Political and social life
Kenya is an independent republic, since 1963, and a member of the Commonwealth. The constitution, revised in 2001, established a presidential system. The President, elected for a five-year term by universal suffrage, appoints members of the government and selects a Vice-President. The National Assembly (a chamber of 210 deputies) has legislative power. The country is divided into eight provinces, each of which is governed by an advisory council whose members are appointed by the President of the Republic. Each province is divided into 40 districts, each with local councils. These local authorities have a large degree of autonomy and their own taxes to pay for health care, equipment and education.
The family, a central value
In Kenya, because ethnicity is still quite important (often more so than nationhood), loyalty to family is paramount in all groups. The sick and the elderly are still full members of the community.
Families in rural areas usually have 4-6 children; men may have more than one wife. Houses consist of several dwellings: parents, young children and girls live in the main house, while grandparents and older boys have their own huts. The women cook and clean, provide water and dry wood for the fire, look after the children and crops, and build their own houses, while the men are responsible for bringing money home. Dwellings are made of unfired brick, with thatched roofs and cement floors.
Many of them go to the city in search of work. But the cities are overcrowded and people often live in apartments or makeshift shelters. More than half of Nairobi's population, nearly 2 million people, live in slums or informal settlements. These people lack access to water, hospitals, schools and live under the constant threat of forced eviction.
The situation of the children
Traditionally, it is accepted in Kenyan culture that children assist the mother in her various functions. This family help is observed by governments and international organizations, including UNICEF and the International Labor Office. Described as domestic work, this assistance keeps many children and youth out of school. They work in the fields, in handicraft workshops, or come to haunt the streets of the cities to escape the harsh living conditions. Girls are especially affected because they assist their mothers in domestic activities and take care of younger children, so that the older girls can work and feed the family. In some nomadic tribes, children as young as 3 or 4 years old are responsible for herding cattle.
The place of the elderly
In Kenya, demographic aging is occurring in the context of rapid economic change, accompanied by urbanization, changing community attitudes, and population movements. Rural-urban migration has disrupted the family structure, leaving the elderly to manage the economic and social affairs of rural areas. This has weakened traditional supports and increased the hardships of the elderly.
Despite government efforts to address their needs, the majority of them still face mainly economic, health and social problems. The elderly are the poorest of the poor and often do not have a regular income because of limited employment opportunities. They are also more vulnerable to disease, malnutrition, loss of independence, and abuse from family and society. Only a small percentage of the elderly population receives a pension.
The place of women
In rural areas, women manage the family and the home: they take care of food, firewood collection and water supply. Women are an essential and usually free part of the agricultural labor force, controlled by the head of the rural farm or the heads of households within it. On their own land, they receive little help from their husbands, except for heavy work. Even then, help is scarce. More and more women farmers are taking on these tasks themselves. They also turn to self-help associations, usually women's, and, within the limits of their possibilities, to agricultural wage labor.
The informal economy (which represents 45% of the country's economic activity) is largely owned by women. But they are also the most vulnerable, as informal enterprises are synonymous with insecurity and poverty.
In urban areas, the emergence of an upper middle class has led to greater financial autonomy and a reduction in gender disparities. But Kenya remains a deeply patriarchal society, and there is still room for progress on the gender equality front. While elementary school enrollment is high in Kenya, secondary school education and university enrollment show phenomenal disparities. And in some communities, girls have to forego secondary education for fear of losing their "marriageability. Finally, at the top end of the political spectrum, even though the 2010 constitution requires that no more than two-thirds of the members of parliament be male, in 2019 only 21 per cent of seats were held by women. Kenya remains far behind its neighbors.
In the poorest families, it is also women who suffer. The risks of poverty-related diseases are greater for women, aggravated by their reproductive role: marriages, early pregnancies and numerous sexually transmitted diseases (AIDS strikes women more than men; in Nairobi the risk of contracting the virus is 90% for teenage girls forced into prostitution), genital mutilation, clandestine abortions, breast and cervical cancers, etc., all result in a significant mortality rate. The most serious risk is the lack of control women have over their own status, their bodies and their fertility, a lack reinforced by cultural and legislative codes.
Education, a sector in crisis
Since elementary school became free in Kenya in 2003 - a few years before secondary school (2008) - and compulsory and free since 2010 for all children between the ages of 6 and 14, the number of children enrolled in school in the country has increased dramatically. The increase in the number of children enrolled in schools has resulted in classrooms so overcrowded that administrators have had to defer admissions of students due to lack of space. In many schools, classrooms that once held 40 students now hold 70. And despite a dramatic increase in primary school enrollment, more than 1.2 million school-age children remain outside the education system. (UNICEF, 2020).
While more than 85 percent of school-age children now attend elementary school, factors such as cost, test scores, and lack of facilities mean that many do not attend secondary or post-secondary education. In some areas, such as northeastern Kenya, which has been affected by terrorist violence and repeated droughts, young people are being denied an education altogether due to a lack of schools and teachers.
With the Covid crisis in 2020, the sector is even more vulnerable, as the closure of schools has resulted in thousands of teachers losing their income and being forced to turn to other jobs to survive.
Health and social protection
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Kenya has barely one doctor for every 10,000 people, when the WHO recommends ten times that number. And three quarters of them work in the private sector at prices that are obviously unaffordable for almost the entire population. In the public sector, medical care is provided by government agencies, religious institutions and voluntary associations. Provincial hospitals are located in the major city of each province. At the local level, there are also dispensaries and regional hospitals offering basic services.
Long considered one of the best on the continent, the Kenyan health system is now severely undermined by poor management, a severe lack of funding, technical and human resources, and openly denounced corruption. Medical care is expensive and most Kenyans will only go to a doctor if they are really sick, preferring to use traditional medicine.
For many years, social protection has not been a priority for Kenya. In 2003, only 15 per cent of the population had social security coverage. In 2014, a mandatory pension fund for all citizens between the ages of 18 and 65 was established. Today, the National Social Security and Pension Fund provides social protection to all Kenyan workers in the formal and informal sectors. In practice, however, the extension of social protection to the informal sector, which accounts for 45 percent of the country's economic activity, remains a major challenge, and many of these workers, whose work is irregular and low-paying, do not benefit from the fund.
