Three years ago, JKUAT inaugurated its own enterprise company – JKUAT enterprise Limited – whose main purpose is to promote and encourage industrial and business ventures. The University is now engaged in a number of profitable industrial and business venture producing a number of highly valued products for the local and international markets, ranging from computer assembly (under the brand name Emado) and design of software (EstateXpress and NOVA University ERP) to the production of fruit juices and mushroom spawns (seeds).
The University’s engineering faculty has made a number of breakthroughs, including the design and production of simple tractors and trailers for the small-scale farmer to motorized bicycles and other transport equipment. Only a few of the products and machinery have gone into full-scale mass production but there is high potential to propel Kenya’s industrialization process through collaboration with private enterprise.
Situated in Juja, 36 kilometres northeast of Nairobi, along the Nairobi-Thika Highway, JKUAT started in 1981 as a middle level college (the Jomo Kenyatta College of Agriculture and Technology [JKCAT]) by the Government of Kenya, with the assistance of the Japanese Government. In 1978, President Jomo Kenyatta donated 200 hectares of farmland for the establishment of the college which is now charting Kenya’s path towards technological advancement as a leading local and regional technological academic institution.
JKCAT admitted its first batch of diploma students in the fields of Agricultural Engineering, Food Technology and Horticulture in May 1981. They graduated at the institution’s inaugural graduation ceremony in April 1984. On 1st September 1988, JKCAT formally became a constituent College of Kenyatta University and the name officially changed to Jomo Kenyatta University College of Agriculture and Technology (JKUCAT).