announced that they would from now on actively sensor intolerant, tribally insensitive and provocative words or speeches on the airwaves. In one case they would do so just the same as they would sensor sexually explicit words and in extreme cases they would sensor a whole speech by a politician. In its stead they would issue a public statement saying that they viewed the expression of the said politician provocative and therefore could not air it. They would then broadcast that they have forwarded the provocative message to NCIC for prosecution. So instead of a politician rogue expressions being aired, their misbehavior would be highlighted and shamed instead. 

In the same spirit of reigning down on anti-cohesion and integration conduct, the judiciary made plans to constitute special courts to handle cases related to cohesion and integration offenses. The judiciary also made the necessary changes that would see video and audio evidence admissible in court as well as screen shots from social media sites. They would be enough to sustain a conviction without additional supporting evidence. Other changes included the recruitment of active social media marshals under NCIC. They were to monitor social media and form a proactive presence on the internet where the public can reach them to report on any offenses occurring on social media. The social media marshals in conjunction with the judiciary, communication authority of Kenya (CAK) and police would be able to suspend within 24rs, phone lines, modems and other IP domains used to share and post tribally abusive internet data , the suspension could last for as long as one year. Suspensions would also extend to banning the name and ID number of those behind such offenses from owning or registering any phone line, modem or online communication line. Anyone found knowingly offering or hosting these offenders activities on their lines would stand to receive the same banning. 

The commission also developed and publicized a cohesion and integration offenses matrix so that the public, politicians, the media etc would know what was considered an offense. The matrix drew a clear line between right and wrong and provided an undisputed reference when judging offenses. It is in reference to this matrix and the seven days ultimatum that saw the president himself lead the nation in committing to abide under this matrix and signing it on behalf of the Kenyan public as well. The signing by the president to abide by the cohesion and integration offenses matrix laid the precedence for all political leaders to do just the same. The president was followed by another publicized signing ceremony of the deputy president accompanied by the official leader of the opposition. The so called political enmity between these two in the public arena made this signing ceremony quite exceptional and symbolic in burying the proverbial hatchet. These leading political leaders were followed by governors, senators, members of parliament and members of the county assemblies. The signatures opened up the politicians for prosecution if they contravened the cohesion and integration offenses matrix. The media, judiciary and the police signed as well and committed themselves to play their part in documenting evidence, arrest of offenders irrespective of their station and prosecution of offenders.     

End of Kleptocracy in Kenya

The year is 2030 and a crowd of about a thousand is gathered outside parliament. The crowd had grown leaner by the years as the country matured out of corruption and the memory of the country’s financial promiscuity waned away. Fifteen years ago about a million Kenyans made a human shield around the parliament building for three days straight. Day and night these Kenyan change makers braved the tropical sun and chilling nights for something they believed in. Once a spineless country in matters corruption, we could no longer allow ourselves to tie the lambs of our public coffers in the pens of our public offices with hyenas in coats of public servants. They wanted change that could only start with a legislative amendment to a deficient law. So parliament played host to a determined mass of humanity that would not bend their morals to accommodate the fears of accountability of a few. 

The proverbial reference to corruption as a cancer was an understatement in Kenya. Corruption was allowed to devour our nation with impunity and absent of humane reasoning. So much so that it was obvious to everyone and an accepted practice that each successive regime had their rightful time to bleed the public coffers. Unlike natural rats that nimble on someone while blowing on the wound, these were wild human sized monstrous rats both in size and insatiable appetite for material wealth. Even though our newly elected leaders at the time could be said to be above board in officially sanctioned corruption. The same could not be said about the minions they inherited from previous regimes. Deep rooted institutionalized corruption networks that meandered alongside public revenue streams. Vultures with low hanging pot bellies who hanged around the corridors of powers with no official duties but with wings of influence wide enough to intimidate even the boldest of public officials. 

A time had come that the price of corruption threatened a well planned and visible prosperous future. The prospect of losing the long awaited walk into the first world by any individual or a wayward culture was unacceptable. The country to a man wanted to slay the dragon that was institutional corruption once and for all. It’s not like we as a nation did not know exactly what needed to be done even to the last detail. It was for lack of a better assessment, some sort of an ingrown disposition as a nation not to act definitively to end corruption. An indifferent reaction to widespread corruption, a perpetual state of postponement of known remedial measures, almost as if we were scared of a corruption free nation. Our inertia mostly fueled by our seemingly inseparable marriage to the only lifestyle we knew, so blinded by our misplaced loyalty to our corrupt tribesmen. 

