Kenya encourages women engineers

NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 1 - Kenya is to initiate a full sponsorship programme for female students taking engineering courses, Higher Education Minister William Ruto has said.

The move is geared towards encouraging more female students to pursue technological and science based courses in order to assist the country achieve the Vision 2030 goals.

"We have now decided as government that women students who go for course in engineering and technology will learn for free. We are going to give them 100 percent bursary," Mr Ruto announced.

The Minister was speaking at the Masai Technical Institute in Kajiado during the institution’s first graduation ceremony where he pledged government’s actions in removing hurdles afflicting technical institutes in their service delivery.

Mr Ruto announced that students at various technical institutes across the country would soon be able to access loans from the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB).

"We have agreed now as government that students in our technological colleges will access loans like their university counterparts," the Minister said.

He added that his ministry was committed to increasing the number of students in technical institutes nationally from the current 54,000 to more than 500,000 in five years’ time.

Mr Ruto said that the government would also address challenges facing the labour force at the institutes with a view of improving the lecturers’ working conditions.

He announced a grant of Sh42 million that will be given to the institute to assist it in setting up a workshop and procurement of equipment and accessories.