I just saw this and I thought I could weigh in with my two cdnts worth...
I got a job with KU last year though I never took due to a better offer elsewhere. KU gave me a post of senior lecturer with basic salary of Ksh.101,000. With other allowances for house and medical my net take home would have been circa 120k. I was also offered to teach parallel classes in their Karen campus for 3k per hour as extra. In terms of my quals I hold a Phd, 6 publications and 6 yrs postdoctoral experience.
I also had another offer from Mount Kenya University with a gross of 225k although this was for a 5-yr renewable contract.
All in all, what I found out during my search for a university position is that public universities are great for job security (terms are on permanent and pensionable, you can moonlight, etc.) while privates normally are on contracts though they pay more. Some of the privates don't even operate pension schemes (apart from the diabolical nssf) and its left to the employees to sort themselves! The downside of the public ones is that workload is enormous (class sizes can be sometimes 1000 (especially for the mass market degrees eg. B. Arts, Bsc. & B. Ed). There's no time for individualised teaching or research and lecturers feel like factory operators.
I hope this helps the debate...