A tweet that claims the government has allocated KSh2.7 billion to the Higher Education Loans Board is false.
According to the tweet, the funds allocated to the government agency which provides student loans has plunged precipitously since William Ruto was sworn in as President of Kenya on 15 September 2022.
“From Ksh15.8 billion (Uhuru) to Ksh2.7 billion (jamaa wa kujipanga). University students must learn to stop eating chicken, and eat like chicken. Haha. #HustlerEduKe” the post reads.
Alongside the tweet are two images. The first image shows what appears to be funds allocated from a budget, including for the Teachers Service Commission, university education, Free Day Secondary Education, the Higher Education Loans Board, Free Primary Education, among others, for the 2021/22 financial year, which ended at the end of June 2022.
We searched Google for the text: “The allocations in the FY 2021/22 are aimed at enhancing competencies to develop quality” and it led us to the Mwananchi Guide to the 2021/22 Budget, an abridged version of the National Budget meant to ease understanding amongst Kenyans not versed in public finance (you can find the actual books here).
The Higher Education Loans Board was allocated KSh15.8 billion in 2021/22 as the photo on Twitter showed. The 2022/23 version of the Mwananchi Guide also showed a KSh 15.8 billion allocation to the Board, meaning that the budget allocation did not change.
According to the 2022/2023 budget, KSh 15.41 billion is planned for “Domestic Loans to Individuals and Households” in the current financial year.
The second image in the claim shows a press release attributed to the Education Cabinet Secretary, Ezekiel Machogu. We reached out to the Ministry of Education to confirm if it was genuine.
A spokesperson for the education ministry, Mr. Kennedy Buhere, confirmed that the information in the press release was accurate. However, he dismissed the claim in the tweet explaining that students received their total loan amount in multiple batches.
“Funds being disbursed or paid out in small batches does not mean the budget has been slashed, ” Buhere clarified.
The first supplementary budget of the 2022-2023 financial year was released on 7 February 2023. It shows the budget allocation for the Higher Education Loans Board remains unchanged, at KSh15.8 billion.
Conclusion
A tweet containing a graphic and what appears to be a government press release claims that the budgetary allocation for the Higher Education Loans Board has been slashed from KSh15.8 billion to KSh2.7 billion.
Figures from the latest supplementary budget show that the budgetary allocation for the Higher Education Loans board remains untouched. The claim is false.
This fact check was published by Debunk.media with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and African Fact-Checking Alliance.
