KENYA
Kenya’s race for smart sustainable development is being impeded by low investment in research and innovation as well as a huge shortfall of expertise in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, according to a UNESCO report.
The report, titled Mapping Research and Innovation in the Republic of Kenya, indicates that Kenya is only spending 0.8% of its gross domestic product on research and innovation, against a target of 2%. The report was released at the end of 2023.
Like most of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya’s university enrolment in STEM disciplines is low compared to enrolment in social sciences and humanities degree clusters. According to the report, about 25% of all students are enrolled in STEM fields at the bachelor degree level. Of that cohort, 7% are enrolled in programmes in natural sciences, 6% in health, 5.3% in information and communication technology, 4.2% in engineering, and 2.8% in agriculture.
The report pointed out that only a few students proceed to postgraduate studies, which means that Kenya has a severe shortage of researchers in STEM fields, a factor that impedes efforts towards producing a workforce for the realisation of progress on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Participation in STEM education in the country is also highly skewed in terms of gender. According to the World Bank, the percentage of women graduates in overall STEM disciplines is about 31%, and 19.5% in engineering, manufacturing and construction.
Are young girls not mentored?
To address the low enrolment of women in STEM, the World Bank has called for attractive programmes to be established in secondary schools to mentor young girls, and to assist female students in transitioning to university STEM-related studies. But that appears not to have happened, as only 29% of professionals in science and technical fields are women in Kenya.
Highlighting some of the barriers that have led to low university student enrolment in STEM courses, the report noted that, although various government policies have identified the need to promote training in STEM, few measures are in place to ensure enrolment of students in those courses.
Universities have shifted focus away from STEM-based courses and now about 75% of enrolment is concentrated in non science-related fields. According to Professor Chacha Nyaigotti-Chacha, chairman of the Commission for University Education (CUE) in Kenya, the situation is worse in private universities, where most STEM degree clusters are scarcely represented or non-existent. Most universities also lack adequate qualified academic staff with the capacity to offer high-quality STEM-related programmes. The pressures to expand access to university education have led to an increase in the number of universities that rely heavily on part-time lecturers who are less qualified.
Few full-time researchers
The high cost of offering STEM-degree courses in comparison to the social sciences and humanities has adversely affected the delivery of technical courses, a problem that the report attributed to the need to invest in expensive equipment and establish laboratories for STEM-based programmes.
In this regard, human capital with cutting-edge skills and experience in research and development has been lacking. The latest data from UNESCO indicates that, in Kenya, there are 225 researchers per million inhabitants, a setback for a country that aspires to become a middle-income economy by 2030.
Quoting Kenya’s draft STI Policy 2020-30, the report noted the number of full-time researchers stands at 9,305, indicating that the researchers, especially at universities, were not fully engaged in research and development.
According to the CUE, whereas the combination of teaching and research by academic staff is expected to be complementary in higher education, the increase in enrolment in universities in Kenya without a corresponding increase in academic staff has led to a negative bias towards research, with most academic staff assuming more teaching roles at the expense of research and development.
Contrary to many unimplemented government policies that had been urging for concerted efforts to educate many the scientific workforce, the pace in that direction had been not only too slow, but also highly unequal in terms of gender representation. According to the Kenyan engineering board, out of 2,501 registered professional engineers, 211 are women, representing a meagre 8.4%.
Level of education too low
As in most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the quality of Kenya’s researchers is affected by the level of their education, as Kenya’s National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation says many technical researchers are holders of masters degrees and only 36% have doctoral qualifications. Despite these handicaps, in the past 10 years, Kenya has doubled its scientific production output and, according to UNESCO, now lies fourth in Sub-Saharan Africa after South Africa, Nigeria and Ethiopia.
In this context, the report noted that Kenya is producing 58 publications per million inhabitants, ranking 12th out of the 47 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Comparatively, the top three performers in the region are the Seychelles with 532 publications per million inhabitants, South Africa (359) and Mauritius (342).
UNESCO noted that Kenya’s publication output patterns have remained stable over the years, as in the other countries in the East African region. Kenya’s researchers publish mainly in health sciences and 50% of the country’s research footprint is in that area. Other major areas of Kenya’s research interests are agriculture, fisheries and forestry, with 12% of publications in those fields collectively.
Although Kenya appears to be performing well in terms of scientific publications in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to UNESCO, 82% of its scientific publications were with foreign co-authors. In the past 10 years, the main partners of Kenyan researchers in publication output had been their counterparts from the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Germany and Uganda, in that order.
In this regard, Kenya’s record of productivity and respectable citation of its scientific publications is largely connected to many international collaborations and research funding which makes the relationship unequal, as local researchers are not likely to be the first authors. “Northern researchers tend to be cited as lead authors because they are the main funding recipients,” stated the report.
Innovation performance improved
Although Kenya has lagged behind in the development of human capital and research, infrastructure and market sophistication, it has stepped up its innovation performance in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Global Innovation Index 2022 ranked Kenya the fourth-most innovative country in Sub-Saharan Africa after Mauritius, South Africa and Botswana, in that order.
GII 2022, which is a ranking profile of the World Intellectual Property Organization, also noted Kenya was among the 26 countries globally that were outperforming on innovation relative to their development. The issue is that, in the past five years, innovation hubs have increased from just a few to over 200, all initiatives that have provided an environment where tech communities, entrepreneurs, start-ups and creative minds explore their talents and skills and come up with solutions. According to the 2021 UNESCO Science Report, The Race Against Time for Smarter Development, Kenya has by far the most tech hubs in Central and East Africa.
However, according to the report under review, innovation hubs in Kenya encounter various challenges that include limited skills, lack of a system for registration of start-ups and gender disparity. They are also confronted with weak capacity for the protection and certification of innovations, poor access to funding, inadequate linkages and limited access to specialised laboratories.
Amid efforts to mainstream science, innovation and technology into the national economy, challenges remain in terms of integrating a multiplicity of overlapping legislations in the sector. Kenya’s draft STI Policy 2020-30 pinpoints the problem to the relatively low research and development personnel and little awareness of intellectual property rights, resulting from low science culture among the population.
A lot of work ahead
What is emerging is that Kenya has a lot to do if it wants to join the club of middle-income economies. UNESCO recommends urgent realignment of tertiary education and training curricula to the needs of the industry.
Further, considering the current inadequate infrastructure in most public research institutions and universities, UNESCO suggests that Kenya urgently address the prevailing shortage of critical technical and research skills by ensuring ample qualified staff to teach STEM-related programmes.
The issue is that, although Kenya is often featured as one of the fastest-growing economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, UNESCO is sending a message that the country’s dream of attaining smarter sustainable development soon would be in jeopardy if it does not improve its STEM-based university education.
Source link : https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20231219104728871
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Publish date : 2024-01-18 08:00:00
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