On this page we will keep you updated about new developments and information regarding DEpUK.
October, 2021: 15 Kenyans in Germans
Several years have past by since DEPUK project has come to live. The joint efforts of all universities during the whole project period has brought about interesting ideas, valuable business prototypes and accelerated organizational development of participating universities in Kenya. Students and teachers participated in various entrepreneurial activities that foster not only career development and job creation among students, but also improve materials and course structures that teachers could use for teaching students the “entrepreneurial mindset”. As we want to acknowledge, honor and celebrate these efforts at the end of this project, we created a final event, that should summerize the project outcomes, learnings and future pathways of participating universitie
Have a look into the event, following this link:
Second round: 15 Kenyans in Germany
The DEpUK project goes into second round! Again 15 professors from Kenya came to Germany to work on a concept to implement entrepreneurial thinking at their universities. Now that they are back home we´re excited to see the change in the coming months!
During the first days the 15 champions from Chuka, Nyeri and Karatina got insights into the entrepreneurial structures of Saarland University. The next step for the second half of the week was to use that knowledge to find a way to support the Start-up culture in Kenya. With guidance of Norbert Lang and Sebastian al-Halabi the professors developed detailed plans to encourage new business founding at their universities.
We want to thank all the lecturers, organisers and of course the attendants for their participation. It has been a great week with a lot of cultural exchange and valuable learning experiences for everyone!
Organising a Business Plan School
The workshop for a Business Plan School took place in Karatina. Participants from all three partner universities learned what a business plan is, about already existing concepts for it and about the financing. The next step was to develop individual concepts for the different universities and how to implement them for their students.
We´re excited for the results at each university!
Start-up Weekend DeKUT
DeKUT university took on the big project to organise a Start-up weekend themselves. All partner universities got invited and everyone worked very hard on their business ideas. It´s awesome to see so many creative and motivated young people.
It´s been a great day for the entrepreneurial spirit in Kenya!
August, 2019: Leaning about Pitch and Presentation
In Karatina the project members got insights into a very interesting form of pitch practice taught by an actor. He showed the audience diverse speaking and breathing techniques and changed the perspective on classical pitch practice completely. After also communicating the content of a business pitch a start-up team pitched their idea and got feedback on it.
It was a great experience for the Kenyan partners and we hope to see many more great pitches from new founders when this knowledge gets passed on!
August, 2019: Project Management Workshop
Great programs are in progress and of course good project management is essential for the success of it. So, in this workshop member of the partner universities travelled to Nyeri and learned some important lessons about organisation skills on the example of planning a Start-up Weekend. This served as preparation since it was planned that each university will host a Start-up Weekend themselves during the course of the DEpUK project.
Let´s see how their organisational talents will advance and how this will show in future projects!
June, 2019: Planning a 600Ksh Start-up program
The 600 Shilling Start-up is an adapted concept from the 5€ Start-up from the Start-up centre from Saarland university. Students found a business in 12-15 weeks with very simple means like the symbolic amount of as less as 5€ and with the help of experts. Members of Chuka University, DeKUT University and Karatina University came together to develop an individual program for each of their universities.
We hope to see this project soon to be put into action!
June, 2019: Strategic Action Planning
At the strategic workshops last month many great concepts have been put down on paper. Now it´s all about putting the ideas into actual action plans. For this procedure the three universities came together in Chuka to work on the details and the execution. Goals, tasks, ressources, stakeholder, obstacles, responsibilities and milestones have been specified.
And now we´re looking forward to seeing these action plans put into practice!
June, 2019: Start-up Weekend in Nairobi
A great way to promote entrepreneurial activity is a Start-up Weekend. Creative people present their business ideas and for 2 days teams work on the persecution. Some members of the DEpUK project visited Nairobi and even made it to the winning teams!
That´s the entrepreneurial spirit!
May, 2019: Design Thinking and Job shadowing
The next workshop in our sequence of activities was, unlike the previous, a methodological one. Our consultant Sebastian al-Halabi covered with students the topics of design thinking, while being job shadowed by the lecturers of the participating Kenyan universities.