Like explosive materials lying in the open, so were the pent up aspirations of the majority of Kenyans. Just waiting for a spark, a catalyst of inspiration to our combustible state of the nation, to explode with purposeful action. Very few Kenyans witnessed the live moment the spark went off, but everyone witnessed the explosion, many took part in the explosion, whose embers were first witnessed on social media. When a targeted campaign was launched on social media to rise and occupy parliament, with written memoranda of exactly the demands the country clamored for in this fight against corruption. It was hard to draw the line between the spontaneity of the million man gathering outside parliament and a well choreographed social media activism exercise. All this made complete by a wise legislature who quickly wrote up a bill encompassing the whole memoranda of demands by the Kenyans picketing outside parliament. Parliament was caught un-aware and was forced to play the public tune and forced to make the legislative changes. 

First in our demands was the total restructuring of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC). From a traffic cop bursting institution to a president, cabinet secretary, governors bursting institutions. This involved reinforcing EACC powers to investigate, giving EACC the long demanded powers to prosecute and new demanded powers to freeze and appropriate funds and assets of convicted corrupt individuals as well as special corruption courts to expedite corruption cases. Further changes to EACC were in its administration structure which called for the abolishment of the EACC boss position. This was an overrated public office that was more of a coveted highly entitled office than a functioning deterrent to corruption. This corruption boss office was to be abolished and replaced with a committee. The 2 million plus remuneration for the EACC boss was sub-divided among the committee members. As this was one of the many offices like the judicial service commission that was meant to attract selfless public servants and not those after material gains from public coffers. The committee was so structured as to have varying tenures for different members, that it was a nightmare for the corrupt to have that office in their pockets. This office was made up of the civil society, religious leaders, media personalities and private accounting firms. This made it impossible for a coordinated subversion of justice practices by members of the committee amongst themselves. 

Extended reforms demanded by Kenyans when they occupied parliament was an integrated digitization of the financial sector. This digital financial system modeled like the financial tracking system of the American IRS documented and tracked every Kenyan financial transaction. From Mpesa accounts to Kenyan and overseas bank accounts, the idea was to make it impossible to move money around or accumulate unexplained monies in your name. This was more elaborate for public servants, their families and during investigations their acquaintances and business partners. Any sudden spike in income of a public servant would trigger alarms in a dozen or so government agencies. This allowed for stringent financial tracking that left corrupt individual with no other option but to stack up hard cash in their homes or warehouses because their was no way to move such money without attracting attention. This came in handy during the prosecution of corrupt cases and seizure of assets and funds from corrupt dealings.  

    

This radicalization of the fight against corruption was also taken to schools and classrooms. There was a push for the introduction of a subject in school with a comprehensive coverage on corruption and ethics. Not in the normal and polite academic lingo found in the academic world but rather an intense psychological conditioning of our children to loathe corruption. Corruption and unethical leadership was painted in such a way to our children that it was guaranteed they would grow to abhor such practices as much as murder or rape. Just as corruption had ingrained itself in the fabric of our society, the only hope of reversing such a pervasive culture was to hot wire it into our children psyche. The same way environmental conservation tendencies such as a littering and separation of domestic waste were imbued on a whole generation in the western society. 

Other sectors to tow the line in the anti corruption drive was the media. In realization of their role as the mirror to a society and instrumental powers to influence the masses. The media fired up the anti corruption crusade in earnest. From live coverage of anti corruption cases, to in-depth investigative journalism, the media went as far as flashing the faces of the corrupt all over the news. Together with their personal details and history like schools they went to, previous jobs, just simply creating pariahs out of them and a leprosy-like historical alienation of the corrupt from society. Such was the heavy reinforcement of antipathy to corruption that a renaissance of moral values and virtues took over our society. 

And that is how the war on corruption was won, through the powers to prosecute, the abolishing of the anti corruption czar post, digital integrated financial systems and tracking, education and coordinated mass media campaigns. And yes, not to mention the total eradication of sitting and attendance allowances for public officials in official duties and replaced with contentment with their salaries. No one should have special rewards for doing the work they were appointed to do. They were not doing the public any favors, it’s their job.

Malibongo Education System: An Intensive Specialized Education Program

The year is 2030 and the country is gathered in different counties to witness the graduation ceremony of the first batch of students to go through the Malibongo education system. The Malibongo education system as the name suggest (which is a loose translation of wealth in brains or mental wealth) was a radical approach in the Kenyan education system. The system suggested not only a shift from the mainstream education program used in the country but against even systems available globally. Its critics and supporters were therefore drawn from within the country and internationally. However the fearless audacity of its pioneers triumphed against even international education partners who had threatened to ostracize the country for its independent school of thought in education provision.  

The Malibongo education program was based on the agreement that the education system at the time offered little in terms of specialized training in the initial twelve years of education. Students at the age of 18, at the end of their first twelve years of education were experts in nothing but how to read and write. Considering the great disparities in education facilities and socio-economic background, even after these twelve years more than half of our children reading and writing skills were barely average. The existing education system guaranteed that more than three quarters of the product of our twelve year education system were noting but human data storage carriers. There was little room for free thought or sound interpretation of the data they had crammed in their twelve years of education in relation to current and emerging societal challenges. Creativity and innovation was of no particular importance in their long and tedious hiatus in our education institutions. 

