Every year, thousands of young Kenyans leave university with fresh degrees and an urgent need for work. Alongside them are third-year students scrambling to secure internships, often their first test in an increasingly competitive job market.
Yet companies and new jobs are not growing at the same pace.
Lilian Ngala, the human resources director at Diamond Trust Bank, says this gap is the main reason internships are becoming harder to secure.
“Organisations cannot match the number of students being churned out,” Ms Ngala says.
Another factor is cost as a growing number of companies post losses, forcing them to downsize and cut costs, including stipends for interns.
“When a company’s finances tighten, internship budgets are often among the first things trimmed, since interns bring long-term value but no immediate return,” she says, adding, "This is why a strong internship programme is a sign of a financially healthy company, one able to invest in people before it sees any returns from them.”
As the number of graduates keeps rising every year, Ms Ngala expects internships to become more competitive in the coming years. She points out that a degree alone is no longer enough to secure an internship. Students need extra skills to stand out.
“You can't just say, 'I have an HR degree, that's enough. What about technology, digital skills and new ways of doing things?'” Ms Ngala says.
Also, a reputable university alone no longer opens doors. Graduates are increasingly expected to bring soft skills, especially teamwork and the ability to work well with others.
“Your GPA, your university — everything is important and critical,” she says. “However, the most critical skill that you must acquire right now is soft skills: the ability to work with others.”
With fewer internship opportunities and rising concern over low stipends, critics may argue that internships are no longer the indispensable career step they once were.
Job shadowing
“They are. School provides the theory, but it takes time in the workplace for students to understand what the real world of work actually looks like,” says Ms Ngala, adding that internships have also evolved to meet the demands of today's workplace.
Diamond Trust Bank, for instance, has two programmes for students: job shadowing and internships. In job shadowing, a student watches how employees in a department work.
The student does not perform the tasks; they simply observe. In an internship, the student takes on real work duties. Each year, about 150 students join the internship programme and another 200 take part in job shadowing, but demand still far outstrips supply.
Making the case for why internships still matter, Ms Ngala says they help students in three ways. First, students learn skills they cannot get from books alone. Second, students grow more confident.
Third, students build a network of people they can turn to later. She says a student who has already seen how an office works will not struggle when they start their first real job.
Ms Ngala says universities and companies need to work together more closely as some courses are outdated and no longer match industry needs.
"If schools and companies talked more, schools could teach the right skills, and companies could plan how many students to absorb each year," she says.
Prof Francis Mula, the deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Nairobi, also agrees that the internship problem starts with how universities are structured.
Most university courses do not require an internship at all. A student can study, sit exams and graduate without ever stepping into a workplace. Only a small number of courses make an internship mandatory.
“Engineering, architecture, some disciplines of agriculture, and teacher training are the ones that require you to do an internship before you graduate,” says the professor of biochemistry.
Medicine also requires an internship, but it happens after the student has already qualified, not during the degree. Prof Mula says the mix of rules is part of the problem.
“If it were built into the degree programme as a graduation requirement, you would not be able to graduate without completing one,” he says. “So the lecturers, the university and every parent would make sure students intern.”
Internship gap
He contrasts this with parts of Europe, where degree programmes typically run for five years, with the final two years built around paid work.
Students rotate through real responsibilities, making work experience a core part of education rather than an afterthought.
Prof Mula adds that the number of students is far greater than the number of workplaces that can take them. A university with tens of thousands of students would need thousands of companies willing to host interns, and that many companies simply do not exist.
“Do we have 20,000 industries?” Prof Mula asks.
The Kenyan government has attempted to address the internship gap through publicly funded programmes, but the money has largely been directed to state offices, bypassing private firms.
“They are injecting that money into their own state corporations. Why can't the internship money follow the student to industry?”
He gives an example. If the government wants students to gain journalism skills, it could give the money directly to a media company.
Prof Mula also points to another problem: many companies do not see the benefit of training students, with some arguing they could be training future competitors.
Kenyan companies are not legally required to take on interns, leaving such programmes to be treated largely as an act of corporate social responsibility rather than a core part of workforce development.
Universities also lack the staff and networks needed to place students. Career offices are usually small and handle general duties like counselling, not industry placement.
“You cannot have one department, no matter how big it is, serving 50,000 students,” Prof. Mula says. “The structure has not been thought through.”
He notes that some private universities have found a workaround, relying less on formal programmes and more on community networks.
Institutions closely linked to religious groups, for instance, often place students in schools, workshops or businesses run by the same community, where trust is already established and the need for lengthy vetting is minimal.
“Internships are crucial. You do internships largely to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge—what you have been taught in class—and industry,” Prof Mula says, adding that "the shortage is unlikely to ease unless internships are made a mandatory and publicly funded part of every degree, rather than an optional add-on limited to a few professional courses."
