Tech giant Mozilla, on Thursday, December 1, hired Chao Mbogho as its community fellow to drive its Computer Science Challenge’s expansion into Kenya.
Mozilla launched the challenge in 2018 to support professors in higher education who integrate ethics into computer science curricula.
In August 2022, it detailed that the challenge would expand to Kenya and India with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) support.
The challenge supports the conceptualization, development, and piloting of curricula that empower students to think about the social and political context of computing.
This challenge seeks to unearth and spark innovative coursework that will not only be implemented at the participating home institutions but also scaled to additional colleges and universities around the globe.
Mozilla and USAID will award 10 grants to innovation hubs and accredited institutions of higher education in Kenya.
Awards of up to Ksh142 million will be granted to institutions to develop course materials that integrate social, political, and technical perspectives in introductory computing courses.
According to Steven Azeka, the Mozilla Program Lead with the Responsible Computer Science Challenge, Mbogho is an exceptional addition to the program.
“Dr Chao Mbogho is an exceptional addition to the Responsible Computer Science Challenge community. Her background in education, technology, and civil society will be vital in expanding the challenge — and more responsible computing — across Kenya.” Azeka asserted.
Dr Mbogho, Dean of the School of Science and Technology at the Kenya Methodist University, is the Founder and Program Lead for KamiLimu, a student mentoring program.
Mbogho has worked at the Oxford University Press as a publications assistant, extending her thesis research into a second year working on software that could automate classroom scheduling within a complex university organisation.
She then moved to Cape Town for her PhD and subsequently to Kenya Methodist University as faculty.
Mbogho holds a PhD in Computer Science and is the first ever Kenyan to receive the prestigious OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Award.
Her KamiLimu initiative has served students from over 25 tertiary institutions in Kenya and collaborated with over 200 industry professionals and companies to deliver structured mentorship.
Equally, Mbogho is an instructor at Coursera, where she designed and delivered more than 25 courses on computer programming and data structures.
On March 8, 2021, Vogue magazine recognized her efforts and lauded her for founding the coding mentorship programme - KamiLimu.
