Regular readers of this column will know that there are two subjects that I keep returning to, over and over again.
These subjects are education and agriculture. Especially the policy aspects of these two crucial sectors.
Now as far as I can tell, as a country, we are nowhere near any serious reconciliation following the deeply divisive presidential election of a few months ago.
And so, on the one hand, those who supported President William Ruto in that election are largely convinced that the indefatigable Dr Ruto will go down in history as the president who did the most to move the nation "to the next level" through sheer hard work and determination. Indeed, surely, nobody would deny that the president has a rare capacity for hard work.
But on the other hand, those who supported the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga (who lost to Dr Ruto in the presidential election) if I am to judge by the kind of things which the more prominent among them post on social media, are convinced that Dr Ruto may be great at political campaigns, but running a country is a very different thing.
They believe that his appointments of those who will occupy high office in his administration reveal that he has no idea what he is doing; and so, they are basically hoping that he will stumble and fall.
As I said: the country seems to still be very deeply divided.
But whichever side of this divide you may fall into, those two sectors – education and agriculture – while not as exciting as the spectacle of a presidential election and the aftermath thereof, should concern you.
For agriculture, the reason is that a clear majority of our people – about 65 per cent by some accounts – depend on agriculture for their livelihood.
Unfortunately, there is a limit to what Kenyan policymakers can do for our farmers. The simple reality is that few within that 65 per cent will ever be able to escape relative poverty by working hard on their farms.
And this is because our farmers tend to make more money when their farm produce can be exported; and the global market for farm produce is shamelessly rigged to benefit farmers in rich nations.
Against such powerful vested interests, the most that our small-scale farmers can hope for is that they will be able to feed themselves.
So, if small-scale agriculture is not a viable pathway to the middle class, then what are we left with?
Well, education of course. Traditionally and in all countries, education has been the golden key that allows families which start off as peasant farmers wresting a living from unforgiving soils, to emerge as middle-class professionals just one generation later.
And education policy is definitely something that is almost entirely within the scope of our own technocrats. There are no global forces or trends imposing limited options on our schools and colleges.
But here you find the most glaring failures due largely to misplaced priorities and short-sighted policies.
To mention but one example, the government has in the past year spent a lot of money on new classrooms for the competency-based curriculum, which is supposed to make us the equal of some of the rich Nordic countries, famous for their advanced education systems.
But even as this was being done, public universities were weighed down by unsustainable debt. And this was not primarily due to the usual reasons of corruption and incompetence. Rather it was that there had been a temporary 'higher education bubble' when the demand for such higher education seemed limitless.
Admission numbers skyrocketed and families willingly sold off livestock or even land, to keep their sons and daughters in college, believing that this investment would in the end pay massive dividends.
And universities, both public and private, responded to this demand by a reckless expansion of physical infrastructure – a major contributor to all that debt.
But then came a collapse in demand, as the realisation dawned that in 21st century Kenya, a college education is no longer the golden key to the middle class. Indeed, college graduates often end up back on the same small farms where their parents had worked all their lives.
With abruptly reduced revenues, even the salaries of lecturers and support staff can no longer be guaranteed.
