The Aegis Graham Bell awards was established by the Aegis school of Telecom Data and Science as a tribute to the late father of Telephony, Sir Alexander Graham Bell.

The award’s mission is to recognize outstanding innovations and entrepreneurship in the fields of Telecom, Social, Mobility, Analytics, Cloud, and Security.

This year’s awards ceremony was held on Thursday 9th February 2017 at the NDMC convention centre in New Delhi.

While the rest of the winners were countries with operations in India, BRCK is the only company outside of India that won an award. BRCK’s education solution, the Kio Kit, won the top honours in the mEducation category.

Alex Masika, BRCK Biz Dev Manager, receiving the award

BRCK’s game-changing products and solutions continue to receive international acclaim for use of technologies that are literally revitalizing businesses and communities around the world.

ITU world is the global platform for high level debate, networking, innovative showcasing and knowledge sharing across the ICT. It is the UN specialized agency for ICT’s with 193 member states and over 700 private sector members.

This year, the ITU world gathering was held in the vibrant city of Bangkok in the Kingdom of Thailand. Although the country was in mourning following the death of their revered King His Majesty Bhumibol Adulyadej, the government decided that the event should still go on as planned. Very noticeable during the week was the black and white clothing worn by the people of Thailand in honour of their fallen hero. Also conspicuous was the Late King’s portrait all over the city adorned with beautiful flowers and memorabilia. It was evident that the people of Thailand really loved their King.

The event was held at the Impact Exhibition Centre in Bangkok. The opening ceremony was graced by Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri SIridhorn. There was also an exhibition hall showcasing innovations from various countries around the world.  BRCK was in the colourful Kenya pavilion designed and created by the Communication Authority of Kenya which also showcased the Communication Authority’s products and another Kenyan company also shortlisted for the awards – Africartrack.

The Kenya Pavillion

The highlight of the event was the award ceremony held in the afternoon of 17th November. The ceremony aimed to recognize companies that are effectively using ICTs innovatively for social good, highlighting best practices and the cross fertilization of ideas for innovative socio-economic development and provide a platform to network, mobilise investment and create new business opportunities for ICT solutions with Social Impact.

Companies selected for the awards underwent a rigorous selection process. They had to send in applications and for those that scored 70% and above had to pitch to a panel of judges so as to qualify for the awards.

Alex Masika pitching to a panel of judges

The award categories were as follows;

• GLOBAL SME AWARD – Top award for the most promising innovative solution for an SME
• THEMATIC AWARD – award for most promising innovative solution with a social impact in vertical sectors
• RECOGNITION OF EXCELLENCE AWARD – For the best innovative exhibitor within each pavilion 
• HOST COUNTRY AWARD – for best innovative SME from host country

The host country award and the recognition of excellence awards were presented first and all winners were issued with certificates of excellence.

Then came the coveted Global SME award. Three companies were shortlisted for this award and BRCK emerged the overall winner!!

Alex Masika giving his acceptance speech

Team BRCK is greatly honoured to be the recipient of this award and we are humbled by the fact that the world is recognizing that we are not only creating technology but we are also positively impacting the world we live in. Thank you ITU!

Kenyan delegation led by PS Sammy Itemere, Ambassador Patrick Wamoto, MPs, board members and staff of the Communication Authority of Kenya pose with Thailand’s Prime Minister

AfricaCom: Best Pan-African Initiative Award

BRCK was also in South Africa for the annual AfricaCom event.  This is the largest gathering of technology companies in Africa, and it happens in one of the best cities in the world: Cape Town.  In this year’s AfricaCom Awards, BRCK also came away with top honors as the “Best Pan-African Initiative.  Erik Hersman, BRCK CEO, was there to collect.

CEO Erik Hersman accepting award at AfricaCom

On a chilly but warm Monday morning of June 20th 2016, Rene John Dierkx and I embarked on a 4 hour road trip from Lilongwe to Blantyre to deploy a Kio Kit purchased for Noacha Full Primary school by UNICEF.

Rene is an Education specialist and Architect at UNICEF who has worked in Africa for many years. As we chatted away during our journey I was amazed by the well maintained tarmacked roads, the warmness of the country and the lack of crazy traffic on a Monday morning! To me, Malawi was living up to its nickname – the warm heart of Africa.

Malawi is a landlocked country in the Southern African region and is among the world’s least developed countries. About 85% of the population lives in rural areas and the economy is driven by agriculture.

At around noon, we arrived at Noacha Primary School which is located in the outskirts of Blantyre. The school has over 5000 primary school pupils. Although the school has about 90 teachers, it does not have enough classrooms and learning resources. Each class has an average of about 100 students and there is a severe shortage of textbooks, exercise books, and even furniture leading to some classes being held out in the open.

Rene, being an architect, is monitoring a pavilion for the school which will serve as a learning and social resource centre. He has initiated a project called Living Schools that seeks to empower children to become thinkers, designers, and makers. Through this initiative, the school has implemented some fantastic projects such as tree planting and helping out in the construction of the pavilion. These activities will enable the children to reach their full potential, and I’m proud that the Kio Kit is a part of the project as a learning resource.

When we arrived at the school, we found the morning teachers winding up their shifts. About 10 teachers agreed to remain behind so that we can train them on the Kio Kit – our fully integrated education solution that turns every classroom into a digital classroom.

The reaction was amazing! The teachers were all excited. All the hunger pangs were gone and we ended up having a full afternoon training session. Due to time, we agreed that we’d continue the training the next day to include the other teachers as well as utilize the Kio Kit to teach a class.

On day two, teacher Gertrude was well prepared to teach her class 6 class science. Her topic for the day was living plants and with my help we selected appropriate topics from the Kio Kit. She selected a topic on plants from eLimu and was very excited that it had the exact illustrations and explanations that she had in mind.

In class she introduced the topic using chalk and a blackboard and then gave step by step instructions to the class on how to find the topic in the tablets. Due to the large number of students, they had to sit in groups of 4.

After about 10 minutes of working in groups, the picture below speaks a thousand words on what happened when she asked questions. Everyone raised their hands ready to answer questions. The only other resource that she had apart from the chalk and blackboard was the Kio Kit.

After class, some of the feedback I got from the students were, “it makes learning fun, I understood the subject more” etc.

Feedback from the teachers were, “it made teaching easy and fun, they were happy that they were the first school in the region to access digital technology, it helped them solve the issue of lack of textbooks” etc.

At BRCK, we do not just create technology but we design and engineer solutions that make a positive impact in the society we live in. Over 400 million children around the world do not have access to basic education. Our vision is to enable millions of children in schools across emerging markets to access digital education tools for better learning. Schools like Noacha and partners like UNICEF only help us reiterate our mission of providing quality education to all children around the world.