PERSPECTIVES ON THE UNIVERSITY ACT 2012 AND THE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION ACT 2012 ON KENYA’S R&D SYSTEM

As the curtains close on the coalition government, one of the greatest achievements of this government is the numbers of bills that went through the 10^th parliament and which breathed life into the new constitution.  Among the last of these catalogue of bills were three critical bills; Technical Vocational Educational Training (TVET) bill 2012, University bill 2012, and the Science, Technology Bill 2012. Enactment of these bills into law will not only ensure that all qualified Kenyans access quality technical and university education and therefore ensure that the country builds a critical mass of skilled human manpower for Research and Development (R&D) and the labor market in general but also go along way into reorganizing the STI sector to make an effective “enabler” of the Vision 2030 targets.

The thrust of the University Act 2012 is to provide an effective regulatory framework for developing university education in Kenya through agencies such as Commission for University Education, the University Funding Board and the Kenya University Admission Board. The Act clearly stipulates the role and functions of these agencies all focused towards improving the quality and access of university education and increasing Kenya’s competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. At the moment, Kenya’s education system seems disorganized with very many deserving students from high school missing on university opportunities due to lack of chances and resources that can support their education in these institutions. For a long time, university admission in our country has been pegged on bed spaces and lecture capacity. Fifty years after independence, Kenya has had only 7 public universities with about 25 constituent university colleges with very little expansion or improvement in their human and infrastructural development to allow for quality education. One of the main causes of this has been universities dependence on the exchequer for funding. Lack of adequate resources to improve programs, build research infrastructure have therefore reduced our intuitions of higher learning into centers of theoretical learning at the expenses of R&D which is one of the major mandates stipulated in the universities Acts.

As a country keen on becoming a knowledge-based middle income economy in the next 17 years, Kenya must walk the road of basic research. It has been shown that there is no better place to do this than the universities. The world over, universities are becoming hubs of innovation and fertile ground where the private sector fish for ideas, test them in the laboratories, develop innovative prototypes which can be picked by venture capitalists for transformation into products, processes and services for wealth creations. Such an arrangement lead to conglomeration of businesses and development of Science parks with high concentration of related expertise with immense contribution to the gross national product. This is the vision Kenyan university systems should have. However, this has not been possible in the past given that our public universities allocation for research have always been negligible and thereby denying Scientists and Professors opportunities to engage in meaningful basic research. Kenya has therefore perpetually relied on externally generated data to develop interventions most of which fail field validation because of the difference in environmental, cultural and societal conditions and mindsets. This scenario has not only denied our university dons and scientists the opportunity to compete and bench mark with the best of the world in their fields in contributing to the growth of new knowledge but also dampened Kenyan innovative minds especially in our youth.

With the enactment of the University Act 2012, the horizon looks promising given that just from the word go, the number of public universities is increasing from 7 to 22 meaning more opportunities to all qualified Kenyans to access university education.  The proposed University Funding Board that the new Act will create has its work cut for itself. The agency will have to burn midnight oil to look for new sources of external funding to ensure that Kenyan public universities do not only boast modernized learning infrastructure but have adequate well skilled human resource capacity with cutting edge teaching and research deliver lessons and conduct ground-breaking research. In this digital age, universities need ot invest in e-resources such as e-library and e-lectures and not relying in outdated reference books and “brown” notes. Such ambitious strategic planning will however need huge investment from the government and the universities themselves if they have to be more competitive. Towards this end, the new STI Act 2012 will provide the necessary policy advice and strive to promote, coordinate and enhance programs that will contribute to improving Kenya’s research and innovation system. The Act 2012 expressly establishes three agencies, the Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation to advice, promote, coordinate and regulate research, the National Research fund to finance research and the Kenya innovation Agency to promote innovations in the country.

Taken together with the recent Cabinet approval of 2% GDP allocation to STI, Kenyan scientist and university dons interested in research will have more resources to make their contribution to national socio-economic development through research. This resources must however be targeted towards developing a critical mass of well trained human resource and conducting research that can impact Wanjiku’s life now and in the long term. If planned and executed well the University Act 2012 and STI Act 2012 will be a sure path to Kenya becoming a prosperous middle income economy with a sustainable annual growth rate of 10% through Science, Technology and Innovation.