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Logistics in Kenya’s Academic System
By Johan Woxenius
February 2012
Spending seven months in Kenya last year clearly left me with lasting impressions. My first
article about my stay (see the September issue of Northern Lead newsletter) was largely writ-
ten in future tense; this article presents what happened with my plans. With a focus on Ken-
yan academics, collaboration between Gothenburg, Nairobi, and Mombasa, and my time as a
visiting professor at the University of Nairobi, please enjoy a glimpse of a very fruitful stay in
a quite different academic environment!
The Kenyan academic sector
Seven of the 30 universities in Kenya are public and the remaining 23 are private, of which 14 are
fully accredited by the Commission for Higher Education. The public universities have 15 constituent
colleges that sort under the main universities in academic matters. The number of Kenyan universities
and colleges are thus comparable to that of Sweden. In 2011 the public universities enrolled some
151 000 students, the polytechnics 11 000, and the private some 31 000. This figure is about half of
Sweden’s 360 000 enrolled in higher education. Four times more people live in Kenya than in Sweden.
The Kenyans with the best high school grades enjoy free university education, whereas those with
money can enrol as self-sponsored students. There is a clear quality gap between the student groups.
The teachers I spoke to obviously preferred teaching the government-sponsored students but were paid
extra to teach the self-sponsored.
Kenyatta University, outside of Nairobi, is the largest, whereas the University of Nairobi (UoNbi) is
the oldest and generally seen as the most prestigious. Employers, however, are sometimes reluctant to
hire graduates from UoNbi due to the university’s student activist reputation. When I was at UoNbi,
for instance, the student union leader was slashed by a machete-man and lost some fingers, and his
student's room was burned down. Moi University in Eldoret, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture
and Technology (JKUAT) north of Nairobi, and Maseno University in Kisumu at Lake Victoria are
also well-known institutions. Nairobi and Maseno are cities, whereas Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap
Moi were the first two Kenyan presidents. Visiting Kenya, you get used to having half of everything
being named Kenyatta and the other half Moi; and if they are not named after the presidents, you often
find that they are owned by someone named Kenyatta or Moi. The third and still sitting president,
Kibaki, has not followed the tradition of labelling the Kenyan society with his name.
A carpenter’s workshop at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.
Notably, Kenya’s second largest city, Mombasa, lacks a university, although Mombasa Polytechnic
University College (MPUC) is expected to get university status in 2012 and then cease to be sorted
under JKUAT.
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A workshop at Mombasa Polytechnic University College.
Mombasa is also subject to the interesting phenomenon of the main universities competing for stu-
dents all over Kenya. UoNbi, for instance, educates at campuses distributed across Nairobi, but also in
campuses in Mombasa and Kisumu and in ten “extra mural centres” all over Kenya. I was surprised to
find that UoNbi had bought what appeared to be the largest building on Mombasa’s high street. Dur-
ing my visit they were busy throwing out tenants and remodelling the building with lecture halls and
canteens. The School of Business (SoB) already had a thousand students there and the School of Law
and other parts of the university had another thousand students. Many of the courses given in Nairobi
were also offered in Mombasa, and the teaching staff travelled between the cities.
External and internal view of the University of Nairobi’s campus in Mombasa.
The same goes for the other main universities in creating a true market for higher education, with uni-
versities competing for self-sponsored students on highly commercial grounds on campuses in virtual-
ly all Kenyan cities. Imagine the University of Gothenburg admitting students to campuses in Stock-
holm, Lund, and Uppsala and at extra mural centres in Örkelljunga, Finspång, and Sollefteå!
3
Linking Swedish and Kenyan universities
Cooperation between universities is either initiated from the universities’ top management finding
strategic reasons for cooperation or through a bottom-up process with individual researchers working
together. Both ways have their benefits and shortcomings, but they both rely on actions taken on at an
operational level to fill the cooperation with content. A university level agreement makes life a bit
easier and opens up for student exchanges and certain funding; it also provides a bit more stable coop-
eration than the bilateral initiatives by individuals.
