Opinion - Free Education Has Given Mandera Hope – Water Security Must Sustain It

16 January 2026 - A new school term has opened in Kenya, and in Mandera County something quietly historic is taking place.Grade 10 learners are reporting to senior secondary schools as the first cohort shaped entirely by the Competency-Based Education system.

In many parts of the country, this moment is accompanied by the usual tension over school fees. In Mandera, that burden has been removed.

Public secondary education is free for every child.

That decision has changed the social landscape of the county.Mandera is a pastoralist region where life revolves around livestock.

Cattle, camels, goats and sheep are more than property; they are savings accounts, livelihoods and cultural identity.

But years of relentless drought have shattered that way of life.Rainfall has become erratic, pasture scarce and water sources unreliable.

Animals have died in large numbers, wiping out wealth built over generations.As herds disappeared, household incomes collapsed.

Families struggled to put food on the table, and education quickly became a luxury.Even modest school fees turned into impossible demands.

Parents faced painful choices: buy food or keep children in school, sell the last remaining goat or withdraw a daughter from class.

Too often, girls were the first to lose out.This was the harsh reality Mandera confronted in 2022.

During that election year, Governor Mohamed Adan Khalif made a pledge that sounded ambitious, even unrealistic: free secondary education for all students in public schools.

Many doubted it could work. The county was in the grip of drought, humanitarian needs were high, and public resources were limited.

Yet the promise was kept.

Three years on, the programme is still running. More than 20,000 learners now attend secondary school in Mandera without paying fees.

At the beginning of each term, children report to class with confidence instead of fear.Parents no longer dread the humiliation of having a child sent home for arrears.

Girls, who once bore the heaviest cost of poverty, now have a fairer chance to complete their education.In a region too often associated with marginalisation, this is a powerful achievement.

Mandera has become the only county in the former North Eastern region to implement free secondary education comprehensively and sustain it.Education has effectively become a form of social protection – a buffer shielding young people from the economic shocks that regularly batter their families.

For that, the county leadership deserves recognition.But celebration should not breed complacency.

Beyond the classrooms lies a deeper, unresolved crisis: water.

Drought in Mandera is not only a problem of inadequate rainfall; it is a problem of fragile water systems. Without dependable water infrastructure, livestock perish, rangelands degrade and livelihoods collapse.