Berlin-Nairobi Exchange - an international science exchange nonprofit corporation

History

Before learning more about the unforgettable experience of studying physics in Nairobi, here's a little sketch of our organisational history.
In 1997 Jurgen Theiss founded the Berlin-Nairobi Physics Student Exchange between the Freie Universitaet Berlin (FUB) and the University of Nairobi (UoN) while working at UNESCO. The two universities signed a so called Memorandum of Understanding granting the respective partner university three university places and waiver of tuition fees. Moreover the UoN offerd the German exchange students free accomodation on the campus.
The first students were funded by the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD. Later DAAD provided additional scholarships for PhD students from UoN under the ISAP programme. However, after a global budget cut our DAAD funding was cancelled in 2003.
In the meantime the whole student exchange had expanded. Additional programmes had been adopted like the initiative on solar cells, the bio-energy programme, and the DOAS project on ozone layer measurments in Nairobi. Both the student exchange and the other programmes needed sustainable funding. So we decided to set up a nonprofit corporation, the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange. It is registered in California (corporate record number: C2583907) and is tax exempt in the U.S.A. and in Germany (Steuernummer 29/347/13794, Finanzamt Koerperschaften 3, Berlin). We are seeking to establish a Kenyan branch, too.
To date, seventeen German undergraduate students have studied at UoN, further four just started this summer / fall. Two Kenyan PhD students conducted research in Berlin. And two senior researchers from Kenya came to Berlin for coordination meetings and to do research. One German senior researcher visited UoN.

Today

Today, our main partner university in the region is JKUAT, the Jomo Kenyatta University for Agriulture and Technology. It's located in the outskirts of Nairobi.
Today, the role of the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange is the role of a clearing house. We run the student exchange, we do the administration, and we select the German exchange students in our annual assessment process. And we support all our exchange students and visiting researchers in obtaining scholarships and travel grants. Also, we set up the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange "small grants programme" which provides students, researchers, and experts with travel grants under the other Berlin-Nairobi Exchange programmes (solar cells, bio-energy, DOAS). Moreover, we are in the process of establishing more student echange programmes with other East-African universities.

Goals

Many physicists are convinced that the physics community is truly global. Yes, it's true, there is lots of exchange on the undergraduate and PhD and postdoc level between e.g. German and Eastern Europe. And lots of students from Europe go to the U.S.A. for a year. And if you want to become physics professor in Germany you better spend some postdoc time in the U.S.A.. But for African students and researchers it is already hard to even access standard text books and scientific journals. Most African countries have not yet made it onto the world physics map. The advancement of physics needs a global scientific work force. And African nations need science in order to industrialize and to fight poverty. The Berlin-Nairobi Exchange wants to help connecting African universities, students and researchers to the physics community by mutual exchange.