Mombasa Governor Abdulswamad Nassir has said the broad-based government has fulfilled its pledge to teachers by hiring 100,000 of them in the last four years, and has done more for education than previous regimes.
Speaking at the opening of the four-day 2026 Kenya Comprehensive School Heads Association annual general meeting and conference in Mombasa, Nassir said the additional 16,000 teachers expected would bring the total to 116,000 before 2027, as promised.
"With the additional 16,000 more expected, that means the government has kept its promise of 116,000 additional teachers before 2027," Nassir said.
He said previous regimes hired about 5,000 teachers annually. "The most that was ever done was about 10,000 in one particular year. The number of classrooms built is about 23,000 and these are not done by the NG-CDF," he said.
Nassir said President William Ruto has ensured equity in the distribution of teachers across the country, and that his Usawa ni Sawa initiative continues to tackle marginalisation in the education sector.
He noted that for a long time the distribution of teachers had been skewed, with some counties having more teachers than others.
"Call it politics, but I call it the truth. For the longest time ever, we've had certain counties in this country that have had more teachers than other counties. And you will bear me witness that that is the truth," he told the school heads.
He said some counties had excess teachers while others did not have enough. As a result, in some places there are no Board of Management (BOM) teachers, while in others they are the majority in the school. He said this made education more expensive for parents in some counties than in others, yet all learners follow the same syllabus.
Teachers Service Commission (TSC) acting CEO Evaleen Mitei said the commission is handling the matter and is trying to rectify it. She asked school heads to promptly facilitate the release of excess teachers whenever requested so that disadvantaged schools in other parts of the country can have a chance at fair and quality education.
Nassir said his county administration has also invested in education, building more than 20 early childhood development education (ECDE) centres, with learner numbers expected to reach about 13,000 by January next year.
"Hopefully, by 2027 the number of schools that will be already finished will rise, with about 15 new ECDEs coming up," he said.
He said the programme started with a feeding programme in which all ECDE learners in the county receive a hot meal a day to keep them in class. The county is now in discussions with its finance and education departments to introduce feeding in primary schools.
"Our ECDEs are currently 100 per cent free because the county government is paying capitation to all the centres," he told the school heads.
He said the county has also hired more teachers to match the growing number of learners, to keep teacher-learner ratios manageable, and provides free books to ECDE learners.
Nassir said secondary school heads in Mombasa told him in a meeting that food and BOM teachers are the most expensive parts of the fees learners are made to pay.
"Then my county administration came up with a programme where we paid a Sh5,000 capitation for every single secondary school student within Mombasa county," he said.
"This was then coupled with an extra Sh2,500 for the feeding programme for the secondary school students, which brought the total to Sh7,500 for every secondary school student in Mombasa county."
Nassir said the positive response to the education programmes pushed him to consider offering free healthcare to Mombasa residents, saying a healthy county will keep learners in class.
"First, we said the free healthcare would be only for November but we extended that. Whatever ailment it is, it is totally free for all county residents," he said.
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