Kenya has made significant strides in advancing children's rights and welfare, First Lady Rachael Ruto has said.
Speaking during the national celebration to mark the International Day of the African Child at Mwatate, Taita Taveta county, she said the state is keen on ensuring children get access to education.
Kenya, she said, is fully committed to supporting children to achieve their full potential.
The Day of the African Child was started in honor of hundreds of South African black children who were massacred during their protests on June 16th, 1976.
The Soweto children were protesting the poor quality of education in their country.
This year's theme was 'Education for All Children in Africa: The Time is Now'.
"We must commend our government for the significant strides we have made towards achieving the theme of this celebration, as well as the impactful steps we have taken to improve the state of education nationwide," Mama Rachel said on Sunday.
She said among government's efforts to support education include recruitment of 30,000 additional teachers to bring the total to 41,000 teachers.
The First Lady said some 1.8 million additional primary school children were in 2023 also put under the School Meal Programme, under the matching programme between the national government and devolved units.
"This has seen the transition rate from primary to secondary school increase from 84.5 per cent in 2022 to 91 per cent in 2023," she said.
The first lady said the government is also increasing access to computers in learning institutions under the Jitume Digital Hubs programme by the Ministry of ICT and Digital Economy.
The programme is being implemented by Konza Technopolis.
Mama Rachel noted that the state has further recruited an additional 1,300 trainers for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions.
This is an increase of 22 per cent from the 5,833 trainers in 2022.
In her speech read by, Social Protection and Senior Citizen Affairs PS Joseph Motari, Labour and Social Protection Cabinet Secretary Florence Bore said the government will continue to implement the Inua Jamii programme in a bid to protect children's rights.
She said the programme supports at least 1.2 million households of which 353,000 are orphans and vulnerable children.
CS Bore said the state is building the capacity of the directorate of children department to prevent counter-government extremism and protect children against radicalisation.
"We are in the process of fully operationalising the Children's Act, 2022, and just concluded public participation on drugs regulations for finalisation," CS Bore said.
The event was also attended by Taita Taveta Governor Andrew Mwadime and legislators Peter Shake (Mwatate), John Bwire (Taveta) and Woman representative Lydia Haika among others.
Haika asked the government to reintroduce the school feeding programme in the county in a bid to boost education.
She said the initiative will promote school attendance.
"This is an important programme because children are assured of food in school. We ask the government to bring back the school feeding program," she said.
Haika further asked parents to support their children's welfare in a bid to tame violation of children's rights.
She said her office is in the process of finalizing construction of a modern rescue center to help protect children's rights.