How to start a tech club at your university when none exists

The registration process at most Kenyan universities takes weeks: draft a constitution, find a patron (a willing lecturer), collect signatures, submit to the dean of students office, wait for approval. If you wait for all of that before your first meeting, the semester ends before you start.

Instead, start meeting as an informal group. Book a study room in the library or find an empty lecture hall. Five people, one hour, every week. No constitution needed for that.

Once you have been meeting for a month and the group is stable, begin the formal registration process. You will have proof of activity, which makes the application stronger.

You do not need twenty people. You need five who will show up every week.

• Ask in your CS, IT, or engineering classes. Stand up after a lecture and say: "I am starting a weekly tech meetup. Who is interested?" Three people will raise their hands.
• Post in your class WhatsApp group with a specific proposal: "I want to start a weekly coding session, Wednesdays 5 PM, library study room. Who is in?"
• Ask friends outside your department. Tech clubs work best with mixed backgrounds. A design student, a business student, and three CS students make a more interesting group than five CS students.

Be specific about the time and format. "I want to start a club" gets less response than "I want to meet every Wednesday at 5 PM to work on projects." Specificity attracts committed people.

Meeting 1: Introductions and format. Who is here, what do they want to learn, and what format should meetings follow? Agree on the study group format (check-in, work time, show one thing) or a variation.

Meeting 2: Work session. Everyone works on something. No talks, no presentations. Just code (or design, or research) side by side. This proves the format works.

Meeting 3: First "show" session. One member demos something they built or learned. Five minutes. No slides. This creates the accountability cycle.

Meeting 4: Plan the month ahead. Decide on one shared activity: a mini-hackathon, a guest speaker, a group project, or entering an external competition. Shared goals bond the group.

If all four people come back for meeting four, your club is real. Now formalise it.

After a month of consistent meetings, approach the dean of students office and ask for the club registration process. At most universities, you need:

• A simple constitution (purpose, membership rules, leadership structure). Keep it short. One page is enough.
• A patron: a lecturer willing to lend their name. Ask someone from the CS or IT department. Most will say yes if you show them you are already meeting regularly.
• A list of founding members with student IDs.

Registration gives you access to university facilities (rooms, equipment, event approval) and official recognition, which matters if you want to host larger events or apply for funding.

But the club's value comes from the meetings, not the registration. If the bureaucracy stalls, keep meeting. The paper will catch up. See the full communities cluster for more on building and joining tech communities on campus.