Kenya’s 29-year-old Nelly Cheboi has been named the 2022 CNN Hero of the Year.
Cheboi who in 2019 quit a lucrative software engineering job in Chicago to create computer labs for Kenyan schoolchildren emerged as the winner from among 10 other nominees.
She will now receive $100,000 (Sh12.3 million)to expand her work.
According to CNN, she and the other top 10 CNN heroes honoured at Sunday’s gala will all receive a $10,000 (Sh1.2 million) 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.
Cheboi will also be named an Elevate Prize winner, which comes with a $300,000 (Sh36.9 million) grant and additional support worth $200,000 for her non-profit.
Cheboi’s nonprofit, TechLit Africa, has provided thousands of students across rural Kenya with access to donated, upcycled computers — and the chance at a brighter future.
A hard-working student, Cheboi received a full scholarship to Augustana College in Illinois in 2012.
She began her studies there with almost no experience with computers, handwriting papers and struggling to transcribe them onto a laptop.
Everything changed in her junior year, though, when Cheboi took a programming course required 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,” 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.
“I feel so accomplished seeing kids that are 7 years old touch-typing, knowing that I just learned how to touch-type less than five years ago,” she said.
Once she had begun working in the software industry, Cheboi soon realized the extent of which computers were being thrown away as companies upgraded their technology infrastructure.
“We have kids here (in Kenya) — myself included, back in the day — who don’t even know what a computer is,” she said.
So, in 2018, she began transporting donated computers back to Kenya — in her personal luggage, handling customs fees and taxes herself.
“At one point, I was bringing 44 computers, and I paid more for the luggage than I did for the air ticket,” she said.