By Lucy Cheptoo
Nelly Cheboi, a 29-year-old Kenyan, has been voted as Kenyan Techprenuer 2022 CNN Hero of the Year. Online voters selected her from among this year’s Top 10 CNN Heroes.
Cheboi received the award with her mother whom she said “worked really hard to educate us.”
At the beginning of her acceptance speech, Cheboi and her mother sang a song on stage that she explained had a special meaning when she was growing up.
As CNN Hero of the Year, Cheboi will receive $100,000 (Ksh 1.2 million) to expand her work. She and the other top 10 CNN Heroes honored will receive a $10,000 (Ksh 120,000) cash award and for the first time, additional grants, organizational training and support from The Elevate Prize Foundation through a new collaboration with CNN Heroes.
“When I discovered Computer Science, I just fell in love with it. I knew that this is something that I wanted to do as my career, and also bring it to my community,” she told CNN.
Many basic computer skills were still a steep learning curve. However, Cheboi remembers having to practice touch-typing for six months before she could pass a coding interview. Touch-typing is a skill that is now a core part of the TechLit curriculum.
“My hope is that when the first TechLit kids graduate high school, they’re able to get a job online because they will know how to code, they will know how to do graphic design, they will know how to do marketing,” Cheboi said adding that by bringing these skills and resources closer, the world opens up.
Baringo County Governor Benjamin Cheboi lauded Nelly for the accomplishment despite being raised in a rural village and in a poor family at Mogotio, Baringo County.
Speaking during Jamhuri Day celebrations in Eldama Ravine Kerkwony stadium, he claimed that Nelly was lucky to secure a full scholarship through Zawadi Africa to study Computer Science at Augustana College in Illinois, graduating in 2015.
Thereafter, Nelly worked as a business analyst and lead software engineer in US firms – New World Van Lines and User Hero. She later resigned her job in US and decided to come back to her village in Kenya in 2019 aiming to empower her community from her gained experience in US.
She is the founder and CEO of Technologically Literate Africa (Techlit Africa), a company that uses recycled computers to create tech labs in schools. She used to study as she worked and earned Ksh 40,000 monthly to the extra hours she put in. She saved 80 percent out of her earnings for over one year.
“Nelly Cheboi decided to buy a plot at Mogotio and built a school naming it Zawadi Yetu, where children would study more about technology with parents paying a small fee monthly to sustain their operations,” he said.
The school relies on donations to collect, ship and import donated computers as well as to develop curriculum and administer digital skills education. She has already built 10 computer labs in rural Kenya and currently working on their next 100 computer labs.
She was listed in the Forbes 30 under 30 lists in April. She says her happiness is to see the children in rural areas learn and make their own money online using computers because Kenya is currently facing a huge challenge of unemployment.
The governor also lionized President Ruto for recognizing Nelly and giving her a standing ovation saying she had conquered the world through Technology.
