As of this year, although the date is yet to be confirmed, to pay school fees, parents or sponsors of Kenyan pupils at any public school will have to rely on the eCitizen online platform, also paying through the mpesa system on the government's single number 222222.
The Ministry of Education's decision is in line with the government's directive to bundle any government service, from tax payments to visa and immigration office services, and lately even driver's licences, into one account to avoid the dispersion of funds that can inevitably lead to incidents of corruption and fraud.

The deputy minister of education, Belio Kipsang, sent a circular to all national school headmasters in the past few days, warning them to be ready and to start providing account details and how to make the payment, to facilitate the entry process and to submit information about their institution, including their bank details, used until now for payments, by 6 February.

"The management of eCitizen, in collaboration with the Information and Communication Technology Authority (ICTA), the Ministry of Information, Communication and Cigital Economy and the National Treasury, is coordinating the inclusion of all government services in the eCitizen platform to improve service delivery," the circular reads in part, "as part of compliance with the requirements, it is necessary for parents/guardians to make fee payments for their students in your institutions through this platform.

Until now, a large proportion of students paid their fees in cash and it was then the school management that entered them into their account, from which the government normally had to withdraw fees and leave funds for the institution's ordinary expenses, such as electricity and water bills.
The government's goal, according to the national media, is also to increase the number of new users signing up for eCitizen, in addition to the current 11 million who use the service on a daily basis, and to get them used to using the service to make any payment that can be traced back to the state.

Certainly, this system is part of the genuine desire of President William Ruto's administration to fight corruption and malpractice at all levels, but it is already encountering understandable difficulties, as we have already seen with other services that have recently moved to the online platform.
In addition, many parents often 'bargain' with educational institutions for payment in instalments or ask to be facilitated in some way, e.g. by the age-old method of collections (harambee). What will happen with modernisation and electronic systems?
It is to be hoped that the losers will not be the millions of students for whom education is a right, even before being an obligation up to a certain age.