Society
Towards Optimisation : Building A Brighter Future For Kenyan Children
By Priscah Motogwa
My guiding word for 2024 is optimise . How this word came about is after coming off from a year of settling into a new role and realizing that the job change had resulted to not bringing my best self to some areas of my life . Change is not easy . The same way old wine skins will not work for new wine , old ways will not work in new spaces . Optimise means to use something to its full potential , which is by no means an easy task .
It is interesting what settling on a word does - it heightens your mind to notice things that touch on that subject matter . I recently came across a statistic that broke my heart : the Presidential Policy and Strategy Unit ( PASU ) found that Kenya has a human capital score of 0.55 , which means that a child born in the country today is likely to achieve just half of his or her potential .
We keep saying that our children are the future of this country but it seems we are not aware that the quality of our future talent pool is actually in jeopardy . The opportunity that our demographic dividend presents is therefore also in jeopardy . The saddest thing is that these staggering numbers of children not attaining their potential is largely caused by situations out of their own control . In this article , I will focus on just three factors that impede Kenyan children from achieving their full potential .
Nutrition
There are some things that we take for granted . There is a correlation between good nutrition and achieving potential . It is so critical for growing children to have a balanced diet . Right from the point a woman is expectant , she needs to
The rich and the middle class in our society utilise services from private entities and may not feel the pain of parents with low incomes . However , those with access to private services cannot afford to ignore the plight of the bigger portion of Kenyans . We can only say that we are successful as a country , when each and every single citizen is able to lead a decent life .
start getting certain nutrients , in order to deliver a healthy baby . This does not stop once the baby is born , because the mother remains the source of food and nutrients to the baby at least for the first six months . But what happens , when a mother cannot afford to buy nutrient dense foods both while pregnant and after delivering the baby ? It sadly means that the health of that child is affected right from the get go .
What happens , when the situation persists and parents cannot afford to provide a balanced diet to growing children ? Most of these parents will try their level best to provide at least one meal so that their children do not go to bed with empty stomachs . Typically , that meal will be ugali ( a mixture of maize flour and water ) and possibly some broth , a meal that does not contain all the requisite nutrients .
Malnutrition , sadly leads to stunted growth , affecting both the physical and cognitive development of affected children .
Health
Children who do not have access to quality healthcare will likely not live up to their full potential . This starts off right from birth where there are certain vaccinations that are required . There are some children who have ended up with permanent disabilities because of poor quality healthcare . It is unfortunate too that as a country , how we care for people living with disabilities has still not matured to the requisite level . To make matters worse , there is also the likelihood that some of these children may end up dying prematurely because healthcare situations are sometimes life and death situations .
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