President William Ruto and First Lady Rachel Ruto on Saturday hosted the 97th Kenya Music Festival State Concert, at Sagana State Lodge, Nyeri county.

After the event, they will head to Kampala, Uganda for the East Africa Music, Dance and Drama Festival, alongside winners from the Drama and Theatre Festival.

The East African festival will run from August 17 to 25.

The 12-day festival, which showcased the best in music, dance and elocution, attracted nearly 150,000 participants, with female learners dominating the event.

National chairperson Frederick Ngala raised concern over the gender disparity, noting that female participants far outnumbered their male counterparts.

“We must make concerted effort to help the boy child participate at the festival after we had over 95,000 female against 45,000 male participants recorded this year,” he said during the winners’ Gala at Meru School on Friday.