The Kenya Education Network (KENET) in 2016 embarked on an active outreach and discovery exercise for researchers within its member institutions. The objectives of the outreach were as follows;

1. To introduce KENET to the researchers.
2. To discover the researchers and appreciate their needs and challenges.
3. To introduce to researchers the research infrastructures available at KENET
4. To discuss avenues of cooperation and collaboration between KENET and researchers.

Activities

The outreach and discovery initiative mainly took the form of half day forums, webinars, a mailing list and workshops;

Half day forums; An initial forum for selected researchers and research administrators was held in May 2016 at Safaripark hotel. This forum was followed up by a series of on campus forums at the University of Nairobi (UON), Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), Moi University (MU), National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (NACOSTI) and the Meteorological department.

University of Nairobi – College of Biological and Physical Sciences Forum 19^th September 2016

Technical University of Mombasa

At the Technical university of Mombasa (TUM), Dr Moses M Thiga of KENET was well received on 6^th June by the director, research Prof Prof Saeed Mwaguni. They had discussions on what KENET is and Prof Mwaguni elaborated on the research activities at TUM. The university is basically an engineering university and that is where most of its faculty are domiciled. The forum with the researchers was held on 7th June between 2:00 pm and 4 pm and there were 14 researchers in attendance. Needs for HPC, big data storage, a data repository, collaboration, journal access and collaboration were expressed by the participants.

Pwani University

A visit to Pwani University was held on 7^th June, and there were 39 faculty in attendance. The researchers at Pwani University pleased to learn about KENET. They expressed need for big data storage, HPC, a platform to disseminate research findings, access to quality publications, the use of technology in teaching, content development and collaborations among others. There was a specific request to also host a similar forum for postgraduate students.