Primary education in Kenya is now compulsory and free

BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents was broadcast on Thursday, 8 May, 2003 at 1100 BST.

Kenya's new government wants to show that it is serious about change.

It says it is clamping down on corruption.

Click here to listen to the programme

It has introduced compulsory free primary education, and has released prisoners from death row.

But schools are bursting at the seams. There are not enough teachers, and average class sizes are now up to 120.

The death row prisoners may have their freedom but they only possess the clothes they are standing up in.

So can Kenya's National Rainbow Coalition Government really overturn decades of misrule and corruption?

For Crossing Continents, Esther Armah travelled to Nairobi to find out.

	:	Picture gallery
Life as a schoolchild in Kenya

Reporter: Esther Armah
Producer: John Murphy
Editor: Hugh Levinson

E-mail this to a friend

Printable version