The Emerging Kenyan Innovation System and the Future of Engineering Education

Last Updated 13 years ago by Kenya Engineer

By Professor Meoli Kashorda

Introduction

In January 2013, the Kenyan parliament passed the Science Technology and Innovation Act 2013 or ST&I Act 2013 [1]. This is the first Act of Parliament that has created the governance structure for the Kenyan Innovation System. Although the ST&I Act 2013 did not appear to address engineering issues specifically, it is not possible to implement the Act and the associated innovation system without the participation of engineers and the introduction of reforms in engineering education in Kenyan universities and technical colleges as defined in the Universities Act of 2012 [2] and the TVET Act 2013 [3]. 

The ST& I Act 2013 was one of the three Acts of Parliament that were prepared by the then Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology in period about one year from September 2011 to September 2012 under the leadership of Eng. Professor David Some, now the CEO of the Commission of University Education. The Universities Act 2012 aims to reform university education in Kenya and is the one that created the Commission for Universities Education that will regulate all universities, both private and public. Under the Act, 22 public universities have already been chartered (15 additional public universities established in March 2013). The Act also created two other institutions that are yet to be established:

a.The Universities Fund that will be the new vehicle for financing universities and will take into account the degree programs offered (e.g., higher funding for expensive engineering degree programs). This body will be responsible for upgrading the public universities learning and research infrastructures (e.g., laboratories for engineering education). It will also establish clear criteria for funding and monitor implementation of capital projects among other functions. 

b.Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service that will replace the Joint Admission Board that will admit all students receiving government loans or bursaries and ensure alignment with the constitution of Kenya in terms of promoting participation by all marginalized groups. 

The TVET Act 2013 aims to reform and regulate the Technical and Vocational Education and Training in Kenya.  Once fully implemented, the three Acts of Parliament ensure that Kenya can pursue the Vision 2030 whose foundation is Science, Technology and Innovation.  These three Acts will enhance the science and engineering education components the innovation system and also create the necessary governance structures as explained in this article. 

This brief article describes the emerging innovation system of Kenya and how it will be governed and funded as defined in the new ST&I Act 2013. The article will highlight to role of engineers in the innovation system the potential impact on the future of engineering education in Kenya. The author was a member of the Taskforce on Alignment of Higher Education Science and Technology that prepared all of the three bills that have now become Acts of Parliament. 

Section 2 will aim to define the term innovation and the innovation process. Section 3 will then briefly describe the Kenyan innovation system as articulated in the science technology and innovation policy. This will set the context for discussing the science technology and innovation Act 2013 and associated governance and funding structures in Section 4. Section 5 identifies the potential impact of ST&I Act 2013 and the Kenyan innovation system on the future of engineering education. Section contains our conclusions. 

What is Innovation and how is it measured? 

Innovation is probably an overused term – in business, education, government, technology and even in policy documents. Kenya is now globally recognized for innovation in ICT and mobile banking because of the MPESA service, considered a Kenyan innovation by most Kenyans. Unfortunately, the MPESA patent is owned by Vodafone (UK) Limited and Safaricom has to pay for royalties for using it. 

One of the best definitions of innovation is that by management guru Peter Drucker “Change that creates a new dimension of performance”. It is important to distinguish between creativity and innovation – creativity is coming up with new ideas while innovation is putting those ideas to work and creating a benefit [4]. Since innovation is based on putting new ideas to work, it is necessary to have a process of generating new ideas through an education system and a Research and Development (R & D) environment. 

For example, the World Economic Forum Global Competitive Report series measures innovation in terms of business sophistication indicators (50% of the weight) and Research and Development (R&D) indicators like patents, quality of research institutes and availability of scientists and engineers (50% of the weight). The Global Competitiveness Report 2013 ranked Kenya at position 66 out 144 economies of the worlds that were measured comparable to South Africa at position 50. This is way ahead of the neighboring countries of Tanzania (92), Uganda (101), and Ethiopia (125) or even Ghana at position 102. Kenya is therefore surprisingly almost like a middle-income country in terms of innovation ranking although overall Global Competiveness ranking at position 106 out of 144 economies [5]. 

