Kenyan universities, private sector team up to produce laptops

Rhoda Chumba installs software at JKUAT's Digital Assembly Plant ( PHOTO: DAVID GICHURU)

NAIROBI, KENYA: At a graduation ceremony at the Nairobi of University back in 1983, former President Daniel Arap Moi issued a challenge to the academicians.

“Kenya has the knowledge and manpower to spur with the best of the word in manufacturing,” said the former head of State.

To prove this, the university was challenged to come up with a locally manufactured vehicle.  Such are the origins of the Nyayo Pioneer Car, one of the heirlooms of Kenya’s manufacturing story.

Two years later, one of the first five prototypes made by a newly established parastatal, the Nyayo Motor Corporation, roared to life before sputtering a few meters from where a beaming President Moi had flagged it off.

Although the project reportedly cost some Sh670 million in taxpayers’ monies (Sh1.7 billion in today’s figures) nothing followed the five prototype vehicles that rolled out of the assembly line. The Numerical Machining Complex, NMC, where the manufacturing occurred, was shut down and boarded up soon after.

Today, the government is once again trying a hand at boosting local manufacturing and assembly, seeking to breathe new life into the country’s manufacturing sector and assert Kenya’s economic clout in the region. 

As was the case in the 1980s, the country is banking on universities to push for industrialisation and this time Moi and the Jomo Kenyatta University of Science and Technology (JKUAT) have taken up the task.

The two universities beat several other universities and technology firms in 2015 to clinch the Sh17 billion tender to produce, supply and install digital learning hardware and software to all public primary schools.

Other universities that had made bids to produce the devices included Strathmore, Nairobi, Kenyatta and Technical Universities, Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, Meru, Multimedia and Dedan Kimathi Universities.

Unlike 1983, this time, the universities teamed up with the private sector to form a hybrid consortium bringing together the academia, funding and business acumen of the private sector.    

Kenyatta University, considered one of the leading contenders among local universities headed a consortium that included hardware company BRCK Ltd and China’s Guangzhou Institute of Technology.

Nairobi and Multimedia Universities partnered with Huawei Technologies and Equity Group respectively while Strathmore’s Research and Consultancy Centre teamed up with Haier Electrical Appliances and Bluplanet Technologies among others.

At the end of the bidding process, however, the State settled on a consortium led by JKUAT and Moi Universities to be the producers of the learning devices. Earlier this month, JKUAT unveiled a tablet assembled at its Juja plant. The tablet, dubbed the Taifa Elimu Tab, sports a Windows 10 operating system, 64GB of storage and 2GB of RAM.

JKUAT is working with Intel and Microsoft for hardware and technical support with the university keen to complete its delivery quota before the government-imposed deadline lapses at the end of this year.

“We set up the assembly plant in 2014 from where we have assembled tens of thousands of devices meant for the 21 counties under our quota,” explained JKUAT Vice-chancellor Prof Mabel Imbuga.

Prof Imbuga says producing the devices for the digital learning programme is proof of the viability of local manufacturing and assembly championed by institutions of higher learning.  

Kenya’s manufacturing sector has been stagnant for more than a decade, struggling to up value and output amid intensified competition from overseas markets.

According to the Economic Survey 2017, Kenya’s manufacturing sector recorded a decelerated growth of 3.5 per cent in 2016 from a revised growth of 3.6 per cent in 2015.

The Kenya Bureau of Statistics, however, attributed this poor performance in the sector to underperformance in other sectors including agriculture and electricity that provide inputs for the manufacturing sector.

However, a closer analysis of the country’s manufacturing trends over the past two decades paint a picture of a sector struggling to reclaim lost ground.  

The World Bank states that Kenya’s contribution to the global manufacturing output has declined drastically by 900 per cent in the last three decades as irregular tariffs and high production costs dampen the country’s prospects to become a regional manufacturing powerhouse.

In 2015 for example, the World Bank says the average Kenyan exporter exported just Sh15 million worth of goods annually. This is far less compared to other sub-Saharan Africa economies including Egypt (Sh58 million), South Africa (Sh26 million) and even Tanzania (Sh16 million).

Imports from China and India have flooded the market to fill this void in production with local manufacturing output stagnating at 12 per cent of Kenya’s GDP for more than 20 years. 

These grim numbers have haunted policymakers and stakeholders in the manufacturing sector even with fresh challenges to the business environment complicating things further.

Lowest point

The latest Kenya manufacturing sector barometer published by the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) revealed that confidence in the sector was at its lowest point in over four years.

This has been attributed to the country’s lengthened elections process and an interest rate cap introduced earlier this year.

According to the manufacturing barometer, more than 47 per cent of the country’s industrial manufacturers surveyed reported pessimism over business prospects for the next six months.

More than half of the respondents stated their plants were running on about half operating capacity with 40 per cent reporting a drop in the expected orders for the next three months.

“For the past two years Kenya has suffered a few setbacks which have impacted on our economic growth rate,” said KAM CEO Phyllis Wakiaga in a statement.

“For the manufacturing sector, in particular, our share of GDP dropped to 9.2 per cent and this was brought on by issues such as severe drought, double taxation, delayed payments, multiple levies and fees brought on by devolution and the plastic bag ban, among others, which have all affected the overall competitiveness of the sector in the region.”

It is in this regard that JKUAT and Moi Universities are attempting a re-boot of local assembly and manufacturing hoping to leverage on their academic resources to make it a success.

“We invite students who are taking courses like computer science, information technology and mechatronic engineering to get attached to the assembly plant where they can bring in some of the knowledge they get in class into the assembly line,” explains Prof Imbuga. JKUAT’s Taifa electronics project key staff is made up of 14 computer assembly technicians, for quality assurance technicians and four in sales.

Other administrative departments, including human resource, accounting and procurement, are similarly staffed by current or former students of the university.

Prof Imbuga said this will help not only boost job creation efforts but also establish a much-needed continuity between what students learn in class and what they actually practice in the field.

“Right now we are working all three shifts at the assembly plant full-time and we expect this to be going on for a while as we complete the mandate given to us by the ministry,” she stated.

In June, Moi University opened its Digital Literacy Programme device assembly plant at the university’s Rivatex complex in Eldoret.