We Rule the World

Benjamin Kipkorir, a retired professor and former Kenyan ambassador to the US, says that when he was making up his mind 40 years ago to embark on a PhD, it never occurred to him to consider any institution other than Cambridge University.

In large part, he says, that was because of the influence of his Alliance High School headmaster, Carey Francis, a Cambridge graduate who was responsible for training many members of Kenya's post-independence elite.

Kipkorir, who arrived at St John's College, Cambridge, in 1966 and received his doctorate in history a little over three years later, says his attitude was, "Why would I want to go anywhere else?"

Kipkorir was following a familiar path. Whether members of prominent families like Mbiyu Koinange, son of a colonial-era chief, who did a year at Cambridge starting in 1936, or the offspring of aspiring but poor rural families like Kipkorir, students from Kenya have been coming to Cambridge for at least three-quarters of a century.

(Scholars of African descent have been coming even longer, among them the son of a Barbados man who earned a degree from Cambridge in 1811.)

Today, according to Njoki Wamai, a 2005 graduate of the University of Nairobi who is now a Gates fellow at Cambridge, Kenyan students are aware of many more choices than in Kipkorir's time but Cambridge is still highly attractive.

"There are very, very bright people" at Cambridge, she says, and "the support is just immense." Wamai, who is researching Kenyans' attitudes toward the ICC as part of her work toward a doctorate in politics and international studies, says she's also enjoyed learning about English culture: such things as mulled wine, mince pies, and debates at the Cambridge Union.

But it's hard being part of such a small minority, she says. There are only 20 Kenyans currently studying at Cambridge, and only 243 from all of Africa, out of a total of more than 18,000 students, according to university records.

That's up considerably from what it was a few years ago but still low when compared, for example, with Malaysia, which has a smaller population than Kenya but which last year sent 10 times as many students.

African faculty are even thinner on the ground: Wamai says that when she was looking for a sponsor for a new African students' society she helped to start, she could find only one African with the required qualification of being a fellow of one of the colleges.