Kenyatta University to launch a business incubation center.

Kenyatta University Main campus on Thika Road

Kenyatta University is set to launch a 50 million shilling incubation center. The center will train up to 20 business students with viable business ideas. The project is in partnership with the Chandaria foundation.The Vice Chancellor, prof. Olive Mugenda, says this is to encourage the students to opt for self employment which helps in wealth creation. The youth fund, will also support the venture with a kshs. 6 million funding. It will fund viable business ideas from youth who have graduated from the incubation center.It is expected that about 20 students will graduate from the incubation center each year.

Prof. Mugenda says that although KU students have no problem getting jobs, self employment does offer many more  opportunities.It has a greater multiplier effect as it helps create many more jobs. However, it will be difficult to identify the viable businesses. The problem with incubation centers is how to pick the winners. It's almost a gamble trying to predict which business idea will grow on to become a good business. The financiers certainly do not want to be throwing too much mud on the wall and none of it ends up sticking. 

Granted, many Universities and countries have adopted incubation centers. For instance, in 2006, China set up a venture capital fund of 300 million dollars(Kshs.26 billion) so that the best and brightest students returning from abroad can set up successful high tech businesses.Across the world, the Massachusetts Institute of technology comes across as a good example. Each year, about 250 companies have been churned out by the alumni of MIT. This has been in such areas as IT , bio tech, materials science etc. To date, the total number of companies would amount to 25,000. If the companies were to be isolated, they would form the 17th largest economy in the world, with an economy of over $1 trillion dollars. 

Obviously, the Kenyan University students at the moment cannot possibly churn out these huge number of companies. However, with initiatives such as these, it is possible to start creating about a dozen companies each year.

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