Remarks By The Vice Chancellor, Prof. Isaac O. Kibwage During The Tagdev Side Event During The Kenya National Research Festival 2025

VENUE: MAIN CAMPUS, NJORO

DATE: THURSDAY, 20^TH AUGUST, 2025

Distinguished Guests, Colleagues, Partners, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good afternoon, and on behalf of Egerton University, I warmly welcome you to this TAGDev Side Event taking place alongside the Kenya National Research Festival 2025. We are deeply honoured to host this gathering under the festival’s theme “Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security: Empowering Communities through Research, Science, Technology and Innovation.”

This side event speaks to the heart of our mission as a university. Egerton is privileged to be one of the twelve African universities implementing the TAGDev 2.0 Programme, a ten-year initiative (2023–2033) led in partnership with RUFORUM, the Mastercard Foundation, and the Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for Agriculture and Life Sciences (GCHERA). The programme is designed to strengthen universities so that they serve communities better by equipping young women and men with the skills, values, and confidence to transform agriculture and agri-food systems.

Today, agricultural education in Kenya and across Africa is undergoing a vital shift. We are moving away from traditional models of knowledge transmission to more transformative, competence-based, and inclusive approaches. These approaches empower learners not just with information, but with critical thinking, problem-solving, and innovation capacities to address food insecurity, climate change, and youth unemployment while contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG 2 (zero hunger) and SDG 4 (quality education).

This dialogue is therefore timely. It provides us an opportunity to align agricultural education with national development priorities, to forge stronger university–industry linkages, to support youth-led innovation, and to identify the policy and institutional reforms needed for inclusive and entrepreneurial education.

I invite all of us to use this platform to co-create practical pathways that will bridge policy and practice, and drive sustainable transformation in our education and food systems.

It is now my great pleasure to officially open this TAGDev Side Event.

Thank you.