The ST&I Act of 2013 emphasized the R&D indicators of innovation rather than the business and social indicators. In fact, the Act defines innovation mainly in terms of technovation model or novel products and processes. However, since ideas from R&D are often put into practice by businessesor society, the Act does also recognize business and social innovations. Every country does have a national innovation system that puts ideas to work for benefit of society or business, or government. In the next section, we describe the proposed Kenyan Innovation System that was articulated in the ST&I policy and was the basis for developing the ST&I Act 2013 [1]

The Proposed Kenyan Innovation System

The Taskforce on Alignment of Higher Education Science and Technology to the Constitution developed a Science Technology and Innovation Policy that was the basis for the new ST&I Act 2013. 

Notice the critical role of the education and research system of Kenya and the need for linkages with the business system. ST&I Act 2013 created the governance system that includes the funding system which has been a challenge in Kenya. The National Research Fund and Kenya Innovation Agency are new institutions that will be created by the Cabinet Secretary in charge of Education, Science and Technology. 

The ST&I demand consists of the consumers and producers. An innovation system must make certain assumptions about the ST&I demand. For example, if the demand is for innovations that solve the socio-economic problems in Kenya and Africa, that will influence the funding of ideas by NRF and the focus of the education systems. The developed countries and multinational companies often define global demand for their innovations. 

The government of Kenya and the Kenyan universities and technical colleges need to articulate the demand side of the innovation system. In the opinion of the author, this is a vague area. For example, the Kenya ICT Board has in the past five years focused on attracting multinational companies to establish operations and research hubs in Kenya. The idea is then to create a local innovation culture or even to adapt innovations in developed countries to the Kenyan and African market. 

The ST&I infrastructure consists of Financial sector (include venture capitalists and angel investors), the legal environment for protecting innovations and ideas, and innovation support systems. Some components of this infrastructure exist in Kenya. However, the financial system required for supporting innovations is considered weak with very few venture capital firms. It is possible the government, through the NRF will improve the financial system for innovations. There a few incubators that are mainly focusing on ICT businesses that are being established in Kenya and most are university-based and on a very small scale. There is a need to scale up incubation centers and science parks in order to support complex innovations. 

The Science Technology and Innovation Act 2013

Key Institutions Created by the Science Technology and Innovation Act 2013

The ST&I Act 2013 created the following three key institutions:

1.The National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation, the successor to the National Council for Science and Technology. This is mainly the regulator of the science technology, research and innovations sector

2.The Kenya National Innovation Agency (KENIA), a new body whose mandate is to develop and manage the Kenya National Innovation System

3.The National Research Fund (NRF) that will manage a fund amounting to 2% of the national GDP for the purpose of funding research and innovations in Kenya. This is a new institution

Apart from the National Commission for Science Technology and Innovations, all of the other institutions had not been established as of June 30, 2013. It is the Cabinet Secretary in charge of Education, Science and Technology who shall establish the other institutions. In the following, we briefly describe the intended structure of the new institutions. 

The Kenya National Innovation Agency

This is the new body that will develop and manage the Kenyan innovation system. Clause 29 of the Act lists all of the functions of the agency which include:

a.Institutionalizing the linkages between universities, research institutes, the private sector and the Government

b.Cause creation of science and innovation parks, institutes or schools and centers of excellence

c.Nurture innovative ideas from individuals, training institutions and private sector

d.Establish an innovation award system

e.Develop the national capacity and infrastructure to protect and exploit intellectual property from research financed by the agency

f.Identify strategic fields of innovation and provide incubators for innovative ideas

KENIA will operationalize the innovation system. Notice that KENIA shall be part of the governance system while a critical sub-system is the education of research system that includes universities, research institutes, TVET institutions, primary and secondary system as well as the ICT-based research and education network as represented by KENET. Although innovations are generated in all areas of research and education, it is the innovations arising from commercializing science and engineering research output that is the focus of this article. 

Although most the components in the innovation system have existed in Kenya, the linkages among the components have not been explicitly defined or governed. This is what KENIA is expected to achieve. 

The National Research Fund

The main purpose of the fund is to facilitate science and engineering research that ultimately the innovation output of Kenya. This means enhancing the research infrastructure of Kenya that includes building the human capacity for research and provision of the necessary information and knowledge infrastructure and broadband connectivity to support collaboration of researchers. 

