Kenya's Best: KenSAP Scholars Thrive, Enrich Life at Davidson

Today, Rotich, a post-doctoral fellow at Purdue University, uses medicinal plants in her lab, exploring how plants contribute to new medicines and products.

Rotich was the first of six — soon to be eight — students who have traversed continents to attend Davidson through the Kenya Scholar Access Program (KenSAP). Since its founding in 2004, KenSAP has helped nearly 300 talented students from Kenya’s rural villages, urban slums and refugee camps attend prestigious United States colleges and universities. 

KenSAP is the brainchild of Mike Boit, Kenya’s former Commissioner of Sports and an Olympic runner, and John Manners, an American journalist with deep ties to Kenya. Boit, who earned multiple degrees in the U.S., approached Manners with a bold idea: help six students from the Rift Valley prepare for the SAT and apply to U.S. colleges.

Five of those students received full scholarships to top-tier schools, and Boit and Manners realized their work had just begun.

Making the Cut

KenSAP draws applicants from across Kenya. Each year, more than 1,000 high-achieving students apply for just 15-20 coveted spots. To qualify, applicants must rank in the top one percent of the 600,000 students who take Kenya’s national high school leaving exam annually. 

KenSAP staff narrow the pool to 300 candidates, then conduct phone interviews to identify 50 finalists who travel to Nairobi for in-person interviews. The final cohort embarks on a five-month residential orientation program where KenSAP staff and volunteers guide students through SAT preparation, college research, application writing and lessons on American culture. Students also take classes that simulate the kind of work they will encounter at demanding U.S. institutions. After an additional orientation in Boston, the scholars scatter across campuses nationwide.

New Challenges

No orientation fully prepares a young person from a rural village or refugee camp for life at an American college. Joining class discussions, asking questions, writing papers and visiting a professor’s office can intimidate students accustomed to more formal classrooms and learning by rote memorization. Many of the scholars use a computer for the first time when they fill out their college applications.

Accents and colloquial phrases add a layer of complexity to an already foreign language. Public transportation might be inconvenient or non-existent in many American cities and towns. Holidays require housing and travel plans. Winter clothing is expensive, especially for students who send money back home. Laundry machines and kitchen appliances are mechanical puzzles. The Vail Commons salad bar looks like a buffet of danger to students from places where raw vegetables make people sick.

Even abundance creates challenges. In Kenya, Victoria Ochieng ’27 ate two small meals a day but says she had to “negotiate a new relationship with food” because she was around it all the time at Davidson.

Decisions about what to eat and how much become decisions about how to participate in American culture — Ochieng learned quickly that “lots of meetings or social engagements take place over a meal.” And the amount of available food can generate complicated feelings about privilege and waste.

Empowered by these resources, KenSAP scholars are finding ways to reinvest in their communities and find professional pathways: Frank Edong’a ’25 won a Katherine W. Davis Projects for Peace grant to study political conflict in the Rift Valley. An Alvarez Access grant allowed him to train researchers for the Rift Valley Institute. Sam Waithira ’24 studied abroad in Ghana, London and Singapore. He attended Harvard University’s annual Africa Business Conference twice. Waithira also won a Projects for Peace grant to promote sustainable agriculture in Kenya. A Meet My World grant allowed Fridah Rotich and an American friend to travel to Kenya.

“Whenever a student has an opportunity or a goal,” Davidson says, “the college always says ‘yes.’”

Beyond financial support, the college’s people and community help the scholars thrive. Ochieng was pleasantly surprised to find a culture at Davidson that values kindness and that celebrates both community and individual identity.

“When I arrived,” she says, “I already felt accepted for who I am.”

Professor Ken Menkhaus, an East Africa specialist, advises all first-year KenSAP scholars. He helps them understand academic life at Davidson and opens his home to them for meals and over holiday breaks.

Ochieng remembers the professor who allowed her to turn in hand-written work while she learned to type, and the economics professor who asked her to explain in class how Kenyans use cell phones for business transactions.

“I felt seen,” Ochieng says. 

When Rotich mentioned her interest in medicinal plants to Chemistry Professor Cindy Hauser, Hauser introduced her to a retired professor with similar interests. That introduction led to an internship in a lab at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and later her graduate education.

The college’s culture extends beyond campus boundaries. Host families in town offer transportation during breaks, provide temporary housing over holidays, and introduce students to American family life. When Alan Davidson visited the college last year with Waithira, he witnessed this warmth firsthand at Summit Coffee Shop where two older men who had worked with Sam on community projects greeted him by name.

“Some places beat them up,” he says of scholars at other schools. To survive, they become harder. Davidson’s KenSAP scholars, he says, remain “the same people, but they’ve blossomed.”