Kenya’s best two KCSE candidates each year will be admitted to Harvard University under the Wings to Fly programme courtesy of Equity Bank.
This will be in honour of the late Harvard don professor Calestous Juma who passed on this month.
Equity Bank CEO James Mwangi said Harvard University has agreed to the proposal.
“Harvard University has agreed to the proposal in honour of late Kenyan scholar and we are sending off the best of our candidates to Harvard starting with these nine who scored straight A’s,” said Mwangi on Friday according to the Star.
Equity Bank has been sponsoring bright but needy students through the Wings to Fly initiative funded by Mastercard.
Juma died on December 15 at the age of 64 years. He was an authority in the field of science and technology.
According to Wikipedia is internationally recognized in the application of science and technology to sustainable development worldwide.
The New African magazine named him among the most influential 100 Africans in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
At Harvard, he was the professor of the practice of International Development.
He was the faculty chair of the Innovation for Economic Development Executive Program at Harvard Kennedy School besides being the school’s director of the school’s Science, Technology and Globalization project.
He contributed to Africa’s agricultural sphere by heading the Agricultural Innovation in Africa Project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
He is an author of several books with his latest, The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa being published by Oxford University Press between 2011 and 2013.