The recent County Dialogues Report reveals alcohol, other drugs and gambling as leading causes for children dropping out of school in Kenya.
The report covers a range of causative factors for poor educational performance and kids dropping out of school in Kenya. These factors include alcohol, other drug use and gambling.
Drug and other substance abuse is still a major challenge facing many schools…,” stated the report, as per SDE.
County Dialogues Report
The other factors identified are teenage pregnancies, child labour, poverty, teacher shortages, conflicts, natural disasters, poor parenting, inequitable and insensitive resource allocation to education sector, high illiteracy and low participation and support among parents on school development activities.
Alcohol harm in Kenya
Alcohol has been proven to be an obstacle to education and to reaching the sustainable development goals overall.
President Uhuru Kenyatta’s big four agenda aims at advancing sustainable development in Kenya through bold action across four priority area: manufacturing, universal healthcare coverage, affordable housing and food security.
But alcohol is a major obstacle to this agenda.
As WHO reports, almost half (49.7%) the alcohol using youth in Kenya engage in binge alcohol use. The figure is over half when it comes to young boys. Both alcohol use disorders and dependence among Kenyan men are higher compared to the WHO African regional average.
Alcohol harm is pervasive in Kenya, which is placed on the higher end for years of life lost due to alcohol.
Kenya urgently needs to adopt a written comprehensive national alcohol policy and foster collaboration within county governments to effectively implement the alcohol act and boost education and development through alcohol prevention.
