Safaricom through M-Pesa Foundation has announced over 10,000 scholarships for learners in senior schools across the country over the next five years.
The funding is part of its Sh30 billion education initiative aimed at improving education and training outcomes by equipping teachers with digital skills.
Dubbed “Citizens of the Future”, the program also seeks to upgrade infrastructure and enhance teacher skilling in ICT across over 600 institutions nationwide.
“We have developed education interventions that seek to bridge the gap through innovation and material support. Under the Citizens of the Future Program, we are consolidating our initiatives to ease access to education from early learning to technical and vocational training in an initial investment of about Sh30 billion in the next five years,” said Peter Ndegwa, Chief Executive Officer, Safaricom.
The programme will involve the development of model institutions reflective of “Schools of the Future” that will signify future learning, with modern infrastructure that is built sustainably, integrated with technology and with an emphasis on inclusivity for learners with special needs.
Kenyans will have a month to nominate a learning institution of their choice through https://www.citizenofthefuture.org/ with deserving schools shortlisted from the set criteria to award beneficiaries.
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The program comes at a time when the telco is celebrating 25 years of operation and adds to the over Sh29 billion M-Pesa Foundation has invested in the education sector, impacting more than 4 million learners in Kenya.
The program also comes at a time when the education sector is facing challenges such as inadequate capitation and a lack of teaching materials despite decades of investment and reforms.
In the financial year 2023/24 the sector received an allocation of Sh628.6 billion, accounting for 20.7 percent of national revenue and 4.7 percent of the country’s GDP.
While the allocation positioned Kenya well above the UNESCO minimum threshold of 4 percent, it’s still below the recommended share of 15-20 percent of total public expenditure.
