NEW LAWS TO BUILD HUMAN AND TECHNICAL CAPACITY IN ST&I

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 and Innovation Bill (ST&I) 2012. Enactment of these bills into law will not only ensure that all qualified Kenyans access quality technical and university education and therefore ensuring that the country builds a critical mass of skilled human manpower for Research and Development (R&D) that can effectively contribute to needs of labor market but will also go a long way into reorganizing the ST&I sector to make it an effective “enabler” of the Vision 2030 targets.

Kenya's education sector has experienced a lot of admirable achievement especially towards providing free basic education to all. The number of admissions to primary education and secondary education have significantly increased in the last one decade putting a lot of pressure on existing tertiary colleges and university that are to absorb those that graduate from primary and secondary schools. The technical institutions such as polytechnic have been highly hit by the explosion of students given that for a long time they have not had adequate instructors, workshops and equipment to conduct their training hereby compromising on the quality of their work. To address these shortcomings the Government enacted the TIVET Act 2012 which will basically ensure that technical institutions offering middle level  certificate and diploma training have the capacity to offer quality training programs that addresses the requirement of our labor market. The Act puts forward frameworks on standardization, quality assurance with a harmonized assessment and certification systems to regulate the quality of training and graduands that come from this institutions and also establishes the TVET Authority to regulate and advice on TVET and also to ensure access equity and relevance of TVET training in line with the Vision 2030. More important, the problem of lack of instructors and equipment to conduct training is solved through this Act by establishing a TVET funding board to source and provide resources that are required for the smooth operation of public colleges offering technical training. Overall the Act will ensure that well equipped technical colleges offer relevant training  required by most employers in the private sectors are established in each constituency. This will significantly contribute towards imparting technical and entrepreneurial skills required to make our youth more competitive and job creators and not job seekers.

 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 hall capacity. Kenya has made tremendous progress in improving its University education despite the myriad challenges it has faced in last 49 years as a nation. From only one University College, the Kings College, now University of Nairobi in 1963, the country have grown to 54 universities. Among these are 10 full public universities will another 12 awaiting award of charter by March this year to bring to 22 the number of full public universities and 10 university college with the remaining 24 being private universities and university colleges. This expansion is meant to help build a solid human resource base that the country needs to leap frog into the knowledge based-economy and achieve the targets of the Vision 2030.

As a country keen on becoming a knowledge-based middle income economy in the next 17 years, Kenya must not compromise on the quality of skills that its training institutions impart on the trainees. Universities must therefore develop an all round curriculum that will seek to develop the trainees into not only skilled persons in the areas of training but into responsible citizens of integrity that have the self-drive to make things done. This call for Universities to adopt more flexible approaches to their training and ways of doing business. The University Professors must therefore come down from their scholarly towers and touch base with consumers of the knowledge they generate through their researches. One of the proven ways of being "practical" don  is through program that ensure that professors are attached to industry through University-Industry linkages in a way that allow diffusion of ideas and technology from both sides and therefore reducing the incubation period for ideas to be transformed into products or services. Private Public Partnerships (PPPs) with potential to create an enabling environment in which there is free exchange of ideas and consultative approaches to common problems must therefore be encouraged.  More importantly, universities must walk the road of basic research. It has been shown that there is no better place to do this than in the universities. The world over, Universities are becoming hubs of innovation and fertile ground where the private sector fish for ideas, test them in laboratories and develop innovative prototypes which can be picked by venture capitalists for transformation into products, processes and services for wealth creation. 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. It is quite encouraging to see industrialist with proven experience within  the private sector such as Dr. Manu Chandaria coming up to head institutions of higher learning to provide practical guidance to develop and manage technical universities of the future. More private sectors players should come up and be appointed to such positions because this is one of the ways to break the silo mentality between the public and private sectors and between university and industry. The Government must however ensure that our public Universities are provided with adequate resources that can enable Scientists and Professors engage in meaningful basic research and industrial development for them to compete and bench mark with the best of the world in their fields in contributing to the growth of new knowledge.

 With the enactment of the University Act 2012, the horizon looks promising. 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 of modernized learning infrastructure but also have adequate well skilled human resource capacity with cutting edge teaching and research facilities to deliver lessons and conduct ground-breaking research. In this digital age, universities need to invest in e-resources such as e-library and e-lectures and not rely on outdated reference books and “brown” notes. Such ambitious strategic planning however need huge investment from the Government and the Universities themselves if they have to be more competitive. Towards this end, the new ST&I Act 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 ST&I Act  expressly  transforms National Council for Science and Technology into the Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation to advice, promote, coordinate and regulate research, and establishes 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 ST&I, Kenyan scientists and university dons interested in research will have more resources to make their contribution to national socio-economic development through research.

Lastly, the kind of resources that the three Acts will provide must be managed well to ensure that they provide the expected results. In this regard, there is need for leaders honored to be trustees of such resources to shown high degrees of integrity, accountability and exemplify visionary and transformative leadership in the way they lead these institutions to realise their mandates. In every move we make toward developing a critical mass of well trained human resource and conducting research that can impact Wanjiku’s life now and in the long term we must forever remain in touch with the spirit of the constitution in terms of addressing the common Kenyan problems. If planned and executed well, the TIVET, University Act and ST&I Act 2012 will be a sure path for Kenya to become a prosperous middle income economy with a sustainable annual growth rate of 10% through Science, Technology and Innovation. It is incumbent upon us to also reflect in the kind of leaders that we elect to the next Parliament in a peaceful manner but we need to consider putting into office leaders who will move the process forward by fully operationalizing the Acts.