By Collins Akong’o
Kajire Girls High School based in Taita Taveta County emerged the winners at the Diamond Africa challenge, held in Elgeyo Marakwet.
The competition, run by Startup Africa essentially connects, mentors and builds skills especially for the students, youth and women besides spurring the entrepreneurship engagement.
Kajire Girls alongside Murray Girls, both beneficiaries of the Sote ICT schools program and Sote Hub enrolled for the September 2017 edition and impressively made it through a list of 90 submissions nationally to emerge at finals held at Maria Soti Girls High school.
Kajire emerged the winners at the Business idea category and ranked the best overall too.
The team of 4 ladies Joyce Mtoto, Sandra Lukindo,Nancy Wairimu and Macrina Antonia guided by their teacher Mr. Ezra Abuga have often prominently featured in various editions of the Trade Fair held annually by the Sote ICT, a platform though which they have undoubtedly mastered the art of idea generation, pitching, general presentation among other skills.
The Kajire students’ innovation was in a sensor that generates mobile alerts and alarms to Kenya Wildlife Service rangers and villagers ensuring real time response before elephants cause damage to properties.
This minimizes the human-elephant conflict in wildlife conservation regions such as the Tsavo where both schools are apparently located. It has an integration of motion sensors and GSM.
Armed with their prototype and polished pitch deck skills, Kajire emerged the best nationally and now proceeds to the University of Delaware in the Unites States of America in April for the global challenge.
Sandra Lukindo one of the champions expressed her excitement on winning and attributed the success to dedication, hard work from her team members and great support from her teacher Ezra and Principal Phydiliah Kilimo.
