Gitunduti rise as Kenya's major university town

Karatina University administration block, on October 30, 2018. [File, Standard]

Gitúndútí is the name of a small town in the neighbourhood of Karatina University. If you keep on pronouncing that name, you may soon see a dentist.

Last week, I had a brief visit to this town, attending a funeral, the day after Raila’s. I could see the contrast in the two ceremonies. Fewer traditions in Karatina.

This part of Nyeri is a tea area hugging Mt Kenya. From Karatina to Gitúndútí, tea buying centres punctuate the 15-kilometre trip. But it was not tea that caught my attention despite the beautiful small-scale farms. It was real estate. 

Hostels are taking over small tea farms. The customers are students from Karatina University.

From Gitúndútí to Kagochi tea factory, the hostels define the road. The average age of this area must have reduced significantly because of the youthful students. A few questions went through my mind despite mourning. Does converting tea farms into hostels make economic sense? It must be, farmers would not convert.

It seems what is happening in Kiambu coffee farms is happening in Karatina on a small scale. What does the county government of Nyeri say about it? What of zoning laws?  Two, is there any coordination among hostel owners or each has his own design? The hostel owners should even involve the university to get something like a “university-accredited hostel.”

Clearly, Gitúndútí, despite the funny name, could be Kenya’s first university town.

Three, clearly, the owners of hostels are happy with the income. The university, read government, should be happy; someone is taking the burden of accommodation, which, since the 1990s, is seen as not “ core “ to the university‘s mission of educating and skilling the next generation. 

I could ask why top US universities guarantee accommodation for first and second year undergraduate students.The building hostels could be seen as an economic stimulus, a spillover for locating the university at Gítundúti and other similar university towns. Is it the best spillover? 

What of the wider society, how about those without hostels? The SMEs? The tea farmers? The forest nearby? The tea factories? Any new crop species? 

Any new model of the old forest shamba system which characterised this region for years? Universities should be felt by the wider society, beyond their localities. The chartering of many universities away from Nairobi is a free experiment on how universities can transform societies. Can they be economic firstborns of their locality, attracting other investors beyond hostels and hotels?

 Let us ask loudly, what is the economic transformative effect of Harvard or Stanford? Any benchmarking? Live near a newly established university?

How has it transformed the society in the neighbourhood and beyond? What does Gítundúti mean in the local language?