Policing in Kenya: Does Intelligence Matter?
Let’s talk about the tweet below. The tweet expresses genuine concern about the state of policing in Kenya and largely the rest of Africa. What should be the IQ of a regular cop and can Kenya or Africa achieve an intellectual police force? That’s what I will be talking about in this article.
Intelligence as an important attribute for a soldier is not new. Most people tend to believe that to be a good soldier or police officer, you only need to be physically fit. However, a lot of research has been done in this field and there’s evidence suggesting intelligence predicts a soldier’s performance.
For example, this study investigated the traits of good gunners within a tank crew and found that, gunners tended to have higher intelligence than members of their crew within the tank. As a soldier manning a tank, you’d be safer and more likely to be victorious if your gunner is smart. Aiming at and shooting targets is a more complex task than say, driving a tank. A smarter gunner will navigate these complex tasks better than an average gunner.
A different study looked at which characteristics were the most important in determining success during a soldier’s infantry training. The features studied included general intelligence, level of education, age, run time, push ups, and sit ups. If you asked a Kenyan which among those features is the most important for a soldier’s military training, they’d probably pick push ups, sit ups, and run time.
However, the findings of the study suggested general intelligence and a two-mile run time were the most important predictors of success in a soldier’s military training. This is how the authors summarized their results:
Our results indicated that intelligence test scores and run time significantly predicted success…age, education, pushups, and sit-ups did not appear to be useful predictors of success.
Most Kenyans would be wrong in their belief that intelligence does not matter in the military. Considering most recruits in Kenya are high school dropouts, our leaders seem to have already ruled out intelligence as an important trait in the military.
Compare that to the United States where the average marine has an IQ of 123 while the average college graduate there has an IQ of 110. To join the military in the United States, you have to perform better than a third of those who take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Test (ASVAB). Most undergraduates students in the United States do not meet that standard. Tough!
Police and KDF Educational Qualifications
We’ve seen that other countries especially the United States relies on IQ tests and other measures to recruit police officers and soldiers. However, in Kenya and most of Africa, police and military recruits are often high school drop outs with dismal grades.
This police constable recruitment advertisement, for example, requires that Kenyan applicants:
Possess a minimum mean grade of D+ (D Plus) and above in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination or its equivalent from an examination body recognized in Kenya with a D+ (D Plus) and above in either English or Kiswahili languages.
A D+ is a below average grade and very few jobs in Kenya would accept a student with a D+
In Kenya’s military, the General Service Officer (GSO) cadets have the highest educational qualifications, and recruits need to have an undergraduate degree to qualify. The minimum high school grade is a B plain.
Other than cadets, requirements for other positions are significantly lower with specialist officers required to have a C+ to qualify. General Duty applicants are only required to attain a minimum grade of D plain. That is way lower than the standard requirement for a police constable.
The Problem with Education
You must have noticed there is a discrepancy in the standard requirements for soldiers and police officers in the United States and Kenya. Americans are using IQ tests such as the ASVAB to vet recruits while Kenya is using school exams. What is the problem with that?
One of the quotes highlighted in the opening section suggests that compared to education, intelligence is a much better predictor of a soldier’s performance. What the quote partially implies is that intelligence and education are not equally important in determining how smart a student is. How someone performs in a school exam is not always similar to their performance in an IQ test. Some people who fail school exams can be extremely smart and some people who perform well might be stupid. Kenya’s choice to recruit soldiers based on their school performance (even the cadets) tells us almost nothing about their intelligence.
Even if Kenya was to raise recruitment standards for police and KDF officers to Bs or As, those grades won’t tell us much about how smart those recruits are. Education and IQ tend to correlate by about 50%-80% meaning more than half of the people who pass exams are likely to be smart and a third might not be really smart. Since recruitment is an expensive process, it’s better to be sure and go for an IQ test which tells us directly which applicants have higher IQs.
That also tells us why Americans prefer to use IQ tests to recruit soldiers instead of high school grades.
There is another bigger problem. The author of the tweet suggested that the police should stop recruiting Ds and start recruiting Bs. How can Kenya go about it and what are the limitations of that argument. Let’s see.
Kenya’s Average IQ
For the sake of argument let’s assume Kenyans who graduate with grade B and above are smarter than those who graduate with grade Cs and Ds. What would it mean for Kenya and the police force if we only recruited grade Bs and above?
First, I believe our police force would drastically reform. As I have shown, intelligent soldiers and police officers do their jobs better than non-intelligent soldiers. Training smarter soldiers also takes little time and the soldiers are unlikely to die in war. The United States learnt this the hard way after it mistakenly recruited IQ 85s.
Second, and this is not good, Kenya would not be able to meet the number of recruits it needs. A grade B is an above average grade meaning less than half of the form four students in a given year get grade B and above. Most of these B students are required to join universities and pursue degrees that will lay a foundation for their careers. Unless the government offers to pay them handsomely, this cohort won’t show up for recruitment. (Note: I am assuming B is an above everage grade certainly because C is the median grade between A and E)
Third, and this is worse, Kenya has a measured average IQ of 75.20. If grades were to be converted to IQ scores assuming a perfect positive correlation between the two, students with grade C will have an IQ around 75. If I extrapolate further, students with grade B will have an average IQ 90, and A-students will probably have on average IQ 105. Only 15% of Kenyans are likely to have an IQ of 90 and above meaning a recruitment exercise targeting these individuals will only come up with a handful of them. Also, remember the average marine in the United States has an IQ of 123 in a country where the average IQ is 100.
An A-student in Kenya is unlikely to be recruited in the United States’ military let alone a B student with an IQ of 90. However, these are rough estimates that need to be taken with a pinch of salt. I should also note that my guesstimates are averages which don’t negate the existence of high IQ Kenyans (Above IQ 110 mostly).
Fourth: Considering that most Kenyan undergraduates are unemployed or underemployed, Kenya could still raise recruitment standards and tap this demographic. However, I am afraid this group won’t budge unless the government decides to pay soldiers and police officers well.
Five: Kenya as a country is still in dire need of talented high IQ individuals. We cannot waste them all in the military. Remember we need entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, and engineers. But the problem will be easy to solve if we start using IQ tests for recruitment. Like the US, we can have a certain minimum IQ threshold for police and military recruitment then let doctors be doctors and soldiers be soldiers.
To sum: It is a good call that Kenya should start recruiting more educated and cognitively sophisticated police officers and soldiers. There are a lot of benefits to that including higher job performance, easier to train, and increased productivity in the field. However, there are a few limitations unique to us that would make such a policy difficult to implement. One is the fewer number of high IQ individuals, and another is the unreliability of education as an accurate measure of intelligence. Changing from KCSE to IQ tests would help save time and resources when recruiting officers while also guaranteeing better performances and fewer deaths during combat.
Weekly Readings
- What Are We Arguing About When We Argue About Rationality By Astral Codex Ten.
- Mentioning NATO does not make you a “Putin apologist” By Noah Carl.
- Yes, We Understand You Hate Putin. That Won’t End the War By Richard Hanania.
