What you need to know:

• Kenya needs less prosperity gospel and more prosperity policies. If we truly love God, let’s show it by loving his people, and that starts with giving every child a chance to learn.
• A country that builds churches and neglects schools isn’t praying for its future, it’s gambling with it.

Every Sunday in Kenya, pulpits thunder and churches overflow. But Monday comes, and children return to homes without books, to schools without teachers or to no school at all.

We have built sanctuaries of worship across the country, but neglected the temples of knowledge. What kind of faith are we practising if we ignore nurturing the minds of the next generation? 

This is not an attack on faith but rather a call to reorder our national priorities. Religion has played an important role in Kenya’s history. But today, construction of churches is outpacing that of schools.

In some counties, there are more churches than functional public libraries. In some villages, the most well-built structure is the local church, while children walk kilometres to sit on the floor of a crumbling classroom that floods when it rains.

Without education, how will future generations read the Bible? Or the Quran? How will they interpret religious teachings critically and independently? How will they earn the income required to pay tithe, zakat, or build better communities?

A religious society without literacy is vulnerable to manipulation, poverty and stagnation. Young people can be easily recruited into militias or extremist groups like Al-Shabaab that prey on their ignorance, economic desperation, and spiritual devotion.

Today, many Kenyans know the Bible from beginning to end, but know little about themselves, their history, or the ideas that could improve their lives.

In his book Dependent Independence, C. O. Makame notes that during slavery, it was illegal for Africans to read any book other than the Bible.

Anyone caught reading philosophy, science, governance, history, economics, or any other genre of literature faced the death penalty.

Why was this so? To limit the thinking of Black Africans and to keep them perpetually subservient. They knew that to maintain their servitude, they had to make them accept their lot as the will of God and keep them thinking about the end of days. 

Every Sunday, President William Ruto dishes out millions of shillings to churches across Kenya, “donations” that are never questioned, never accounted for. But when it comes to education, suddenly there is no money to subsidise exam fees.

The same government struggles to consolidate the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) into a national fund to make education free and accessible to all.

CDF is about power. The President and his allies use it to reward loyalty and punish dissent. MPs who toe the line get more allocations for their constituencies. Those who question the government are left hanging. The children become collateral damage.

Meanwhile, reports have emerged that State House Nairobi is constructing an ultra-modern multi-floor church complex at an estimated cost of Sh1 billion.

All while pupils in Turkana, Kitui, Kilifi and parts of Western Kenya continue to learn under trees or in mud-walled classrooms. For context, a standard stone-walled classroom costs approximately Sh2 million.

That means for the same Sh1 billion being spent on a luxury church, we could build over 500 fully-equipped stone-walled classrooms. If each classroom can accommodate 50 students, that’s space for 25,000 learners who would otherwise sit under trees.

Our best-in-class example, Singapore, wasn’t built by Lee Kuan Yew donating millions of public money to churches. It was built through bold, effective policies foremost among them, education.

Singapore invested in schools, teachers and a curriculum that empowered its citizens to compete on a global stage. That is the real path to national revival. 

Kenya needs less prosperity gospel and more prosperity policies. If we truly love God, let’s show it by loving his people, and that starts with giving every child a chance to learn.

A country that builds churches and neglects schools isn’t praying for its future, it’s gambling with it.