There is an acute shortage of research funding in Kenyan universities.
This is particularly so because the government is unable to bear the budget of all researches and largely focuses on science-related research.
A research done by CPS Research International, shows that Kenyan Universities are not investing enough in research funding.
Of the 71 institutions of higher learning in the country, 3.5% confirmed to have more than 100 academic staff fully active in research while more than 18% of the universities have less than 10 staff for research.
On research infrastructure, only 65% of universities in Kenya own research laboratories and incubation centres and the rest hire them when needed.
This is a clear indicator that about 35% of Kenyan universities are not prepared to handle researches that require laboratories and incubators.
Only 34% of the institutions have 20-39 staff fully active in research and only 8% have 50-79 qualified academic staff for research.
From the study findings, on average, Kenyan universities received Ksh. 43.38 million from government, industry, NGOs and self-funding for research programmes while the top 25% of all the universities received about Ksh. 26.67 million each towards research. Also, the top 75% of all universities were funded to attune of Ksh. 16.38 million each for their research.
By statistical inference, the minimum threshold for funding research at any university in Kenya is about Ksh. 19.5 million.
Hence, the universities (53.3%) that received below Ksh. 20 million towards research had almost negligible funding.
This represents a huge gap in terms of access to research funds in the Kenyan universities.