ABOUT KENYA  Situated between Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania, and Uganda, Kenya serves as the regional hub for trade and finance in East Africa. Despite its economic strength, half of Kenya’s population lives below the poverty line and just under half are unemployed. The country's long history of missionary control has led to a strong foundation for education, resulting in a literacy rate of approximately 85% of its 35 million citizens. An independent republic, Kenya struggles today with widespread corruption.

Pathways to Higher Education programs work with multiple Kenyan institutions to develop strategies that promote higher learning opportunities for rural female students and other marginalized groups. Kenya's Pathways programs have gathered valuable data on the challenges facing women in education, such as gender-related access and retention issues. Using this information, it has developed outreach policies and tools to address the specific needs of these populations and increase student retention.

The research has also been useful in exposing how little universities in the region know about measuring and monitoring equity and disadvantage within their institutions. Pathways is now working with a range of organizations in Kenya to address this fundamental starting point.  They are exploring how to create a means of tracking students within their institutions.  The approach will ensure institutional transformation to change the ways that universities understand and monitor educationally disadvantaged groups.

Pathways will also fund the start up of a women’s only education distance learning education system in one of the most educationally disadvantaged districts of Kenya.