During my stay in Kenya I found many research links between GU and UoNbi, and I tried to contrib-
ute to an agreement at the university level since personal presence is a success factor, if not a require-
ment. I think we will get there, but the central process was not very fast, so GU’s Faculty of Natural
Science worked out an agreement at the faculty level. I met Johan Boman, a professor in GU’s De-
partment of Chemistry and part of the Sustainable Transport Initiative, who measured traffic emissions
in Kenya and taught at UoNbi. The talks lead to an attempt to do the same between GU’s Schools of
Business, Economics and Law and its counterparts at UoNbi. Nevertheless, the agreement at the facul-
ty level also failed during my stay; however, Gunnar Köhlin, at the Department of Economics with
their centre of Environment for Development (see my last article), Lena Gipperth, of the Department
of Law, and I are still optimistic and think we will get an agreement soon. We are planning for a semi-
nar at Handels by the end of March when we get visitors from UoNbi.
Entrance to the University of Nairobi’s main campus.
Note the sign to the right saying “University of Nairobi is a corruption free zone”.
Commissioned by Northern Lead’s “sister competence centre” Lighthouse in the maritime field, I also
investigated whether or not we could link our research and education to Kenya. The Kenyan maritime
education sector is clearly in its infancy, and I found few traces of research. On a rather operational or
even practical level, the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) educates its own staff at their Bandari College
in Mombasa and SoB of UoNbi gives some courses for KPA’s mid- and upper-management. Bandari
College has asked SoB to develop a course in maritime logistics and I hope to be part of the effort.
View over the Port of Mombasa from the port’s Bandari College.
Training and licensing seafarers is subject to international rules set by the IMO and are sorted under
the Kenya Maritime Administration (KMA), rather than under the Ministry of Higher Education, Sci-
4
ence, and Technology. KMA’s Director General, Nancy Karigithu, has initiated new navigation and
ship engineer programmes at JKUAT and MPUC, and she was an extremely helpful door-opener. Fol-
lowing the meeting with Mrs. Karigithu, I visited both institutions and discussed ways to move for-
ward with the principals and heads of departments.
Me, Johan Woxenius, outside the Nautical Block at Mombasa Polytechnic University College.
It was a hot and humid day…
Shipping and Marine Technology at Chalmers will deepen the collaboration with JKUAT and MPUC
in the fields of navigation and ship engineers, and I will continue my efforts with SoB regarding mari-
time transport management and logistics.
Department of Applied Science hosting the nautical education at Mombasa Polytechnic University College. The
Swahili architecture reflects Mombasa’s mixed history of Arab, Portuguese, Indian, and British merchants.
A tour around JKUAT’s laboratories revealed that they had been given large parts of their machinery
and teaching equipment from Japanese donors. It was not exactly high-tech, but it seemed adequate for
the teaching offered at JKUAT. They also had a large Wärtsilä engine, originally used for electric
power generation but now used for training ship engineers in the courtyard.
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A ship’s engine used for educational purposes at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.
Logistics in the Kenyan academic system
Freight transport and logistics are not very visible in Kenyan university curricula. The Kenyan society
seems to prioritise education in agriculture, business, and civil engineering. One example is that I con-
tinuously searched for conferences on transport, logistics, and supply chain management and thus
missed the apparently most relevant conference, which was titled “infrastructure”.
Besides the courses at Bandari College, SoB also offers logistics and supply chain management cours-
es in its Bachelor of Commerce and MBA programmes, both with specialisations on Procurement and
Supply Chain Management, Operations Management, and Business Information Systems. At the con-
ferences I attended I found some papers addressing logistics and transport and I met a few East Afri-
can researchers active in the field.
There is a true interest in strengthening logistics education, and I have promised to assist in developing
an MSc programme on logistics. It will be given at the main campus in Nairobi, but an intended spe-
cialisation on maritime logistics will be developed in Mombasa. I hope colleagues within Northern
Lead will be interested in joining my efforts and gain experience from teaching in Kenya!
Personal experiences
My article in September was full of things “still to do” in Kenya. Many of them actually materialised,
such as being part of a panel at the National Energy Conference and helping Ola Alterå, former Swe-
dish secretary of state for energy and now country manager for UNIDO, into the programme. An in-
teresting experience was getting a separate programme detailing to the minute President Kibaki’s visit
and official opening of the conference, just to discover that he gave his speech three hours late. Prime
Minister Raila Odinga’s closing speech was just 2.5 hours after the set time, indicating that he was not
as important as the president.
Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, giving a speech at the Energy Conference.
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While listening to their speeches, I could not help thinking of the close to one thousand killed and the
600 000 who had to leave their homes after their disagreement of how the votes were counted during
the last elections, which is now facing its aftermath in the Hague.There is apparently more interest in
large-scale energy generation projects than in small-scale practical solutions for the countryside
among ministers and parastatal bosses. I just could not help suspecting that it is related to the corrup-
tion that pervades Kenyan society.
