KENET as a community of higher education and research institutes attracts partners that want to work with the higher education community. This could be in capacity development, grants for collaborative research or content and e-journals. In the past 10 years, KENET has attracted the following partners:

1. Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (www.phea.org - Rockefeller and Ford Foundation) that have provided research grants worth approximately $900,000 to researchers in member institutions through KENET as the grantee. These grants have supported research in ICT readiness of universities in the five East African countries and learning technologies pilot projects in Kenyan universities.
2. Network Startup resource center (www.nsrc.org) , Internet Society (www.isoc.org) and Network the World that have provided grants for capacity building and training to KENET staff and researchers in member institutions.
3. DFN, the research and education network of Germany that has a twinning agreement with KENET supporting exchange of engineers and researchers in member institutions in Kenya and Germany. This has provided KENET engineers with advanced capacity building opportunities but is also supposed to promote collaborative research.
4. International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (www.inasp.info ) that promotes collaboration among librarians, capacity building of networking staff and access to e- journals.
5. UbuntuNet Alliance (www.ubuntunet.net) of African research and education networks in Eastern and Southern Africa. This includes TENET, the research and education network of South Africa. KENET is connected to other NRENs in other parts of the world through the UbuntuNet network node in London.