The Technical and Vocational Education and Training Authority (TVETA) is perhaps being mistakenly overzealous and narrow-minded in pursuit of its mandate.
Its recent decision to revoke the accreditation of Kenya Institute of Management (KIM) and declare the papers the college issued since 2018 invalid is overly excessive. TVETA appears to be using a sledge hammer to kill a mosquito.
To begin with, KIM has been training and offering qualifications since 1954. The college was set up as a membership-based professional body to promote excellence in management, to professionalise management, and to build capacity in the profession of management.
This mandate is very closely linked to training. Obviously, you cannot train and fail to assess and issue certificates, which KIM did from 1954 to 2018.
It is unbelievable that an institution could award credible qualifications for 64 years, only for qualifications issued under the same mandate and method to be invalidated just because a bureaucratic body has been set up and wants to charge regulation fees to approve the same training.
Kenya Institute of Management (KIM) Executive Director/CEO Muriithi Ndegwa makes his remarks during the launch of the Board Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Report 2024 at the Norfolk Hotel on March 12, 2025.
Photo credit: Francis Nderitu | Nation
KIM was not the only professional body in Kenya that was training and issuing certificates and other qualifications. Similar professional bodies included ICPAK, ICPS, etc.
The difference between KIM and ICPAK and others is that KIM forgot to protect itself by lobbying for a new law to be passed approving its already legal work (unless an argument can be made that KIM was operating illegally all these years).
By the time TVETA came into being, the accountants, public secretaries, and others had already moved to get themselves established by their respective statutes. Even our own PR profession has sought its own protective law.
Perhaps out of ignorance or mistaken believe that its long history protected it from the wiles and whimsies of a radicalised new-fangled regulator, KIM missed the boat on this one and did not seek a statute to protect it. Perhaps KIM thought it was covered by its move to start a university or became too engrossed in the affairs of running the university to protect its middle-level and professional training programs.
But what really is the difference between a professional body that was previously training and offering qualifications when it becomes enveloped by a new statute and one that is not? Does quality of training differ just because a law has been made establishing an institution?
What is the role of tradition and convention in training? Are traditions and convention automatically invalidated when statutes become a fad? Are we, therefore, to expect the invalidation of all prior Bukusu initiation training if and when a circumcision statute is enacted?
Clearly, Oscar Wilde was right when he wrote that bureaucracy expands in order to meet the needs of expanding bureaucracy.
Nothing illustrates Wilde’s quip better than the reasons given by TVETA for the revocation KIM’s accreditation. According to the regulator, KIM had expanded beyond its mandate by offering its own "internal" academic and professional programs without specific authorisation.
The institution was accused of running courses that had not been vetted or approved by the regulator, which the regulator says is a violation of Section 17(3) of the TVET Act.
Finally, KIM was accused of hiring Unlicensed Trainers, meaning instructors who did not possess valid training licenses from TVETA. Here, the operative word is “unlicensed,” which means that although the trainers might hold higher qualifications, including experience as managers, it all counts for nothing. Only a TVETA license matters.
Which raises the question: If a someone returns from Uganda with a management qualification that was not awarded with the participation of TVETA-licensed trainers, would that person be deemed to be qualified for purposes of practicing as a manager in this Kenya?
This narrowness of mind, the idea that only qualifications attained under the supervision of people trained and certified in Kenya, is a great impediment to the development of this country.
And there appears to be people who specialise in this useless gatekeeping, or turf protection, perhaps because of an inferiority complex.
The simple thing would have been to advice KIM to seek its own statute for the regulation of the Management profession, including training, like the accountants, secretaries, lawyers, journalists, and others have done, and to set a legal sunset clause by when the statute should be made.
A ministry like that of Public Service or even the State Law Office could draft the bill if KIM has no capacity to do so, which is doubtful. The idea is for the whole of government to be facilitative, not obstructionist.
In the British tradition, from which we have borrowed heavily and which inspired the establishment of the KIM, professions were always given the leeway to train and award their own qualifications.
That is how institutions such as Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), Chartered Management Institute (CMI), Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEX), Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), survived.
Even when the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (called Ofqual), the qualification authority was set up, the professional training organisations were not disbanded or frustrated. They were allowed to co-exist alongside universities and colleges and to continue with their training, with the new regulator advising and nudging them to adopt self-regulated standardisation.
The confusion in Kenya is more expansive considering the following. The status of specialised government training institutes in Kenya often creates confusion because many of them operate under their own specific Acts of Parliament rather than the general TVET Act of 2013.
While most are "recognised" within the national education framework, their primary regulator is often a sector-specific ministry or board rather than TVETA.
TVET-level institutions such as KMTC, Kenya Revenue Authority’s (KESRA), CBK’s Institute of Monetary Studies (IMS), formerly the Kenya Institute of Monetary Studies; The NYS Engineering Institute and the KIMC, etc., are autonomous institutions that TVETA cannot wag its finger at.
The situation obtaining is not unlike what is happening in geopolitics. Unable to attack fellow superpowers, an aggrieved or aggressive superpower picks on small a state to demonstrate its military biceps.
TVETA, which has to be seen to be working, is partly attacking KIM because it cannot attack KMTC.
The writer teaches at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Nairobi. Email: [email protected]
