Kenyan Engineering students are set to receive a USD 43 million (KES 3.71 billion) loan from the African Development Bank (AfDB) which will be spent over the course of the next four years. According to the lender, the project aims to increase the number of qualified and skilled engineers from the country's current 6,350 to almost 12,000 by 2017. This means that each new student will be funded to a tune of over KES 656,000. This includes education facilities, miscellaneous expenses as well as other academic resources.

The move is part of a bigger initiative which involves the financing of higher education projects in African regions like Malawi. Last week, the AfDB, launched a USD 29.45 million (KES 2.54 billion) Higher Education, Science and Technology (HEST) Project in Malawi.

The venture aims to increase access to technical, entrepreneurship, vocational and training (TEVET) and higher education in Malawi, with particular emphasis on information and communications technology (ICT).

Now the AfDB aims to achieve similar goals in Kenya based on Malawi’s ongoing success. While Kenya’s AfDB Higher

[caption id="attachment_28129" align="alignright" width="319"] College Graduate[/caption]

Education initiative is still in its budding stages, the Malawi project has, so far, constructed and rehabilitated 18 community day secondary schools, supplied 330,000 textbooks and trained over 700 school administration staff and science teachers. Meanwhile, the ongoing Kenya initiative will be aimed at improving the quality and relevance in engineering faculties in line with Kenya’s Vision 2030 priorities for science, technology and innovation (STI) and human resource aspirations in order to promote intefgration within the East African Community (EAC).

“Our partnership with the AfDB is growing every year, particularly in financing key development projects especially in infrastructure, which is a critical sector to the achievement of our Vision 2030,” said Finance Minister Robinson Githae. This follows a recent loan from the Bank which will be used to fund a hydroelectric power project between Kenya and Ethiopia.

The Minister, who is also the Bank’s East Africa Regional Director, added that the AfDB is committed to working with the Kenyan government to enable it to make an impact on its development activities for the well-being of the Kenyan people.