The number of Kenyan students seeking studies in the US has been on a sharp decline in the past one-and-a-half decade.
From an all-time high of about 7,000 Kenyan students in 2002, the number now stands at 3,710 students, according to a 2020 assessment conducted by an education search platform Erudera.com.
The platform conducted the analysis based on the data provided by the US Department of Education.
According to official data, the number of Kenyans studying in the US for the academic year 2019-20 stood at 3,710, a 44 per cent drop since 2005-06 when the US was the home of 6,559 Kenyan students.
However, the enrolment of Kenyan students has slightly increased since 2015, marking a 22 per cent growth by 2020.
In 2015, 3,019 students were enrolled in the US for higher education; the number jumped to 3,189 students in 2016-17 and 3,322 in the following year. In 2018-19, the number rose to 3,451.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of Kenyan students increased, with enrolment rising to 3,710.
Gent Ukëhajdaraj from Erudera says 7,862 Kenyans were studying in the US during the 2002-03 academic year, but the number has decreased since then, only increasing sporadically.
However, the trend is not just unique to Kenya. On a larger scale, the US witnessed a decline in enrolment of international students, Ukëhajdaraj says.
“The number of international students at US academic institutions also decreased during the past years, which, according to surveyed students and institutions, has happened because of denial of US visa applications under the Trump administration,” Ukëhajdaraj says.
Last year, Nigeria was the African country with the highest number of students in the US, with 13,762 enrolled.
The same year, the US welcomed 4,221 students from Ghana and 2,224 from South Africa.
In total, 41,697 students from sub-Saharan Africa were enrolled at higher education institutions in the US during the 2019-20 academic year.