Three Autumns, Three Truces: Mbadi Must Put the Lecturers' KSh 20B Into the BudgetThree Autumns, Three Truces: Mbadi Must Put the Lecturers' KSh 20B Into the Budget

The KSh 20B ($153.96M) deal that ended this year's walkout is a fair settlement, but a settlement is not a payment. We call on Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi to put the first KSh 6.7B ($51.58M) tranche into the supplementary budget he is due to table in November, as a named line Parliament can see, vote on and track. Anything less turns Friday's signatures into another IOU.

Three Strikes, Three Instalment Plans

The pattern is now too regular to call bad luck. In 2024, lecturers walked out on 18 September and returned on 23 November after the government released KSh 4.3B ($33.1M) of a CBA valued at KSh 9.76B ($75.13M), with the National Treasury committing to cover the balance through a later supplementary budget.

In 2025, the Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) struck for 49 days over KSh 7.9B ($60.82M) of arrears still owed under the 2017 to 2021 agreement, a debt the Employment and Labour Relations Court had fixed as part of a KSh 16.57B ($127.56M) obligation in January 2021 and the Court of Appeal upheld in March 2025.

That strike ended on 5 November 2025 with arrears split into two phases and a written promise that talks on the 2025 to 2029 agreement would close within 30 days.

They did not close in 30 days. They took close to a year and a further walkout that began on 2 October 2026, before UASU signed the return-to-work formula on 30 October, as Mwenendo reported on Saturday.

On our count of calendar days, the three strikes have cost public university students about 143 days of teaching since September 2024, roughly 20 weeks. That is close to a full semester lost not to a shortage of money, but to the state's habit of agreeing a bill and then arguing about when to pay it.

A Fair Deal Built on a Fragile Promise

Credit where it is due. The government did not fold. The union opened at about KSh 98B ($754.43M); the state first offered about KSh 11.96B ($92.07M) and settled at KSh 20B, paid as KSh 6.7B in 2026/27, KSh 6.7B in 2027/28 and KSh 6.6B ($50.81M) in 2028/29. Basic pay rises 3.5% a year, backdated to July 2025.

Spreading the cost over three years is sensible for a Treasury already carrying a public wage bill of about KSh 1.3T ($10.01B), a pressure Mwenendo has examined in its analysis of public sector pay.

The weakness is not the size of the deal; it is the plumbing. The first tranche falls in a financial year whose budget was passed months before anyone agreed this number. The arrears for July to December 2026 are meant to land in January 2027 salaries. Each of those dates hangs on the Treasury releasing cash on time to universities that rely on government transfers to meet their payrolls.

Mr Mbadi's November supplementary budget is expected to cover spending recently approved by Cabinet and pending bills, with a net increase in total spending. That is precisely the vehicle this deal needs. If the lecturers' KSh 6.7B is not in it, the January 2027 arrears are already at risk, and so is the second semester.

The Case for Patience, and Why It Fails

The strongest argument against our demand is that the Treasury is short of money, that revenue is underperforming, and that Kenya cannot ring-fence every wage claim while hospitals, counties and contractors wait in the same queue. Better, the argument runs, to let the Treasury find the money as cash allows.

We understand the squeeze, and we have argued on this site that budget promises need names, not slogans. That is exactly why this commitment should be named.

A wage deal signed by the state is not a discretionary grant; it is a registered agreement that Kenyan courts have shown they will enforce, and the 2017 to 2021 dispute proves that unpaid CBA bills do not shrink with time. They return as court orders, strikes and lost semesters.

Patience has also been tried. It produced the 30-day promise of November 2025 that became an 11-month wait. A budget line costs the Treasury nothing it has not already agreed to pay. It simply removes the option of paying late.

Four Things We Ask, and by When

First, the National Treasury should list the KSh 6.7B 2026/27 tranche as a distinct item in the November supplementary estimates, rather than folding it into a general transfer to universities.

Second, the Ministry of Education and the Inter-Public Universities Councils Consultative Forum should publish, by 30 November 2026, the month in which each university will receive its share and the date the January 2027 arrears will be paid.

Third, the National Assembly's Budget and Appropriations Committee should decline to approve the supplementary budget unless the tranche is visible in it. Parliament ratifies these deals in effect when it votes the money; it should insist on seeing it.

Fourth, the Treasury should commit now to placing the 2027/28 and 2028/29 tranches in the main budget estimates for those years, so that next September does not begin with another strike notice.

UASU's secretary general, Constantine Wasonga, promised last year that lecturers would not strike again before 2030 if the government kept its word. That offer of industrial peace is still the best bargain on the table. The Treasury can secure it in November for KSh 6.7B, a sum it has already agreed to spend. Failing that, Kenya should expect to read the same story next autumn, and students will pay for it with another semester.