Kenyan poet and mental health activist was among the winners of the inaugural Africa Connected competition. Sitawa Wafula won the award for using Google Blogger to establish an award-winning blog on mental health in East Africa. With the award was a cash prize of
$25,000 (Sh2.1 million) which she will "inject into my mental health work and concentrate on sharing my knowledge with others," she told Word Is.
Other winners are: Eunice Namirembe (Uganda) who runs The Medical Concierge Group which helps Ugandan communities access quality healthcare and information, Eseoghene Odiete (Nigeria) who learned how to create handbags using Google Search and YouTube, Eric Obuh (Nigeria) (aka Vocal Slender), a former dump site scavenger who has recorded songs and shares them on YouTube and Christopher Panford (Ghana) who runs a transport company and uses Google Maps to constantly monitor the location of the vehicles.
The award ceremony hosted at Vila Rosa Kempinski saw STL, Atemi, Scot the violinist and Mozambique dancers Tofo Tofo perform.
