Integrating Soft Skills into IT Education for Development: A Study of Universities in Kenya

Despite widespread recognition of their importance, soft skills remain poorly integrated into IT undergraduate programmes across Sub-Saharan Africa. This mixed-methods study examined prevalence, barriers, and strategies for soft skills integration across ten Kenyan universities, grounded in Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory and Vygotsky's Constructivist Learning Theory. The findings reveal a stark recognition-provision gap: 87.2% of students consider soft skills essential, yet only 31.4% received formal training and 18.6% reported formal assessment. Five institutional barriers were identified — overloaded curricula, passive pedagogy, absence of assessment frameworks, weak industry-academia linkages, and no mandating policy — with inadequate faculty preparation as a cross-cutting constraint. Mentorship (79.53%) and curriculum integration (79.35%) were the most preferred strategies. No significant differences emerged by institution type or year of study. The study provided the first large-scale mixed-methods evidence base for this gap in Kenyan IT education, with direct implications.