The dream of furthering studies in some of the world’s best institutions is a common dream among students in Kenya.
While some learners are lucky enough to cling this opportunity, others have remained with their dreams unaccomplished due to various challenges stretching from lack of funds to visa denials.
These are some of the challenges Bob Mwiti encountered before deciding to launch a program to help Kenyans seeking to study abroad.
The co-founder of the Kenya Airlift program revealed he attended a local public primary school in Meru called Gikumene, emerging the top student in 1977.
He was called to the prestigious Nairobi school but his guardians could not afford the Sh50, 000 school fees demanded.
He joined Nkubu High School, where he sat his KCSE and graduated with a B plain. After high school, he tried to join his father who lived in the UK but his efforts were unsuccessful due to visa denials.
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Following four visa denials, Mwiti joined the University of Nairobi to pursue a Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce, Accounting and Finance.
Persistent students’ strikes at UoN forced him to transfer to Strathmore University to continue with his studies.
After graduation, he started his career as a teller at an Equity Bank branch in Westlands before leaving for greener pastures abroad.
In 2009, he successfully applied for a Visa and moved to the USA to pursue a master’s degree at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. While still a student, he began to look for a job in a bid to extend his stay in the USA.
“As a foreign student in America, once your student Visa expires, the government considers your residence as illegal,” he explained in a past interview.
Mwiti later pursued a five-month course as an IT systems analyst, which enabled him to land a job in 2012. He worked for some time before he successfully obtained a green card which enabled him to set up his own IT company in the U.S.
He founded Appstec Systems in 2017, a company specializing in Robotic processes, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine learning.
He later partnered with Hon. Dennis Kiogora to cofound the Kenya Airlift Program, which sponsors brilliant Kenyan students to pursue master’s degrees in IT at select American Universities.
According to him, Masters programs in the US can be very expensive, costing over Sh5 million. However, through the Kenya Airlift program, students’ studies are funded via loans and grants.
To qualify for the program, which has benefited over 200 Kenyans, students must pass the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) with a score of at least 550 out of 800. They must also have achieved a minimum of a B plain in KCSE with a B in Math.
