Kenyatta University is among the universities that have been in existence in Kenya for a long
period of time. Unfortunately, for various reasons, it’s not one of the best. Truth be told, it is a
desperate institution that is really struggling to compete with the likes of The University of
Nairobi, JKUAT and other institutions. I would say, KU is a wannabe tech giant institution.
Lucky enough, to their advantage, COVID-19 gave the institution an opportunity to play around
with Kenyan minds and unintentionally display there incapability to the public.
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Located in Kiambu, along Thika road, its magnificent buildings can be seen clearly by the
public. On the other side, what the public doesn’t know is that those great buildings don’t
produce real innovators. Why do I say so? In the past few days the institution has been on the
headlines over a ventilator. It even got praise and congratulatory messages from the head of state
as well as other senior government officials. The state propaganda machine went into action to
convince the public that an invention had been made.
Well, it’s a good to see things or items that we had previously imported as a country being
produced here at home. It shows that we are capable of depending on ourselves.
However, the time taken to invent the ventilator made me raise a lot of questions. Were they
working on building a ventilator before the disease stormed? Where did they get the components
used in the development? Do they have the licenses needed? When did they get approval from
the World intellectual property organization (WIPO)?
A quick Google search on who invented the ventilator and the first hit will give you the name
Forrest Morton Bird (June 9, 1921 – August 2, 2015), an American aviator and biomedical
engineer. One of his greatest inventions was the ventilator. It was quickly put to practice in
hospitals and other areas of emergencies and was used for acute and chronic cardiopulmonary
care. He is the father of the ventilator. So why is Kenyatta University inventing something that
was already invented? Anyway, am not surprised with such. We’ve had governors re-launching
donated medical equipment.
Well, let’s get the facts right but before I go further, I would like to define a few terms.
What is an invention?
According to the WIPO, an invention refers to a new solution to a technical problem and can be
protected through patents (an exclusive right granted by a government for an invention).
Innovation on the other hand means doing something new that improves a product, process or
service. The process used to “invent” is not new and neither does it tackle a particular need that
had been left out in the ventilator technology. I can thereby confidently say that KU has neither
invented nor innovated. If indeed Kenyatta University did invent a ventilator, then it means that
it would have manufactured some of the components in the ventilator. Unfortunately, this is not
the case. As it stands, they’ve manufactured NOTHING!
Apart from that, the only other way to come up with a ventilator is if Kenyatta University went
to all component manufacturers and got licenses from the individual component manufacturers.
This two-year long process can only happens if the components used were produced under the
open source project and what KU could have done is called assembling.
Production of Respiratory Ventilators cannot begin before they’re patented. The government was
quick to acknowledge the new technology and promise funds in order to mass produce the
equipment but they are reluctant to patent the idea. Perhaps it is because they know that it’s not
an invention and they’ve just found a loophole to fund their own pockets. Registration of medical
equipment under WIPO Treaties take up to three years.
In conclusion, Kenyatta University students are assembling the machines based on existing
technology and I hope they have License Agreements from the owners of each component. It
will be sad if a University is engaging in intellectual theft for media publicity. The owners will
sue the university & they will pay Billions in damages. It is very heartbreaking to see well
respected scholars believing in the “invention”. The mainstream media has played a huge role in
convincing Kenyans and propagating the fake invention. Where did journalism morals go?
That’s a question we will look into next time.
As it stands, no components were manufactured by Kenyatta University. The ventilators were
invented in less than a month, actually not a realistic timeline and waiting the institution to come
clean on this.
Intellectual Property Patents are subject to sane global law and the fact remains that KU is just
assembling and not in any given way inventing or innovating, thus it must get License
Agreements from the owners of each component lest KU is sued for Millions of Dollars for
breaches. All in all KU should be extremely careful, WIPO is watching. In the fullness of time, they will be called to account.
The Explainer 