1st Pan African Prize for Entrepreneurial Teachers

Winners' Stories

1st Prize: Eco-Friendly Business Education
Akwany Leonard, Ecofinder Youth Movement, Kenya

Akwany Leonard, leader of Eco-finders Youth Movement in Kenya has been working to promote ‘environmental entrepreneurship’ in the poorest region of the country since 1995.

Through cost sharing and improvisation Eco-finders has been able to use its limited resources to reach out to over 100 schools and hundreds of community groups, to establish ‘Environmental Enterprises’. Eco-finder members have been involved in a diverse range of  enterprises, learning both technical and business skills in a hands on manner.

These have  included 20 school tree nurseries, communal village vegetable gardens fertilized with recycled human waste and a self-sufficient agroforestry learning and resource centre.

2nd Prize: Satellite Farms for Schools
Pamela  Akinyi  Nyagilo, Ojere Primary School, Kenya

Pamela Akinyi has been teaching her students how to cultivate indigenous vegetables at school since 2003. Students collect seed at the end of each school harvest and sow them back on their home farm.  This has led to most of the households surrounding the school starting their own indigenous vegetable gardens, radically reducing malnutrition in the area.

At the school’s poultry house, students breed their family’s local hens with purebred cocks, producing high value ‘pullets’. Some of these pullets are sold to local hotels to support and expand the project, whilst the remainder are looked after at school by the students. The project has now grown in size and there are 4 cockerels breeding with dozens of hens, generating a handsome profit which students use to buy educational materials.

3rd Prize: Turning Waste into Gold
Atanga Martin Tabifor, Paradise On Earth, Cameroon

Since being forced to look for alternative forms of fertilizer in Cameroon’s economic depression of the early 90s, Atanga Martin has been leading his community to recycle their waste to produce furniture, ornaments, building materials and of…course…fertilizer, through training courses and enterprise schemes.

By transforming their waste and selling it for a profit, the community has tackled health and sanitation problems head on and found new and profitable ways to exploit waste products. Teaching the next generation to transform garbage into gold not only offers them a route out of poverty, but also a better chance of a genuinely sustainable future.