The NRF shall consist of the following sums of money:

a.2% of the country’s GDP. Currently the total spend on research and development is about 0.5% of the National Budget and the 2% is a dramatic increase in the amount of money that will be set aside for research and innovations. 

b.Donations, endowments, grants or gift from other sources that is designated to the fund

c.Research license fees

A Board of Trustees appointed by the Cabinet Secretary responsible for science technology and innovations shall manage the fund. As of June 2013, the Cabinet Secretary for Education shall appoint the Board of Trustees. The Act gives guidelines on the composition of the Board of Trustees. 

As the funding agency, it will be part of the research governance system as shown in Figure 1 and will monitor the utilization of the fund to increase the research and innovation output of Kenya in priority areas. 

The Future of Engineering Education and Research

The foundation for Kenya’s Vision 2030 is Science, Engineering and Technology. This means that there is a need for developing a critical mass of engineers and technologists to support the innovation system. The Kenyan education system must then generate students strong with Science Technology Engineering and Math or STEM skills and to link engineering schools in universities with business schools that will incubate the engineering innovations. 

The Kenyan education system is ranked highly in comparison even to more developed countries like South Africa. Table 1 compares the Kenya, Uganda, South Africa and South Korea based on the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitiveness 2013 pillars on Higher Education and Innovation. Notice that WEF. The total number of countries ranked in the report is 144. 

Notice that the Quality of Education system of Kenya is ranked 37 out of 144, ahead of South Korea at 44. Kenya is also ahead of South Africa in terms of the quality of Math and Science Education at position 76 compared to 143 for South. But South Korea is now way ahead of Kenya at position 8, explaining some of their successes in innovation. Kenya also has a capacity for innovation that is comparable to that of South Korea at positions 46 and 41 respectively. Kenya is also considered to have relatively high quality scientific research institutions at position 50 out of 144 (South Korea is at position 24/144). In almost all the higher education and innovation pillars, Kenya is way ahead of the neighboring countries even in terms of availability of scientists and engineers. This suggests that the problem for Kenya is the efficiency and effectiveness of the National Innovation System.

However, there is still a need to increase the University-Company collaboration (position 41 out 144) as well as availability of engineers’ indicators at position 68. This will require a review of the curriculum and deliberately seeking input from local industry. There is also a need to continue increasing the quality of math and science education in high schools (76 out 144 compared to only 8 out 144 for South Korea). Innovation is highly dependent on the quality of Math and Science education. 

Table 1: Ranking of Key Education and Innovation Indicators 

 Source: World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013 [5]

Universities and engineering schools also need to nurture and incubate innovative ideas of the undergraduate and graduate students. This means not only improving the quality of the faculty teaching in universities and technical institutes but also improving the quality of the learning environment for the students. Moreover, there is need to develop an entrepreneurial mindset among engineering and technology students and to link engineering schools with business schools. 

Improving the quality of learning environment means upgrading the laboratory and research facilities of the engineering schools. This is an area that has not received adequate attention for the leading engineering schools. The government of Kenya has recently announced that it is working with Africa Development Bank in a program to improve the quality and throughput of graduate engineering education and to upgrade the laboratory facilities of six universities that offer engineering education. 

Conclusion

Kenya has a special focus increasing the innovation output of Kenya for socio-economic development. The new ST&I Act of 2013 is very ambitious and creates a new agency to promote innovation, called the Kenya Innovation Agency (KENIA). In addition, Kenya aims to create for the first time a National Research Fund with the ambitious target of 2% of GDP. This is a significant investment in research considering that the current research spend is estimated at only 0.5% of the annual expenditure. 

The achievement of the goals of the ST&I Act 2013 requires reforms in engineering education and research. First, there is a need to build engineering research capacity of Kenya and to increase the throughput of graduates at Masters and PhD levels. This will in turn lead to an increase in the innovation output of the country measured in terms of patents and innovations that can be commercialized. This will require upgrade in the laboratory and research environment of the schools of engineering and creating linkages with business schools and business incubation centers. 

All of these changes shall require new leadership at both the university level and in the schools of engineering and business in Kenyan universities. There is also need for an initial independent audit of the facilities and human resources available at leading engineering schools. The Cabinet Secretary also needs to create KENIA and to establish the National Research Fund as soon as possible. 

Kenya now has an enabling legal framework for dramatically increasing its innovation output and therefore to create new jobs.