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Five Kenyan universities made it to the top 10 in the region and still dominated the list of the top 100 institutions/FILE

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Kenyan varsities top list of ICT savvy institutions

Five Kenyan universities made it to the top 10 in the region and still dominated the list of the top 100 institutions/FILE

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 2 – Kenyan universities dominated a survey on ICT compliance in East Africa that was conducted by CPS International, a social and market research company.

Five Kenyan universities made it to the top 10 in the region and still dominated the list of the top 100 institutions.

“We wanted to establish how universities have complied with ICT in terms of embracing technology for both students and lecturers,” CPS regional director Dann Mwangi said when releasing the survey in Nairobi.

Makerere University of Uganda topped the list with 13.49 points out of 15 points followed by Strathmore (12.84), Busitema University of Uganda (12.28), School of Finance and Banking of Rwanda (12.08), Multi-Media University College (11.93) African Virtual University (11.90), Makerere University (11.89), University of Nairobi (11.84), Mount Kenya University (11.79) followed by Kenyatta University (11.77).

Others are National University of Rwanda, Bondo University College, Hubert Kariuki Memorial University (TZ), Moi University, Daystar University, University of Dar es Salaam, Mbarara University of Science & Technology, Egerton University, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) and Mountains of the Moon University (UG) at number 20.

CPS said it ranked Makerere top because it has enhanced ICT both in teaching and learning.

“We were not only looking at how many computers a university has, but how they are used by lecturers and students,” he said. “Some universities have computers but they are not even connected to the internet or the internet is too slow and cannot therefore help students at all.”

The survey was conducted between April and October 2012 with the aim of assessing the extent to which higher education institutions in the region have embraced the use of ICT in teaching and enhancing quality of education.

“The results of this survey have been used to rank the top 100 institutions of higher education in East Africa that have institutionalised the use of ICT as a strategy of keeping in tandem with best practices of management, development and sustenance of university education worldwide,” the organisation said.

It involved 250 fully-fledged universities, constituent colleges and college campuses in Kenya, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda.

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“In carrying out the research, we used face-to-face interviews to assess the institution’s facilities and student-staff ratio while accessing ICT facilities,” Mwangi said.

“The information collected was also compared with the ICT practice of leading universities worldwide,” he added.

The report concludes that Kenyan universities are leading in the use and accessibility of ICT in education in East Africa while Burundi is lagging behind.

However, the double intake policy adopted by public universities is reducing the ratio of students to ICT facilities in the institutions especially in main campuses, and calls for urgent increase of ICT facilities.

“It is encouraging to note that universities in East Africa have embraced ICT and are competing lavatory with international universities in the use of ICT,” he said.

Other key observation made in the survey include the fact that Kenyan institutions have invested heavily in ICT than other African universities.

Generally, institutions that have exhibited higher compliance to the use of ICT in teaching and general administration tended to attract more international students, local and foreign grants and collaborations with private ICT service providers.

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