Visit to the University of Nairobi

Yesterday, I took most of the morning to spend time at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Nairobi. I brieflly met with Mary Omosa, a research fellow at the institute and met some of the alumni and current students of the Masters' programme. Apparently the intake for the two-year programme is around six-seven students per year and classes are taught for the first 1 1/2 years. To follow is the research component where students conduct work for their dissertation. I hope that I can use this opportunity to start collaboration between UKZN and UON in terms of a student network. The other part of my visit was to see how the research team was doing for the ICT and Poverty project in Kenya. I spent 2 1/2 hours with Lynet and Obidia flushing out the questions so that they were in Kenyan country context and raise issues to bring forward to the management team at the end of the week. It was great spending time with the two bouncing ideas off of each other about the research tool and learning a few Kenyan terms for food items and ICT products. When we finished off the tea and samosas, I made my one hour walk back to the office...