Because of the Kenyan history, ignorance has been ingrained in the society. As they say in the ‘intellegence circles’, Kenyans have taken it wholly that, ‘the less you know, the better for your security’. Fighting ignorance and encouraging the citizens to seek knowledge, offering high quality education relevant to the development needs of our country holds the future of balanced social and economic growth. FORD-Asili is committed to a suitable human resource development programme that will eliminate illiteracy and ignorance nationally. As earlier said, the people are the principle resource in any country, and so, to equip the citizen with enough and necessary knowledge is the greatest achivement for any society. A FORD-Asili government would strive to realize a 90 percent literacy level by 2030 and strive to give Kenyans free education up to first degree or age of 21 whichever comes earlier. For the party to achieve this, it will address the following:

Education for the sake of it is not useful to socio-economic development. Successive governments in Kenya have clearly stated that they do not provide education in order for people to be employed. Ford Asili differs with this position. Education curricula must be in tandem with national and global market needs. While there are core areas that education must address, appropriate education programmes must address the prevailing global market needs and appropriate socio-scientific demands for the country’s development as well. In addition, the programmes must prepare the learner to identify their individual talents that should be nurtured for self-growth, appropriate placement in society and general competitiveness. The current system is examination based and ends up creating demoralization and desperation which results in hopelessness for slow learners and those with special and non-academic talents and charismas.

Kenya’s education programme for adult learners is based on the regular education programme. FORD-Asili believes that adult learning approaches must be suited to the adult learner’s needs. Research shows that the learning curve of the adult learner is different from that of the child.

A FORD Asili government will aim at developing separate mandatory appropriate education curricula for the regular and adult learners. The aim will be to eliminate ignorance by achieving universal literacy and to prepare learners adequately for the job market in the various sectors of the economy locally and globally. By 2030, our education qualifications and training should be acceptable anywhere in the world.

Poor access to information breeds ignorance, retards socio-economic development and encourages passiveness, idleness, laxity and corruption. Ignorance encourages short cuts and completely discourages innovation, creativity and discovery. FORD-Asili aims at ensuring attainment of universal access of all Kenyans to high quality and authoritative information on all spheres of life. To achieve this, FORD-Asili will encourage dissemination of information through ICT in local established library net works and private/public partnerships.