Kenya’s Kids Comp Camp wins FIRE Africa Awards

The Award ceremony was organised by the SEED Alliance, at the Internet Governance Forum 2016 in Guadalajara, Mexico. The SEED is a collaborative partnership between IP registry organisations in Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America. The Seed Alliance has supported 116 projects in 57 economies in the global south to a tune of around US$ 2.2 million helping them to strengthen and promote the Information Society within these regions.

Chosen from nearly 60 applications, the 2016 FIRE Africa Award winners received a US$3,000 cash prize and a travel grant to attend the 2016 IGF to showcase their projects on the global stage, meet winners from other regions and network with other like-minded individuals and tech entrepreneurs.

Alan Barrett, African Network Information Center (AFRINIC) CEO, gave the opening speech and thanked the Seed Alliance sponsors, IDRC and the Internet Society, as well as former sponsor Sida who played a key part in setting up the strong foundations on which the Seed Alliance programme is based. Dr. Raúl Echeberría, Vice President Global Engagement – Internet Society, Paul Wilson, Director General – APNIC, Phet Sayo, Senior Programme Officer – IDRC, and Oscar Robles, CEO – LACNIC, also delivered speeches. The Award ceremony was also attended by Vinton Cerf, popularly know as the Father of the Internet and who is also the Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google.

Kids Comp Camp is an initiative that seeks to increase competitiveness of young learners aged 8 to 14 in rural and slums communities in Africa. Kids Comp Camps runs school holidays and weekend computer camps targeting young learners with no prior exposure on computers to equip them with computing and computational thinking skills to tackle today’s digital driven society. Since inception in 2014, kids comp camp has reached out to more than 6,000 kids from 10 counties in Kenya. Also worked with Microsoft, Google, Mpesa Foundation, Data Dimension as partners.