Kenya’s education bursary system has been dealt a major legal blow after the High Court declared it unconstitutional, finding that the current framework discriminates against the very students it was designed to protect.
In a ruling delivered in Petition No. E482 of 2023, Justice Bahati Mwamuye found that the absence of a national bursary database, standardised eligibility criteria, and effective oversight mechanisms violates multiple provisions of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010.
“The absence of a coordinated national database for tracking bursary and scholarship allocations, the lack of transparent and standardised criteria for needs assessment, and the inadequacy of oversight mechanisms for the National Government Constituencies Development Fund and county bursary funds violate Articles 10, 27, 43(1)(f), 53(1)(b), and 201 of the Constitution,” the court ruled.
The case was brought by former Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu, who argued that Kenya’s education funding model is deeply fragmented. He told the court that the Ministry of Education, NG-CDF, and county governments each disburse bursaries independently, with no unified system to track beneficiaries. The result, he argued, is a system where some students collect funding from multiple sources while others who genuinely qualify receive nothing.
Justice Mwamuye agreed that these gaps are not merely administrative failures but constitutional violations. He found that the current structure creates indirect discrimination against vulnerable and marginalised learners, and that weak oversight has left the system wide open to political manipulation.
The court’s concerns were reinforced by findings from the Auditor General, which revealed that only five of Kenya’s 290 constituencies had successfully automated their bursary processes between 2021 and 2025. The remaining 282 still relied on manual, paper-based systems, a situation the Auditor General said actively disadvantages students living outside their home counties and those with disabilities.
Civil society has been equally vocal. Ndung’u Wainaina, Executive Director of the International Centre for Policy and Conflict, described the current system in stark terms. “Bursaries have become political tools for humiliation, indignation, and the demeaning of parents and students,” he said, calling for swift enactment of the Basic Education Bursaries and Scholarships Bill, 2024, which would remove MPs and ward representatives from the selection process entirely.
While the court declined to order the creation of a National Basic Education Fund — ruling that establishing new institutions is Parliament’s mandate, not the judiciary’s — it directed the Executive and Parliament to develop transparent bursary allocation criteria, strengthen oversight mechanisms, and establish a coordinated national beneficiary database.
Although the petition was only partially successful, the ruling sets a firm constitutional standard. The government now has a legal obligation to reform a bursary system long criticised as unfair, opaque, and politically weaponised.
