- It recognizes people who have demonstrated impact, leadership, and advocacy in the field of African education.
- Then two join eight other outstanding individuals from across Africa including former Tanzania President Jakaya Kikwete.
Two Kenyans have been named among the finalists for the inaugural pan-African education award. Hi
- Dubbed Africa Education Medal, the award organised by T4 Education and sponsored by information technology firm HP and Intel seeks to recognise exemplary person who has contributed to the improvement of education in the continent.
Felix Malombe and John Mugo are executive directors of STEAMLabs Africa and Zizi Afrique Foundation respectively.
Then two join eight other outstanding individuals from across Africa including former Tanzania President Jakaya Kikwete.
Felix Malombe heads STEAMLabs Africa, which trains students and educators on STEM education, the Sustainable Development Goals, environmental sustainability, and ICT integration in education.
He is a teacher at Crawford InternationalSchool who has led his school to win an award for the Best STEM School in Kenya and become a Microsoft Showcase school in Africa.
He is a Microsoft Innovative EducatorExpert, Trainer, and Fellow who has trained over 4,000 teachers since 2018. He is a founding member of the Google Educator Group (GEG) - Kenya.
As part of his work at STEAMLabs Africa, Malombe is a Microsoft Global Training Partner. He has been training Kenyan educators since the first days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the first sessions in May 2020, Felix carried out seven weekly webinars dubbed Remote LearningMethodologies (RLM) to train over 500 teachers in Kenya on effective pedagogical practices using Microsoft Teams.
STEAMLabs Africa is part of the 44 international organizations in the Scratch EducationCollaborative and has trained over 2,000 educators, empowering them to develop skills inequitable coding with scratch and digital citizenship.
John Mugo on other hand heads Zizi Afrique Foundation, a not-for-profit committed to improving learning outcomes for the children and young people who are furthest behind by nurturing skills for learning, living, and working.
The organization has grown rapidly to help improve the learning outcomes of more than 30,000 children and provide skills training opportunities to more than 1,000 young people facing extreme adversities.
Mugo is an education reform advisor to the Kenya Institute of Special Education, Ministry of Education and other institutions.
He has also contributed to the Early Language and Literacy and Numeracy Assessment(ELANA), a citizen-led direct child assessment for Language and Maths.
He contributes part of his salary and mobilizes colleagues and friends toward educating the children of marginalised communities in Lamu forest and Tana River county.
“Congratulations to Felix Malombe and John Mugo on being named top 10 finalists for the African Education Medal,'' the awards committee said.
HP has been committed to enabling better learning outcomes for 100 million people by 2025.
''Quality education empowers not just individuals, but entire communities. It will skill the next generation to fulfill their full potential in a world being transformed by technology,'' the tech firm said.