Why Many promising innovations end up in the gutter after graduation

“All the way from 1983, through the Physics society of Kenya, we recommended that there is need for the country to have a national laboratory for physical sciences. There is none up to now,” Prof Jackton Odote who teaches Electronic and Solar Energy Systems at the Technical University of Kenya says.

Odote laments that unlike researchers in fields such as biotechnology and medicine that have Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KariI) and Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) respectively, little attention has been paid to young innovators in the physical sciences once they graduate.