Kenyan techpreneur Nelly Cheboi, who is 29-years-old, has been named the 2022 CNN Hero of the Year beating nine other contenders for the coveted prize.
Cheboi in the year 2019 resigned from a well-paying software engineering position in Chicago, USA to establish computer laboratories for Kenyan school-going children.
TechLit Africa, her nonprofit organisation, has availed to thousands of students in rural areas across Kenya donated recycled computers giving them a chance at a brighter future.
Cheboi was accompanied by her mother as she accepted the coveted award as she celebrated her for how she “worked really hard to educate her.”
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On being announced winner, the techpreneur and her mother started her acceptance speech by singing a song explaining that it had a special meaning to her while growing up.
She will receive $100,000, an equivalent of Sh12,276,000 from the award organisers for being named the CNN Hero of the Year for 2022 to go towards expanding her tech work.
According to CNN, the top 10 CNN Heroes who were feted at the Sunday gala will get a $10,000 cash award and, for the first time, extra grants, administrative training and support from The Elevate Prize Foundation via a new collaborative initiative with CNN Heroes.
Nelly Cheboi will also be named an Elevate Prize winner, which comes with a grant of $300,000 and extra support of $200,000 for her nonprofit.
Cheboi received a full scholarship to Augustana College in Illinois in 2012 for her hard work and determination and commenced her studies with almost no experience with computers.
She at first struggled to transcribe her handwritten papers onto a laptop but all this changed in her junior year when she took a programming course needed for her mathematics major.
“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,” Cheboi told CNN.
Cheboi said she had to practice touch-typing, a skill that is now a core part of the TechLit curriculum, for up to six months before she was able to pass a coding interview.
“I feel so accomplished seeing kids that are seven-years-old touch-typing knowing that I just learned how to touch-type less than five years ago,” she reminisced.
On delving into the software industry, she appreciated the extent to which computers were being discarded as tech companies upgraded the infrastructure of their technology.
“We have kids here (in Kenya) — myself included, back in the day — who don’t even know what a computer is,” she noted.
Consequently, in 2018, Cheboi started bringing back to Kenya donated computers carrying them in her own luggage while having to personally handle the customs fees and taxes.
“At one point, I was bringing 44 computers, and I paid more for the luggage than I did for the air ticket,” she said in a recent interview with CNN.
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