Nelly Cheboi, 29, achieved remarkable achievement as a result of her perseverance and commitment to lift her family out of poverty.
Cheboi has worked her way up from a little village in Mogotio, Baringo County, to become the CEO of her own company, TechLit Africa.
She recycles technological equipment from the United States of America (USA) to create computer laboratories in Kenya through her own company.
Cheboi, according to her Forbes profile, hires teachers and teaches them to manage community laboratories so that they are fully equipped to teach pupils living in run-down regions.
Students pay Ksh1,167 ($10) per month to gain access to the laboratories.
Cheboi has more than 4,000 students and 20 teachers, but only ten modern computer labs.
This equates to around Ksh4.6 million per month.
Cheboi recently stated in a media interview that she intends to open 100 more laboratories around the continent to allow children to access and develop digital skills.
What was once a distant fantasy for Cheboi has now become a reality.
“I was born into poverty. I grew up watching my dear mom work tirelessly to educate my sisters and I. She did all kinds of informal businesses from selling goats to selling vegetables. For as long as I can remember, she worked hard day in and day out but our life never changed,” she previously stated.
Cheboi found a silver lining in education.
She received a scholarship to study Computer Science at Augustana College in Illinois, USA, after working well in school.
Cheboi found a job through the work-study program and helped her family move out of the hamlet in a year, motivated by her ambition to succeed.
She also put 80 percent of her earnings from several campus jobs into establishing Zawadi, a school in Kenya.
“I can’t exactly point at what inspired me, I just knew this was something I had to do. What keeps me going now, is I see how little investment it takes to empower people.”
Shortly after setting up the school is when Cheboi launched Techlit Africa. She noted that her biggest expense is importing the recycled computer parts into Kenya.
“Once in the country, we have programs preparing kids for the digital economy. With these skills, they could be working remotely for tech companies all over the world straight from the village.”
Her goal, she said, is to provide rural Africans with the technical skills they need to make money online.
