• Cheboi, on Monday morning was declared the 2022 CNN hero of the year.
• She will now receive $100,000 (Sh12.3 million)to expand her work.
Image: Twitter
President William Ruto on Monday congratulated Kenya’s 29-year-old Nelly Cheboi who was named the 2022 CNN Hero of the Year.
Speaking during the Jamhuri day celebrations at Nyayo stadium, Ruto said that Cheboi has connected and inspired thousands of children in Kenya.
"We congratulate the 29-year-old Nelly Cheboi the founder of TechLit Africa who this morning was declared the CNN hero of the year for her work in creating computer labs for Kenyan children to access opportunities in the digital world," he said.
Cheboi, on Monday morning, was declared the 2022 CNN hero of the year.
In 2019, Cheboi who 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.