Born in the rural area of Mbale, Uganda, Andrew moved to Kampala on a half bursary to study at an advanced level. It later became a hurdle to cater for his needs while at school after his parents became unemployed. In 2008, at the age of 16, Andrew saw a market opportunity in creating paper…
You may have known someone like Yaw in high school, with a knack for understanding risk and the fortitude to take it. At the Accra Academy, Yaw noticed several high school classmates regularly unable to travel home for holidays. While the obvious possibility of giving schoolmates money to go home for the holidays was there,…
Nadege’s story is a remarkable transformation of waste to food. As a student in southern Rwanda, Nadege noticed that many students struggled to pay the additional fees that schools required to cover the high costs of cooking food for students. Schools spent a significant proportion of their budgets on firewood for cooking meals. Wood stoves…
Spurred to action by the lack of labs and experiential learning in primary and secondary education in Egypt, Mohamed Ismail, an undergrad at Tanta University, and fifteen of his friends set out to create scientific toys that would fill this void. Together, they built Bara’s Company and manufacture wooden toys that teach. The team’s first…
Orphaned at the age of 11, Mubarak settled with his mother’s sister and her husband. His adoptive parents operated a small book publishing and distribution company, Acrodile Publishers. He observed the business’s conflicting dependency on a good website to reach more customers and the current webmaster who provided a poor service at a high cost….
Mahmood Oyewo loves technology. As a tech user Mahmood knew the limitations and challenges to technology as well as its power to enable new possibilities. Soon Mahmood and his brother arrived at a vision for a platform that could help app developers across Africa and the world to develop applications efficiently and provide users better…
Born in a rural area in Swaziland, Lindokuhle lost his father at the age of 12 and moved in with his uncle, an agriculture teacher. While enrolled in Lusothi High School, Lindo became inspired to address two major issues in Swaziland: the environment and food production. Together with 15 classmates, Lindo established Eco-Eagle. Under Lindo’s…
Laetitia lives with her mother in the remote village of Bukura in Kenya and has never known her father. Despite her own challenges and responsibilities as the eldest of three sisters, Laetitia still made time to tutor fellow students when she was not studying. For as long as she can remember, she has sought to…
At the age of 17, Isaac hired a local videographer to film his high school prom. The videographer thought he would make a decent profit by making DVDs of the event, and then going on to sell these DVDs to his classmates. Two weeks after prom, the videographer delivered 250 branded DVDs to Isaac. Full…
