Roots and routes – knowledge and career trajectories of Kenyan and Tanzanian agriculture graduates

By Theresa Meyer, Stefan Adamson and Michael Brüntrup*

Agriculture continues to play a critical role in the livelihoods and economies of most African countries. Despite a relative decline in its contribution to GDP, the sector remains the major employer – especially in rural areas – and is closely linked to poverty reduction, food security, climate resilience and national development strategies. Agricultural higher education institutions are called upon to generate knowledge and to prepare future professionals to contribute to the further development of the sector. With agriculture and its ecological, economic, social and even political environments evolving rapidly, universities are challenged like never before to co-evolve. This involves bridging academic, technological, and practical domains, while addressing growing concerns over the employability of graduates, the inclusivity of education systems, and the real-world impact of academic training.

Against this backdrop, our study (see Box at the end of the article) explored motivations for studying agriculture, graduate employment pathways, competency development, roles in knowledge transfer after graduation, and gendered barriers in two East African countries, Kenya and Tanzania. The latter are both agriculturally-based economies, with agriculture central to livelihoods. Kenya, a lower-middle-income country, has a higher GDP per capita (2000 vs. 1,150 USD) and exports more agricultural products, while Tanzania remains low-income with a larger share of its workforce in agriculture (65 % vs 54 %). Both countries’ tertiary education systems are similar, though Kenya has more universities, especially private ones, and higher enrolment rates.

The study applied a mixed-methods tracer design combining qualitative and quantitative data. A tracer design refers to a research method in which individuals leaving an (educational or other) institution are followed up and asked about their experiences both during and after their time at the institution. Over the course of three months, it involved 66 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders from the government, NGOs, academia, and the private sector, 56 focus group discussions with recent graduates and students, an online survey of 193 agriculture graduates (106 in Kenya, 87 in Tanzania) and two national restitution workshops in the capital cities Dodoma and Nairobi to verify, amend and disseminate the preliminary findings. The research areas were determined together with the partner institutions, focusing on Nairobi, Kisumu, Siaya and Narok in Kenya and on the SAGCOT corridor in Tanzania, particularly Morogoro and Mbeya region. 

Research locations in Kenya and Tanzania (own illustration, source: mapchart.net).

Why do graduates choose agriculture?

Our study shows that motivations for studying agriculture are diverse, shaped by changing perceptions of the sector. Most graduates reported that they entered agricultural studies by choice, driven by a combination of personal interest, family background, and a desire to address food security or rural development challenges in their communities. Many also cited perceived business and employment opportunities, particularly the relative ease of pursuing self-employment. These motivations are closely linked to the changing perception of agriculture as an increasingly modern, technology-driven discipline with growing relevance in areas like climate change, innovation and entrepreneurship in agriculture and in backward and forward businesses. The main exception to this motivation pattern is the case of placed admission into agriculture through centralised university admissions (in Kenya), often ignoring students’ initial interest. However, even in these cases, some students developed a growing appreciation for the field over time.

Students during practical training at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) in Morogoro, Tansania.
Photo: Authors

Employment trajectories

Employment trajectories for agricultural graduates in Kenya and Tanzania are diverse and often non-linear. While the number of graduates entering the labour market continues to grow, the absorption capacity of traditional employers – particularly the public sector – remains limited. Public institutions, which have historically played a major role in graduate employment, offer fewer opportunities due to fiscal constraints and saturation while the expanding private and NGO sectors can only compensate partially to offer jobs. Moreover, informal recruitment processes, which are often dependent on personal networks, pose additional obstacles for graduates from disadvantaged or rural backgrounds. Such dynamics can compound inequalities and delay entry into meaningful employment. As a result, many young professionals experience delayed entry into stable employment or are compelled to pursue informal or hybrid income strategies.

Self-employment has become an increasingly common response in both countries – motivated by necessity and by aspirations for financial independence and professional autonomy, but also by passion. Those graduates engage in a wide range of activities that include commercial farming, input supply, agri-advisory services and innovative urban farming practices, with some entrepreneurs creating innovative solutions and additional jobs.

In recent years, government programmes, donor-funded initiatives and university-led incubators have increasingly supported agripreneurship as a strategic response to youth unemployment. These initiatives provide training, access to start-up capital and platforms for networking. However, the reach of such programmes remains uneven across sub-disciplines and universities, and many graduates still report limited awareness of or access to these opportunities.

