NAIROBI —
For the seventh week running, classrooms across Kenya’s public universities remain eerily silent. Lecturers have vowed not to resume teaching until the government settles their Sh7.9 billion salary arrears in full, a standoff that now threatens to wipe out an entire semester.
The University Academic Staff Union (UASU) on Monday rejected the government’s latest proposal to pay the arrears in three instalments, describing it as an insult to their patience. The union insists that the government must clear the full amount and honour the 2019–2025 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) before lecturers return to work.
“The government is proposing to implement the Sh7.9 billion in three phases — that’s three strikes, and we don’t want to subject our students to further frustration,” said UASU Secretary General Constantine Wesonga. “They better suffer now up to December so we clear all these issues. Come January, it will be a clean slate — they can study up to 2030.”
His blunt remarks captured the growing frustration on both sides. The government, facing tight budgets and pressure to contain public spending, has urged patience. But UASU maintains that phased payments only perpetuate broken promises — a pattern, they argue, that has undermined the academic calendar for years.
The strike has paralysed teaching in 42 public universities, freezing coursework, delaying graduations, and halting research projects. Campuses remain technically open, but corridors are empty, laboratories locked, and lecture halls gathering dust.
For many students, hope is fading.
“Most of us have given up,” said Mercy Oira, a postgraduate student at the University of Nairobi’s Dental School. “We don’t know whether to continue paying rent or just go home. It feels like the semester is gone.”
University administrators, caught between government policy and union demands, warn that the disruption could have a ripple effect lasting well into 2025. The semester that began in September was supposed to end in December, but with nearly two months lost, academic timetables are in disarray.
Parents and students’ associations have called on the Ministry of Education to intervene decisively, fearing that prolonged uncertainty could deepen the crisis in Kenya’s higher education system.
As talks remain deadlocked, both sides appear entrenched — the government citing fiscal constraints, the lecturers citing broken trust. For thousands of students, the cost is mounting by the day: a lost semester, delayed dreams, and growing disillusionment with a system once hailed as a pillar of opportunity.