A list circulating on Facebook purportedly showing 28 public secondary schools that are to be privatised is fake.
A November 2022 list of the enterprises in the government’s approved privatisation programme includes KenGen, the Kenya Pipeline Company, parts of the Kenya Ports Authority, sugar millers, hotels, banks, the Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) and New Kenya Cooperative Creameries (KCC), but no public secondary schools.
Privatisation of public state corporations in Kenya has been discussed often, as a way to save funds spent on bailouts. In 1998, the government published a policy paper that contemplated privatising 200 state enterprises.
Recently, Moses Kuria, the Cabinet Secretary for Investment, Trade and Industry, defended privatising a number of Kenya’s public universities, which he said were cash-strapped, a stance that has since been criticised. President Ruto has also spoken of privatising state corporations and listing them on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
The Privatisation Commission of Kenya and the Ministry of Education, however, dismissed the list in question as fake.
The national treasury has published a draft privatisation Bill. In its analysis, the Business Daily notes the Bill will remove the role of the National Assembly in privatisations, when compared to the 2005 law it is meant to replace. The public is invited to submit comments on the Bill until 7 February 2023.
Conclusion
A graphic posted on Facebook contains a list of public secondary schools and a caption on the graphic claims the schools are to be privatised. We looked at the list of institutions that the government plans to privatise and found no public secondary school. Furthermore, the Privatisation Commission, the public body mandated to oversee the privatisation of public enterprises in Kenya, has disowned the graphic. The graphic is fake.
This fact check was published by Debunk.media with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and African Fact-Checking Alliance.