Skills & competencies

One concern employers as well as graduates themselves frequently raise is a mismatch between university education and agricultural reality. This is tied to graduate skill acquisition, a central theme of the study. Across both countries, graduates felt reasonably prepared in theoretical knowledge but insufficiently equipped for practical, soft and entrepreneurial tasks. Based on qualitative accounts and survey responses, three competency domains emerged as most relevant for navigating post-university life: analytical, interpersonal and entrepreneurial.

A restitution workshop at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JUKAT)
in Nairobi, Kenya. 
Photo: JKUAT communication team.

Analytical competencies, such as writing reports, conducting research and understanding scientific data, are well-covered in most degree programmes. However, many graduates noted a gap between theoretical emphasis and applied analytical tools, including digital literacy, data management and proposal writing. These skills are essential for accessing jobs and projects in NGOs, donor programmes and the private sector, but are often developed only post-graduation. Especially digital literacy and applied skills with simple software such as Microsoft Word, but also more advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools, are lacking.

Interpersonal competencies, including communication, negotiation and facilitation, were consistently identified as vital, especially for those working in extension, advisory and training roles in various segments of agricultural supply chains. Especially communication and presentation skills have gained in importance with a changing labour market. Graduates reported that these skills were rarely explicitly taught and were instead developed informally, for example through volunteering or extracurricular engagements. Weaknesses in team-based learning and student engagement in university teaching were seen as obstacles to developing professional confidence.

Entrepreneurial competencies – business planning, marketing, risk management and innovation – are growing in relevance across all sectors. Yet they remain marginal in many university curricula. Some universities offer innovation hubs and agricultural entrepreneurship training, which can even create additional revenues for the institutions, but access is often limited to a small number of students. In both countries, institutions show growing interest in entrepreneurship training but lack the infrastructure and staff capacity to operationalise this. As a result, most entrepreneurial learning happens informally or reactively, when graduates are already confronted with the pressures of self-employment.

Knowledge transfer to society

Graduates also play a key role in transferring knowledge from universities into society, but this role is constrained by systemic disconnects. Universities are often still organised around linear knowledge transfer models, with limited cooperation between universities and other knowledge actors such as state research institutes, the private sector and NGOs. Promising approaches to improve cooperation, including the involvement of practitioners in curricula improvements often depend on individual initiatives and remain fragmented. The limited follow-up and engagement of universities in policy processes is frequently criticised among stakeholder groups, and they emphasise the need for stronger institutional mechanisms for knowledge co-production and dissemination.

At the graduate level, knowledge transfer manifests in three key directions: 1) with students as trainers or teachers, 2) with employers by teaching colleagues or providing training to employees, and 3) most importantly, with farmers. Many graduates are actively engaged in extension services, acting as intermediaries between acquired scientific knowledge and smallholder practitioners. Most graduates appreciate farmers’ locally rooted knowledge, emphasising mutual learning and a two-way knowledge exchange instead of a one-sided transfer. However, extension systems in both countries face critical structural issues such as underfunding and problematic division of labour between levels of government. In addition, graduates face scepticism by farmers, often caused by insufficient practical knowledge and experience.

Despite these challenges, graduates play a pivotal role in translating scientific knowledge into actionable agricultural advice, particularly when supported by NGO or private sector initiatives, which are of increasing importance in providing extension services. Overall, extension is becoming more decentralised, demand-driven, and multi-actor, with growing use of mobile technologies, vernacular radio and on-call local-language experts to enhance outreach and responsiveness. Graduates have requested more training in these multifold approaches.

Gender

Gender has emerged as a cross-cutting factor shaping graduates’ experiences and opportunities. Normative and structural barriers continue to restrict the participation of women in agricultural employment. These include mobility constraints, unequal distribution of domestic responsibilities and limited access to land. Women are often held back from progressing in their careers due to domestic responsibilities. Within education systems, gender inclusion is improving in terms of enrolment, but there remains room for improvement regarding gender-sensitive learning environments. While student numbers are roughly equal among genders – albeit distributed unequally across agriculture study programmes – there is less female representation in higher positions among research and teaching staff as well as professors.

