How ethnicity shapes recruitment in public universities

 NCIC Chairman Rev Samuel Kobia flanked by other commissioners in a past press conference. [File, Standard]

Kenya’s public universities, long envisioned as engines of national unity, social mobility, and intellectual excellence, are quietly grappling with entrenched ethnic patterns in staffing.

While Section 7(2) of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) Act explicitly prohibits any single ethnic group from occupying more than one-third of positions in public institutions, this has gone on deaf ears.