We again appreciate the great commitment from everybody participated and are looking forward to our next workshops.
April, 2019: Strategic workshop – Towads an entrepreneurial university
After hearing about the different methods of promoting entrepreneurship it´s now time for the universities to develop their own strategy. The three universities from Karatina, Chuka and Nyeri had separate strategic workshops in their cities to work on a concept how to implement entrepreneurial structures at their location.
There have been many creative and interesting ideas and we can´t wait to see how they will evolve!
March, 2019: Persona Canvas session for students
Afterall the students are the ones that we want to see succeeding with their own businesses. Of course, it is really important to give them the right tools to do so. That´s why we conducted a Persona Canvas session with the 2019 class of the NextFounder program at DeHUB in Nyeri. Persona Canvas is a method where you give potential customers a face, name and personality to get a better understanding of what they need and want from a product or service.
We hope this exercise will help the students to become better entrepreneurs who can accommodate the needs of their customer base!
March, 2019: Starting off 2019!
November, 2018: Had a very interesting week in Germany!
Last week 15 Kenyan guests visited Saarland University to get to know different institutions and structures at Saarland University that support founding and entrepreneurial thinking. We want to thank our guests for this interesting experience and exchange!
The journey startet on Sunday with an interesting visit of the StartUp-Weekend. During the following days from Monday to Friday we listened to a lot of interesting presentations from different presenters. The vice president for European and international affairs, Prof. Claudia Polzin-Haumann, welcomed our guests officially on Monday morning. Amongs others Dr. Michael Brenker from Phoenix Contact, Christine Görgen and Sebastian Al-Halabi from KWT, Dr. Thomas Schmidtgall from ZeSH, Lukas Bieringer from CISPA and different presenters from ZeMA held their presentations on entrepreneurial thinking, supporting students and establishing companies. For further information see the detailed agenda for the DEpUK Meeting in November 2018: Program November Meeting DEpUK.
To see in greater detail which activities took place last week follow us on Instagram and Twitter.
Another insight in the informational journey can be seen in an interesting article published on the website of the Dedan Kimathi University of Technology: DEpUK Article.
October, 2018: Looking forward to the informational journey to Saarland University!
We are happy to have less than one month left until 15 Kenyan university members come to visit the Saarland University and participate in the organized informational week. Many presentations containing experiences of founding related corporations such as the KWT, the Start-Up Center, the Career Center, the Center for Key Competences, the Cooperation Center for Science and Employment are already planned. Furthermore, some excursions are planned so that our Kenyan visitor do not only get the informational input on entrepreneurship and related competences but also experience an inspiring week in Germany. The detailed schedule will be published shortly!
July, 2018: The project is getting started with the self-assessment!
To identify the current status of the Kenyan universities a needs assessment was conducted in July 2018. All participating universities represented by management, employees and students fulfilled a self-assessment concerning the university’s current entrepreneurial orientation. The HEInnovate Tool was used for this self-assessment. Overall, it seems that the different universities identified similar fields of action. As planned in the project proposal the next step will be arranged and we await some representers of the Kenyan universities to visit us in Germany in November 2018.
May 1, 2018: The project proposal is approved!
The proposal for DEpUK as a project that initiates concrete action plans to develop entrepreneurial universities in Kenya was submitted in February 2018. Within the proposal we identified possible challenges and developed intended solutions. For nearer information and content visit the page „About DEpUK“.
The proposal is now approved and we are happy to get started. We are looking forward to our first planned steps namely conducting the needs assessment (a self-assessment using the HEInnovate Tool) and increasing the sensibility for the need of change.
February, 2018: Submitting the project proposal!
We submitted the proposal for the DEpUK project – Developing Entrepreneurial Universities in Kenya – in February 2018. The proposal contains of several information concerning the project including the initial situation and possible challenges as well as the projects arrangements and goals. We kept our fingers crossed until the proposal was approved.