Susan Kibue: Kenya's first female professor of architecture

Since April 2025, Susan Njeri Kibue has had a hard time getting used to the title “Professor”. In any case, it has taken the country more than 60 years of independence to produce the first female professor of architecture.

“Whenever I hear someone calling ‘Professor’ behind me, I first look around me to see if there are other professors before responding,” says Kibue. “I am still getting used to it.”

Kibue and I are seated under a tree within the lush compound at the Board of Registration of Architects and Quantity Surveyors (BORAQS) centre along Commercial Street, Nairobi. She is eloquent as she narrates the journey that led to her latest achievement. 

Kibue remembers that morning, the Tuesday after Easter Monday, when she had to face about 20 senior academicians at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT). The panel was evaluating her qualifications as a professor at the hall where the university senate normally holds its meetings.

“The meeting was being chaired by the chairman of the university council. It was a bit intimidating sitting in the middle of the room with all eyes glued to me and answering numerous questions relating to my academic work. I must have satisfied them and that is why I am where I am,” says Kibue.

In 2014, the Commission for Higher Education published guidelines for promoting academic staff in Kenya’s universities.

Among the qualifications needed for one to attain to professorship include earning a doctorate from an accredited and recognised university, a minimum of 60 publication points with at least 40 from referred scholarly publications.

One should have also supervised a minimum of five post graduate students, at least two at doctoral level. In all these, Kibue had performed beyond her own expectations.

“I have supervised Diploma and Degree undergraduate and postgraduate students and co-authored published papers together. This enriches my research. Learning only stops at the grave,” says Kibue.

The Architectural Association of Kenya hailed her achievement as “a historic milestone” and a “remarkable achievement”, fitting accolades from a body whose past two presidents were women.

One of these women is Emma Miloyo who became the first female president of AAK in March 2017. Miloyo, who was a student of Kibue in JKuat, was the first woman to graduate from the university with a first-class honours Degree in architecture.

Kibue’s dalliance with academia began in 1983 when she joined the University of Nairobi for a five-year Bachelor of Architecture course and upon graduation, had a stint as an assistant architect with the Ministry of Public Works. Here, no tasks were too small for her to handle.

“I worked on government projects including police and National Youth Service buildings. No assignments were beneath as I also worked on dog kennels at the Police Dog Unit in Langata and Mombasa,” says Kibue.

Her leadership skills were evident during her work at the Ministry. Oftentimes, some of her superiors would let her chair some project meetings, much to the chagrin of others who felt that she ought to take a back seat.

It is such a stereotypical attitude that once stood in the way of women who wanted to rise in technical fields such as architecture. It is perhaps the same reason why Kenya has not produced a female professor in this discipline for the last 60 years.

For example, Kibue recalls that when she started lecturing architecture students at JKuat, there was very little enrolment of girls due to the “prevailing notion that such courses that have to do with construction were the preserve of men”.

“Girls were persuaded to pursue ‘softer’ studies such as secretarial courses.  There were only two girls in our class. In fact, I saw some girls who had joined the university with straight ‘As’ drop out. Sadly, some of these also felt this was man’s world,” she says.

In 1991, Kibue graduated with a Masters of Arts in Housing Studies from the Centre for Architectural Research and Development at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, further cementing her credentials as an academia to reckon with.

Since May 1992, Kibue has been lecturing at JKuat, handling both Diploma and Degree undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Still intent on advancing her studies, Kibue was back to class, this time at the University of Sheffield for a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Architecture where she graduated in 2000 and setting her on a route to her current achievement as a professor.

Kibue was born in Nyeri but grew up in Nairobi. Throughout her primary and secondary school education, the thought of becoming an architect hardly crossed her mind. By the age of 18, her desire was to become a doctor and help her community through their health challenges.

“We had a big farm just outside the city and whenever someone had an injury, he would come to me. I have always been an empathetic person,” she says.

But Kibue never pursued her first love of medicine as her love of art came calling. She loved drawing and putting her sketches on paper. And so it happened that when time came for enrolment at the university, a course in architecture became appealing.

Throughout her teaching career at JKuat, Kibue has had a distinguished career and many firsts as a woman. Her attributes and membership of professional bodies, both in Kenya and globally are numerous. Locally, the most notable include being the first woman Associate Dean, School of Architecture and Building Sciences, and the first lady chair of the Department of Architecture at the university.

Regionally, she has been an external examiner at Department of Architecture, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda; Department of Architecture, Polytechnic of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia; and Department of Architecture, Ardhi University, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.

In the professional field, Kibue worked on housing and traditional architecture as well as the cultural adaptations for housing urban dwellers in Kenya.  

Through Domus Architects, Kibue is behind the design of the Lecture Theatre at Kirinyaga University whose emphasis on sustainable design concepts will set it apart in the region.

While her achievement is testament to perseverance and talent finally being recognized, she hopes she will not be the last one to hit the glass ceiling in the field of architecture.

“We are nurturing girls in our universities to become the next professors in the field,” she says. “They are as capable as men are. Let us not limit them and neither should they limit themselves.”