I spent most of the autumn as a visiting professor at UoNbi. Trying to follow the instructions on how
to formally become a visiting professor, I experienced a truly Kafkaesque bureaucracy at the universi-
ty level, but it was smooth at the school level. The School of Business proved to be a very good host
and I really enjoyed the friendly climate at the school.
The School of Business at the University of Nairobi’s Lower Kabete Campus.
The university’s signature colour is not sponsored by the big Danish shipping line...
The lectures were quite diverse due to the different courses and at one of the lectures I brought Bo-
Göran Evaldsson, a fellow Swede who worked for Tetra Pak. At another lecture I brought Olivier
Hartmann of the World Bank. These visitors were very well received by the students; it did not seem
to be the norm to bring in guest lecturers from the industry and public sector to the classes.
Me, teaching in the Bachelor of Commerce course “Contemporary Issues in SCM” on October 15th
.
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I must say that the discussions with students in the five different courses, in which I lectured were
more intense and fruitful than most discussions with students at Handels. I particularly liked the dis-
cussion about the students’ views on the Chinese activities in Kenya. Since Kenya lacks natural re-
sources, I cannot explain it in any way other than that the Chinese built a consumer market, as I wrote
about in the last newsletter article.
As part of my activities at SoB, I gave one presentation at the 2nd
AIBUMA (African International
Business and Management Conference, see the September article) and one presentation at the 7th OR-
SEA (Operations Research Society of Eastern Africa) conference, both arranged at the Kenyatta Inter-
national Conference Centre in Nairobi. (Yes, it is named after the first president.) I also held a seminar
on research and research funding for the SoB staff and I plan to deepen the collaboration during future
visits in both directions.
Me, the little dot over the left side of the banner, speaking at the 7th
ORSEA conference in the magnificent
auditorium at Kenyatta International Conference Centre. Photo: Bo-Göran Evaldsson.
The activities at UoNbi exceeded my expectations. Advancing research, however, proved to be a
greater challenge than expected. I started some article projects, but partly due to my scattered pro-
gramme and partly due to my co-authors’ lack of time, we have not yet finished any articles. I also
found out too late that I needed a formal research permit to do empirical research in Kenya, and that
would take several months to get. At that stage there was no point in applying and thus I decided to
“stay below the radar”.
I had long meetings and very fruitful discussions with Olivier, the Frenchman from the World Bank.
He has worked for the World Bank for many years in Kenya and other places but is currently placed at
the Bank’s headquarters in Washington D.C. Together we visited the Embakasi Dryport in Nairobi and
interviewed information system operating officers. The Dryport, formally called Inland Container
Depot – Nairobi, is part of KPA, and thus in the same organisation as the Port of Mombasa. Regarding
the information flow, I actually found them to be more advanced, or at least more integrated, than the
corresponding dryport system in the Port of Gothenburg’s hinterland.
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The entrance gate to Embakasi Dryport in Nairobi from the main office of Kenya Port Authorities, October 13th
.
The ports use variants of the same information system, CATOS, but in Kenya it included the dryport
operations in Nairobi and Kisumu. Their current problem was that the rail company was not integrated
and even refused to inform them of when trains would arrive and what they contained. It did not help
that KPA already knew what was in the containers when leaving the Port of Mombasa and just wanted
to improve their operations with a smooth information flow.
The World Bank continues with the project of monitoring information flows along the Northern Corri-
dor between Mombasa and Uganda through Nairobi and Kisumu, as briefly described in my previous
article. In fact, I am both impressed and jealous of what data they can retrieve and the possibilities it
gives for research.
In my last article I wrote about the 14-seater matatus that provide public/private transportation all over
Kenya. They are driven like crazy, and there is a fairly intensive programme to build pavements to
protect pedestrians. Matatu drivers seem to like this since they now have an additional lane for over-
taking cars and other matatus…
Matatus finding their way through Nairobi’s hectic traffic.
The new pavements proved to be as good as a new matatu lane…
In retrospect, I must say that it was a truly fascinating stay in Kenya and I am eager to share my expe-
riences and contacts. I really recommend staying a longer period abroad, and do not look for the safe
and presumably more scientifically productive option of working with researchers with a similar ap-
proach to similar problems in a similar context. To learn the most: look for a different place, with dif-
ferent problems, and, more importantly, different people!