Sports conducted out of schools is basically an unorganized form of sport and more of a physical activity engagement among kids while engaging in multiple activities such as tending goats, cows or looking after their younger siblings.
Among the older children, their sporting practices are a modification of school sports and the rules are shaped by elite perception of their chosen sports.
The overall mechanism of sports development and promotion is elitist in nature as emphasized in school curriculum.
The nation's visible sporting activities are football, running, rugby, cricket amongst others.
The distribution of sporting activities in Kenya is based on regions. This regionalism of sports is explained by geographical nature of the country.
Specifically, the physical geography of Kenya clearly demarcates the dominance of sports culture and endowment.
For example, athletics is domiciled in the Great Rift Valley while football and rugby is predominantly an inter-lacustrine phenomenon, evidenced by the national competitions spectacles during Kenya Secondary Schools Sports activities.
The almost obvious performances are very predictable on regional basis, although there are occasional upsets and performance disappointments.
Sports play an important role in the socialization process among the youth in Kenya. The community and the government play complementary roles in the commitment toward sports participations.
However, schools are the central foci in the early introduction to organized sports among the youth and this establishes the dependency on the school system as the granary of elite sports in Kenya.
The government, through the respective ministries of Education and Sports, Culture and Arts, controls the policy framework directing the management and functioning of school programs from primary schools through secondary schools.
However, these policies have not contributed toward the desired frameworks for realization of improved sports performance due to incompleteness and incompetency of the policy formulators and subsequent implementation.
The philosophy of sports development is the fundamental flaw when it comes to prioritization of resources and outcomes.
The absence of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms have challenged the status quo with respect to the alienation of the experts and professionals with the requisite knowledge and skills on matters of sports education and policy, thus policies are ill-informed leading to contradictions between the performativity of sports within the Ministries of Education and Sport, Culture and Arts.
Take for instance, the much touted curriculum which presupposes to create a pathway in academic progression among Kenyan children into career world via sports and talents.
Interestingly, the conceptualization of this pathway assumes the obvious competencies in sports and talents as a natural ability continuum pegged on genetic endowment.
The sequencing of physical activities from early childhood education programs is an appropriation of the normal child's development without the benefits of cognitive instruction and the expectation that sports are tailor-made to one-size-fits-all.
This curriculum should ideally be subjected to critical expert review and informed by research before it being fully implemented for the good of the nation's future.
Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) should tap into the pool of sectoral professional experts in the country to benefit from their wealth of experience and technical know-how in order to develop a functional and workable curriculum that will withstand the test of time and relevance.