Architecture is among the best courses to study in Kenya. The salary for graduates in this profession is above those earned by other professions in the country.
The average salary for fresh graduates is Ksh 80,000.You are paid this money when you are fresh from college, or when you are recruited as a graduate trainee.
Once you gain experience of 2 years, you are either allowed to form your own company or continue working with institution you are attached to. At this point most architects opt to start their consulting firms, which is better anyway. But from what we have sampled across industries, architects who have stayed in the profession between 2 to 5 years earn average salary of Ksh180, 000.The salary, however, vary depending on the industry you work for. If you are not fortunate enough and you end up in a firm that is owned by an individual chances are that you will earn less, but if you get a job with a multinational or a top real estate firm, you will earn up to Ksh 300,000.
The highest paid architect in the government earns Ksh 900,000 excluding allowances while in the private sector, many architects make up to Ksh1.5 million per month when employed.
But the beauty of this course is that when you have a consultant firm and you are given a job to design a building you take a percentage of the total cost of construction. In Kenya it is fixed at 10 % of the total cost. Imagine if the building is costing Ksh 1 billion you will pocket Ksh100 million.