Kenyan universities warned thy have three years to rethink how they teach
Enterprise
By
John Maina
| Sep 30, 2026
The students who will arrive at Kenyan universities in 2029 will have spent their entire schooling being asked not what they know, but what they can do.
The institutions waiting for them have three years to learn to ask the same question. That was the warning from Prof Isaiah Wakindiki, the vice chancellor of KCA University, at an inaugural lecture in Nairobi last week.
More than 1.13 million learners in the pioneer cohort of Kenya's Competency-Based Education system are expected to attend university that year, he said.
"If competency is to become the organising principle of Kenyan higher education, someone must do the hard intellectual work of showing how," Prof Wakindiki said.
Prof Anne Kisilu, the dean of the School of Education, Arts and Social Sciences, offered a framework she calls the Competency Transformation Model. Universities cannot succeed by adjusting isolated parts of the system, she argued. What is taught, how it is taught, how learning is assessed, who teaches, and how institutions work with industry must all change at once.
The model lists ten dimensions, from an evidence-based needs assessment to the retraining of faculty, and its slides insist they are not sequential steps.
The presentation noted that change in one requires change in the others. The intended result is a graduate with f14 named attributes, including critical thinking, digital competence, ethical reasoning and entrepreneurship.
Its sharpest demand falls on examinations.
"We must move from recall-based examinations to real-world, performance-based tasks that show learners can apply their competences in meaningful contexts," Prof Kisilu said. Projects, portfolios, case analyses and simulations would replace tests of memory, she noted.
Lecturers would also shift roles, from subject experts to facilitators, coaches, mentors and learning designers, a change Prof Kisilu said makes continuous staff retraining indispensable. She urged universities to invest in laboratories, innovation hubs, simulation facilities and internships, to involve employers in curriculum design and assessment, and to replace periodic curriculum reviews with a continuous, evidence-based cycle.
The proposals raise questions of cost and pace that a lecture is not built to answer. Laboratories and retrained staff are expensive, Kenya's universities differ widely in their resources, and how many of the 1.13 million will choose universities over other routes remains a separate question.
Prof Wakindiki cautioned that a university is not measured by its assets. "Programmes, buildings and technology tell the world what a university has," he said. "But scholarly excellence tells the world what a university is."