This scenario was more vivid when you in-calculated that as a nation, as we grappled with our desire to be a food sufficient and agricultural produce exporter, we had only a handful of agricultural experts coming out of our universities and no agricultural expert to speak of at the age of eighteen, all this in the face our poor turn over from secondary to university.  This meant that the majority of children going through our education system were wasted when they could have been used to address our challenges as a country. Another grim example of our failure to plan and ready ourselves for our dreams as a nation was our meager investment in education in technology. While we were busy planning to build technology based cities like Konza we had put little thought in advancing the ICT knowledge base of our children and future work force. So in reality more than half of those that had undergone the twelve years of our education system had never touched a computer. The best we had come to some level of visionary management of our ICT dream was the initiative to offer laptops to our children, however this fell short of a comprehensive program of intensive specialized training in ICT.   

Social and economic disparities in our Kenyan populace also ensured that our education system produced a loop-sided education spectrum over the socio-economic composition of our populace. Whether intentionally or unintentionally the education system ensured that the rich got the best of eight years of primary education, which allowed them to access the majority of positions in national secondary schools which had the best facilities and in the end these children of the rich filled positions in our public universities. From infancy the poor in our society were destined for mediocre education in public primary schools, ill equipped secondary schools and negligible transition into universities. This situation was even more disadvantageous when you considered children from marginalized communities and genders. Who sadly apart from inadequate opportunities to access education, they had to face an uphill struggle emanating from inherent incapacitation due to their poverty stricken geographical location or gender bias. 

These were just some of the compelling challenges that informed the pioneers of the Malibongo education system. This program hoped to nurture a select number of children in intensive specialized training in three areas, namely agriculture, ICT and financial management. These ambitious 9 year program hoped to produce experts in these three fields able to take up junior management level positions at the innocent age of 21 years old. It would combine some aspect of mainstream education but break away from it early enough to offer substantial amount of time dedicated to an intensive pursuit of either of these three subjects. What’s more, all these would be done by a single all-encompassing institution. Providing seamless education in one institution from when a pupil is 12 years old to when they are 21 years old. 

The Malibongo education program was started by the building of theses special schools by counties that could afford to do so. These schools offering 9 years of seamless education were found in counties that hoped to take up any of the three special subjects i.e. agriculture, ICT or financial management as the bedrock of their county economic foundation. So counties that hoped to be ICT hubs like San Francisco, agriculturally adaptive innovators like the state of Israel or financial capitals like London had an opportunity to strategically churn out experts in these three fields. It started with harvesting of the brightest children at the age of 12 years from poor and marginalized communities. This meant that children in standard 6 from schools found in urban poor areas, rural and remote regions of the country sat for a special examination to determine the brightest children who would be eligible for this program. Those who were successful would be enrolled in Malibongo schools that offered fully sponsored and totally free education in highly equipped boarding institutions.  

The first two years of the Malibongo education program would see the children take up an additional three subjects modeled around agriculture, ICT and financial management. They would at the end of these two years sit for the mainstream end of primary education examination (KCPE) in addition to being examined in the three special subjects. This allowed for those after 2 years would wish for one reason or another want to revert back to mainstream education system and join regular secondary schools. So children in Malibongo schools studied and got examined after 2 years in 8 subjects as opposed to 5 subjects found in regular primary school. From this examination after two years, the students were then divided depending on the subject they had performed best in from the three special subjects. So that in their next three years in the Malibongo education program they would be required to study only one special subject that they had performed best in addition to the mainstream secondary education subjects. They would have an expedited secondary education whereby it would take them 3 years instead of 4 years in secondary school. This group would also be eligible to sit for end of secondary schooling national examination (KCSE) together with sub topics of the one special subject they had specialized in for the three years. This also allowed those who wanted to revert back to regular schooling at this stage to do so.  

Now the last 4 years of their education would be intensive specialized educational training in the one special subject, be it in agriculture, ICT or financial management. Using the same sub-topics model they had used in their last three years, they would continue in this manner while majoring in the sub-topic they were best in. These four years which would be equivalent to an under graduate course would see them graduate from Malibongo education system as experts in their said fields. Graduates from this program were fully equipped to be absorbed by national/county civil service, the private sector as well as self employed entrepreneurs in their field of specialization. Where need be they would continue with their education by enrolling for masters courses in regular universities. The Malibongo education system allowed for counties to produce experts at a fairly young age in areas that they hoped to advance their counties in. The Malibongo education system also addressed the unequal transition from primary schools, to secondary and to university based on socio-economic backgrounds of students as well as addressed counties unique human resource needs. Other outstanding qualities of the Malibongo education system was emphasis on using teaching models that nurtured free thought, innovation, self discovery, self reliance and self starters as its core principals and functioning inspirations.