Distance education methodologies have come into prominence during the last decades of the 20th century. The need for continuous learning and unprecedented technological innovation in communications has pushed distance education approaches to the forefront of educational practice. Kenya, like many other African countries is overwhelmed with increase in demand for education beyond the Government’s ability to shoulder due to budgetary constraints. Open and distance education programmes are therefore appealing because of their ability to offer affordable education to the masses. The programmes present new concepts of, new technologies, new program demands, new audiences, and new commercially competitive providers all of which are challenging to the educators. This paper seeks to provide information on open and distance education practices in Kenya, issues and prospects for a broad range of emerging educational experiences.

Kenya is in the early stages of developing open and distance education and currently, the programmes are offered through various institutions which were initially set up to offer residential mode of education. A survey conducted on open and distance education in Kenya has however observed that there are various challenges in the provision of this type of education ranging from inadequate programme resources, funding, staffing all of which are a setback on the realization of the programmes’ objectives. The efforts of the providers of open and distance education in Kenya are generally not guided by central policies posing a challenge on resource mobilization and programme quality issues. These institutions also, being dual mode, are limited in capacity and are not able to provide adequate access to university education. This is against a backdrop of increased demand for education that has been brought about by among other things, increase in population, the introduction of free primary education in the year 2003 and the recently introduced tuition waiver on secondary education.

This paper looks at the experience of open and distance education in Kenya. The paper reviews briefly the significant contributions to open and distance education in the last century in Kenya, which reveals an early preoccupation with organizational and structural constraints. It also tries to explore the importance of some developments needed for the long-term credibility of open and distance learning practice in Kenya.