Kenya Advanced Institute of Science and Technology is a postgraduate-only

public university A public university, state university, or public college is a university or college that is State ownership, owned by the state or receives significant funding from a government. Whether a national university is considered public varies from o ...

established in 2021. The establishment of the university was aimed at meeting the shortage of highly skilled engineers, needed in the country and the region, to drive Kenya into an industrialized nation by 2030.

Location

The university is under development on a plot of land in

Konza Technology City Konza Technopolis, also known as Silicon Savannah, is a large technology hub being built 64 km (39 mi) south of Nairobi. Its location spreads across the three counties of Machakos, Makueni and Kajiado. It is a gazetted Special Economic Zone. K ...

, in

Machakos County Machakos County is one of the 47 counties of Kenya, which came into being as part of the devolved system of governance occasioned by the 2010 constitution of Kenya. The county's administrative headquarters are in Machakos Town, which is the l ...

, close to the county's borders with

Makueni County Makueni County is a county in the former Eastern Province of Kenya. Its capital town is Wote. It's the largest town in the county. Emali town which is an important market and stop over for the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), is another major tow ...

and

Kajiado County Kajiado County is a county in the former Rift Valley Province of Kenya. As of 2019, Kajiado county spanned an area of 21,292.7 km2, with a recorded population of 1,117,840. The county borders Nairobi and to its south it borders the Tanza ...

. This is approximately , by road, south-east of the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the Commerce, commercial and business center of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides wit ...

Nairobi Nairobi is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Kenya. The city lies in the south-central part of Kenya, at an elevation of . The name is derived from the Maasai language, Maasai phrase , which translates to 'place of cool waters', a ...

, Kenya's capital city, along the

Nairobi–Mombasa Road Mombasa Road, also known as the Nairobi–Mombasa Road, or Mombasa–Nairobi Road or A109 Road (Kenya) is the main road between Nairobi, Kenya's capital and largest city and Mombasa, the country's largest port city. The road is a component of th ...

Overview

The

Government of Kenya The Government of the Republic of Kenya (GoK) is the Central government, national government of the Kenya, Republic of Kenya located in East Africa. It is composed of Counties of Kenya, 47 Counties, each county with its own semi-autonomous gove ...

, in collaboration with the county governments of Machakos, Makueni and Kajiado counties, and the ''Konza Technopolis Development Authority'' (KoTDA), plan to establish an advanced institute of science and technology. The institute is planned to be an all-postgraduate research public university. After competitive bidding, the

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology KAIST (originally the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) is a national university, national research university located in Daedeok Innopolis, Daejeon, South Korea. KAIST was established by the Korean government in 1971 as the ...

won the bid to design the university curriculum. A consortium of two Korean architectural and engineering firms of "Samoo" and "Sunjin", won the bid to design and construct the university campus. Those contracts were signed in November 2018.

Construction and funding

Construction is funded by a KSh10 billion (US$72 million) loan from the

Export–Import Bank of Korea The Export–Import Bank of Korea, also commonly known as the Korea Eximbank (KEXIM), is the official export credit agency of South Korea.

to the Kenyan government. The facilities are expected to be ready in 2021, with the first intake of 200 postgraduate students starting classes in 2022.

Academics

The university will start with six initial departments: *

Mechanical Engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines and mechanism (engineering), mechanisms that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and engineering mathematics, mathematics principl ...

Electrical and Electronic Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

* ICT Engineering *

Chemical Engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of the operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials ...

Civil Engineering Civil engineering is a regulation and licensure in engineering, professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads ...

and *

Agricultural Biotechnology Agricultural biotechnology, also known as agritech, is an area of agricultural science involving the use of scientific tools and techniques, including genetic engineering, molecular markers, molecular diagnostics, vaccines, and tissue culture, to ...

References

External links