Anyone who wins a place at university has been on a long journey to get there – for most of us it meant sticking at it through years of school and scrambling together some qualifications. But for some students the journey is so unimaginably tough, and unlikely, that sweating for your A-levels looks a little pale by comparison.

Graduation day: Sammy Gitau with Dr Peter Mann

Sammy Gitau, who graduated from an MSc at The University of Manchester in December, was not, on the face of it, a likely candidate for higher education. Born to a poor family in Mathare, a Nairobi slum, Sammy had only two years of formal schooling before becoming his family’s breadwinner at age 13 – when his father, who brewed the local moonshine chang’aa, was brutally killed. With zero employment prospects, Sammy became first a thief, then, after he was beaten up by an angry mob, a drug dealer.

Sammy’s long climb out of the desperate life of a slum dealer began only when he had hit rock bottom. After a near fatal overdose of drugs he wound up in a Nairobi hospital, an experience which was to turn his life upside down. Sammy recalls: “After the drugs put me in a coma, I remember hearing hospital staff telling me I was going to die, and when you are dying you make a deal with God. You just say, get me out of here and I will do anything. I will go back and stop children going through the same kind of life as me.”

Mathare resource centre: empowering young people in Nairobi’s inner city

On his return to Mathare, Sammy established a community resource centre which lobbies to bring fresh water and electricity supplies to the locality, as well as helping young men to come off drugs and find a job. A group of wives of local and international officials – including the wife of the head of the Kenyan EU delegation Monica Quince – helped Sammy to convert cargo containers into classrooms from which he and three volunteers could teach skills to disenfranchised youngsters, such as carpentry and computing. The centre, funded entirely by donations, costs $100 a month to run, and is estimated to have so far helped some 20,000 slum children.

From this point Sammy Gitau’s story becomes even more unlikely. In a discarded cardboard wallet, in a dustbin in a well-to-do neighbourhood near Mathare, Sammy found a prospectus from The University of Manchester. What caught his eye were references to Kenya in the outline of a course at the University’s renowned Institute for Development Policy and Management. With encouragement from another EU official, Alex Walford, Sammy applied for the MSc in the ‘Management and Implementation of Development Projects’. The university decided that Sammy’s wide practical experience in development work made up for his lack of formal education, and offered him a place.

Even after being accepted on the course, and finding charitable funding, Sammy’s dream of higher education was nearly destroyed by the UK immigration service which, after hearing about his limited schooling, refused to believe he was a genuine student. The ruling was overturned seven months later.

Talking about his graduation from the MSc course, Sammy Gitau said: “This may be the end of the first part of my journey, but it certainly isn’t the end of the road. I have big plans for the centre – I hope to expand the project into other areas of Nairobi. Who knows, it be may a model which can be emulated across Africa.” He continued: “If it wasn’t for my amazing experience and support from my friends at Manchester University and constant support from donations around the world, this dream would never have become a reality.”

Sammy’s programme director at Manchester, Dr Pete Mann said: “I found it humbling to teach Sammy – it really is a remarkable achievement. In class, he was reflective, thoughtful and creative – a very successful student. A development project or agency can only benefit from one who has witnessed so much adversity yet brings such intense spirit of endeavour on behalf of others.”

Dr Mann added: “We have only begun to hear from Sammy Gitau.”