The Open University of Kenya was established to enable many people, not only Kenyans but beyond, to access education, the varsity’s acting Deputy Vice Chancellor, Prof. Caroline Omulando has said.
Omulando said the university’s students’ population had hit slightly above 2, 500 despite the fact that it’s barely one year and four months since it was launched and chattered by President William Ruto on August 3, 2023.
“This is a new university in Kenya, one year and four months into operation since it was launched and chattered to offer various academic programs,” Omulando said.
She addressed the press during the unveiling ceremony of the China-Africa Regional Cooperation Centre for Digital Education and Open University of China’s Open Learning Centre Future Academy Programme at the Open University of Kenya’s premises at the Konza Technopolis city on Friday.
Konza Technopolis is located in Kenya, in the counties of Machakos, Makueni and Kajiado. It’s about 64 kilometers South of Nairobi, the Kenya’s capital city.
The collaboration is between the Open University of Kenya, Donghua University, and Open University of China.
The collaboration has four areas of focus, one of which is to host the Open Learning Centre and the China-Africa Regional Cooperation Centre for Digital Education.
Omulando expressed their optimism as a varsity that the partnership would help improve OUK’s training quality alongside the number of students undertaking various courses at the university.
“As we look into the collaboration between the three universities, we are delighted as a university because this collaboration aligns well with the focus of OUK,” Omulando said.
She added, “We now have an opportunity as a university in this collaboration to reach far and wide not only in Kenya but into the East African region, Africa and the entire world given that we are thinking of a China-Africa cooperation in this collaboration.”
The don said the areas of collaboration included launching and hosting the China-Africa Regional Cooperation Centre for Digital Education and the Open Learning Center for Future Academy Program at the Open University of Kenya.
“With these centers, we hope to host as many programs as possible. Diverse programmes because, within this collaboration, we have an agreement that we will co-create both academic and non-academic programs that will be offered to various groups of people given the needs current society is in need of,” Omulando said.
“We are also going to look at areas of capacity building among our staff given that we are young and now collaborating with the Open University China, a varsity that’s well established and hosts over 4 million students,” Omulando said.
Omulando said they hope that with this kind of collaboration, the OUK might learn how to move through the steps to grow and host as many students as possible.
She said they would also learn about how the OUC goes about its teaching processes through advanced technology.
Omulando expressed confidence that with the partnership,
they shall have registered great progress and accomplished a number of things
including the establishment of the centers and capacity building of both teaching and non-teaching
staff within a period of five years.
The Open University of Kenya Acting Registrar Dr. Catherine Kagichia said the eighteen countries where their students hail from included Switzerland, the Netherlands, Nigeria and Ghana.
“This university is driven by principles that are affordability, inclusivity, accessibility, and quality,” Kagichia said.