Female graduates, on average, face the challenge of submitting more applications and searching
for longer periods to secure employment.
Photo: Authors

Employment trajectories are shaped by differential access to networks, capital and recognition. Female graduates, on average, face the challenge of submitting more applications and searching for longer periods to secure employment. Further, women are often underrepresented in certain sectors, with their roles typically concentrated in administrative positions, while men dominate technical jobs. As a result, women frequently face lower salaries and may be overlooked for field postings. Affirmative action and gender quotas exist in both countries, and institutional responses to gender challenges are growing, albeit unevenly. Some employers have implemented policies and quotas to promote gender inclusion, often driven by donor frameworks. However, the implementation of these policies is hindered by gaps in enforcement and limited social acceptance, which undermine their effectiveness.

Conclusion and recommendations

This study underscores the critical role of agricultural higher education in shaping rural development in Kenya and Tanzania. Despite structural challenges such as skill mismatches, limited employment opportunities, and gender-based inequalities, graduates demonstrate remarkable agency through diverse career trajectories and agripreneurial innovation. The findings reveal a strong demand for more practice-oriented, inclusive and competency-based tertiary education systems that better align with dynamic trends in and around agriculture, labour market needs and support knowledge exchange between universities and other actors in the agricultural supply chains and in communities. Based on the findings, the study outlines four key recommendations:

1. To improve graduate employability and sector alignment, agricultural education must better integrate theory with practice through competency-based curricula, expanded internships, university farms, and locally grounded teaching methods. Upgrading infrastructure, staff training, and support for lifelong learning are essential.
    
2. Soft, digital, and entrepreneurial skills should be embedded across programmes via communication trainings, AI and data literacy, and real-world entrepreneurship projects linked to local contexts. Universities should foster innovationecosystems through incubators, mentorship, and start-up support.
    
3. Closer collaborationwith industry, government, and communities is needed to co-design curricula, facilitate internships and promote bi-directional knowledge exchange.
    
4. Inclusive and gender-responsive policies must address structural barriers through flexible learning models, targeted support and reforms that ensure equitable access to resources, leadership, and higher education for all.

Partner description

The research was embedded in the project “B05 Science Futures”, part of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 228 “Future Rural Africa” of Germany’s Universities of Bonn and Cologne, and the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS). Aim of the Science Futures Project is to acknowledge the role that both scientific and non-scientific knowledge systems play in shaping and advancing rural futures in Africa.

This tracer study specifically focused on the element of university education and was carried out by IDOS in collaboration with four partner universities in the respective countries: Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST) in Kenya, and Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) and Mzumbe University (MU) in Tanzania. On the German side, the research comprised two IDOS lead researchers and six junior research fellows, who were part of the Postgraduate Programme for Sustainability Cooperation, funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

The research design, data collection, analysis and report production were done in close cooperation with the partner institutions. Two restitution workshops at the end of the field period specifically targeted policy-makers and high-level university staff to maximise potential impact. They provided a platform for verification of preliminary findings, collection and further development of recommendations, their dissemination and a platform for networking and exchange. In addition, all resulting publications are open-access to guarantee inclusivity. 

Theresa Meyer is social scientist specialising in forced migration and European Studies. She is a participant of the 60^thPostgraduate Programme for Sustainability Cooperation (PGP) at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS – formerly German Development Institute, DIE).
Contact: t(at)meyer.eu

Stefan Adamson is a spatial planner dealing with justice-related issues. He is a participant of the 60^th Postgraduate Programme for Sustainability Cooperation (PGP) at IDOS.
Contact: stefanadamson(at)web.de 

Michael Brüntrup is an agricultural engineer and holds a PhD in agricultural economy. He is a senior researcher at IDOS in Bonn, Germany. Find him at IDOS Website.

* With support from Anna Holeck, Alisha Weber, Lena Sgorsaly and Julia Steinhauer, all participants of the 60^th Postgraduate Programme for Sustainability Cooperation (PGP) at IDOS, and GeorgeMudimu, an agricultural policy economist, working as a researcher at IDOS.
The authors would also like to thank Noah Oketch Karan from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), Glory Ernest Mella from Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Theobald Frank Theodory from Mzumbe University (MU), and Samuel Onyango Ohanga and Ruth Ochuodho, both from Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST),  for their close collaboration in all phases of the project.