The Kenyan government, grappling with economic crisis, inflation and emergencies in the agriculture and livestock sectors, which represent the largest income for the population, is attracted by the intention to privatise public universities.
According to some national media, Trade Minister Moses Kuria, a former successful businessman turned politician, is already in talks to have some of the country's most important universities taken over by foreign investors as a first step towards relieving the state of expenses that are becoming unsustainable.
"The country can no longer ignore the mounting debts of its higher education institutions, all public universities are in debt... they are no longer able to function," Kuria said at a press conference last week. 
Currently in Kenya, 450,000 students attend the country's 32 state universities. Some of them even receive scholarships and grants, given their value. But the universities themselves, according to the Auditor General's office, owe a total of 56 billion Kenyan shillings (about 420 million euro) to the government's tax agency, suppliers and staff. Private universities, on the other hand, number 35, but take in fewer students (115,000).
The fear of many, especially students, is that privatisation risks turning universities into profit-oriented institutions rather than academic citadels. This could compromise the quality of teaching and make university education available only to the wealthy.
It is natural to think that the education of boys and girls from less affluent classes would stop at higher education and that privatising universities could be the first step towards having other such 'sales' accepted by the state (think of healthcare, for example).
According to the government, on the other hand, new investors would breathe life and modernity not only into the public coffers, but also into the facilities themselves and, for the sake of competition, they could lower tuition prices or build affordable housing for students. Just as companies and sponsors could set up scholarships for future employment.
As always, it is the reality of our times, seen through the bifocal lens of a system that in the West has proved to be bankrupt and irreversible, and goes on thanks to continuous running corrections, enduring in the most virtuous countries, and that in Africa clashes with the well-known problems of neo-colonialism, corruption, social inequalities and the big hunt for the continent's infinite resources.