Kenya: Schools diverted to Farms to overcome Covid-Crisis

25 Aug 2020

No one needs to be shocked. It’s a truth. A fact. Kenya has diverted its schools and premises and utilized for income-generating mechanisms. In the context of Coronavirus, all schools were closed in Kenya at least for one year. Some schools were engaged in online education programs. But the majority of schools were closed and kept idle. It was at this critical juncture, the private sector has decided to transform the kept-idle schools to income-generating mechanisms.

The classrooms of many schools were now reverberating the nursery rhymes of chickens. Some of the school premises were seriously engaged in agriculture. The blackboards of the classroom were now changed to notice boards to show instructions regarding the farming. Kenya’s private school authorities, teachers, parents, and students are now optimistic that they will overcome the economic crisis created by the pandemic through finding out such diversified opportunities.

Many schools were in the economic crisis that they could not maintain the schools, students, and teachers, and other staff. It is reported that about 95% of the more than 300,000 private-school teachers and staff members have been sent on either unpaid leave or fired. However, state-run schools are still paying their staff. Some of the school management is struggling to find out, sources to repay the EMI that they owed to the Banks. About 133 schools were closed permanently.

The Kenyan people have pragmatically moved with a vision to transform crisis into opportunities. Global observers say that the move of the Kenyan people is worth to be followed by all nations in the grave context of the pandemic. Kenya at present is having 32557 coronavirus-affected cases and 554 deaths. Kenya’s population is 4.75 Crores.