Founded last year by T4 Education and HP in collaboration with Microsoft, the Africa Education Medal is Africa’s most prestigious education accolade.
The Africa Education Medal was established to recognise the tireless work of those who are transforming education across the continent – to celebrate the stories of those who have lit the spark of change so others will be inspired to take up the torch. It is given to an outstanding individual who has demonstrated impact, leadership, and advocacy in the field of education.
Rogers Patrick Kamugisha is the Country Director of Educate! in Rwanda, the largest youth skills provider in East Africa. Educate! tackles youth unemployment by partnering with schools and governments to equip young people in Africa with the skills to attain further education, overcome gender inequities, start businesses, get jobs, and drive development in their communities.
Hailed as a visionary leader, Kamugisha is an educator and an economist with over 10 years’ experience working in the Rwandan education system. He joined Educate! in 2015 to support its launch in Rwanda and subsequently assisted the organisation’s expansion into Kenya and Tanzania. He now oversees a team of 50 working tirelessly to implement Educate!’s teacher training and support model in the 30 districts of Rwanda.
Under his leadership, Educate! partnered with the Rwandan government on the country’s national curriculum reform efforts, focused on curriculum design and project-based assessment.
The results of a randomised controlled trial of Educate!’s two-year teacher training and support model showed participating teachers were 19% more likely to use active instruction techniques, and six months after graduation students were twice as likely to enroll in university, with a 167% increase in university enrolment for girls.
Kamugisha’s unwavering commitment to sustainability and long-term behaviour change in education practices has resulted in the implementation of innovations in Rwanda such as student business clubs and a new software platform, the Comprehensive Assessment Management Information System (CAMIS).
CAMIS enables teachers to continuously monitor students’ progress, incorporating project-based assessments and moving away from traditional reliance solely on exams. The data is uploaded to a central database at the national level, allowing for a detailed overview of student outcomes.
As a former teacher and National Master Trainer on skills-based education, Kamugisha has a unique affinity for educators in the region and understands the challenges they face. He has personally trained over 500 teachers on competency-based curriculum best practices, helped governments to develop education materials, and his work has had a significant impact on the quality of education in East Africa.
Kamugisha is a passionate advocate for education reform and providing opportunities for skills-based learning, having lacked these opportunities as a student growing up in Uganda. He uses his platform to raise awareness about the importance of skills-based education, giving lectures to university students about the value of entrepreneurship and working alongside the UN Industrial Development Organisation to introduce the subject of entrepreneurship in Rwanda. He sees that a quality education must go beyond theory and encompass practical experience. It is his firmly held belief that if young people are given the right support and mentorship, the economy will benefit from the entrepreneurs and leaders of the future.
Meanwhile, Jean-Claude Nkulikiyimfura is Executive Director of Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) in Rwanda, an organisation that empowers orphaned and vulnerable youth to build lives of dignity and contribute to a better world.
Nkulikiyimfura was born a refugee in Burundi. His parents were both orphaned and fled Rwanda in 1961, but taught their children that they would one day return to Rwanda and restore justice and dignity for all. Nkulikiyimfura did exactly that after the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi and began working to fulfil this promise.
Nkulikiyimfura first visited the ASYV campus in 2010, where he met a student named Fabien, a genocide survivor and orphan who inspired him with his determination.
This experience led him to enter the non-profit sector and work for ASYV in hopes of helping students like Fabien build dignified and self-reliant lives. The students of ASYV remind Nkulikiyimfura of his own parents; they have grit, resilience, and hope for a better future.
Nkulikiyimfura leads ASYV in its mission to empower vulnerable Rwandan youth to heal, build lives of dignity, and contribute to a better world. ASYV has provided 1,200 youth ages 14–21, including 500 current students, with secondary school education, medical and mental health services, extracurricular activities, and a loving family environment.
These services were designed to meet the complex needs of genocide survivors, and under Nkulikiyimfura’s leadership have continued to enable hundreds of the nation’s most at-risk young people to complete secondary school and access tertiary education and employment.
Among ASYV’s current first-year students, 63% have lost one or both parents, 65% come from households living in poverty, and 5% are refugees. In recognition of girls’ heightened vulnerabilities to leaving school, 62% of students are girls and 38% are boys. The results of the programme have been phenomenal. Over 60% of graduates have attended higher education, compared with 7% of young people nationally, while 44%, nearly twice the national average for youth, are employed, self-employed or interning.
Nkulikiyimfura also works to strengthen education in Rwanda nationally through ASYV’s Educational Resilience Programme (ERP). A groundbreaking partnership between the public, private, and non-profit sectors, the ERP is training upper- and lower-secondary school teachers from across Rwanda in digital education technology and life skills education concepts like mental health, gender equity, and sexual and reproductive health. The ERP has already impacted over 60,000 students.
His vision for ASYV has guided the organisation in its work to achieve several strategic goals, including digitising all curricula, developing vocational training based on national economic need and opportunity, closing gender-based gaps in programming, and developing a new trauma-informed curriculum that will train staff members to provide students with the emotional support they need to thrive. This work is enhancing learning outcomes and helping students build supportive relationships with their peers and educators.
Commenting on the selection of finalists, Vikas Pota, Founder and CEO of T4 Education, said: “Africa’s teachers and school leaders, and its leaders of governments, NGOs and businesses, all play a crucial part in unlocking the continent’s potential through quality education. African education stands at a crossroads in the wake of the pandemic, but if leaders from across the continent in every field can work together then they can build the lasting change needed.”
Below are top 10 finalists for the Africa Education Medal
● Mary Ashun, Principal of Ghana International School, Ghana
● Laura Kakon, Chief Growth & Strategy Officer of Honoris United Universities, Morocco
● Rogers Kamugisha, Country Director of Educate!, Rwanda
● Grace Matlhape, CEO of SmartStart, South Africa
● Mary Metcalfe, former policymaker and CEO of Programme to Improve Learning Outcomes (PILO), South Africa
● Martha Muhwezi, Executive Director of FAWE, Uganda
● Jean-Claude Nkulikiyimfura, Executive Director of Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, Rwanda
● Simi Nwogugu, CEO of JA Africa, Nigeria
● Sara Ruto, Former Chief Administrative Secretary of Kenya’s Ministry of Education and former CEO of PAL Network, Kenya
● Snehar Shah, CEO of Moringa School, Kenya
Nominations for the Africa Education Medal opened in February 2023 for individuals working to improve pre-kindergarten, K-12, vocational and university education who are either educators, school administrators, civil society leaders, public servants, government officials, political leaders, technologists, or innovators.
The winner of the Africa Education Medal will be announced in July. Finalists will be assessed by a Jury comprising prominent individuals based on rigorous criteria.
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