Ethiopia, Nigeria score big at Eutelsat Star Awards
STUDENTS from Nigeria and Ethiopia have been named winners of the 2016 DStv Eutelsat Star Awards, at the climax of the latest edition of the increasingly popular pan-African competition that focuses on science and space technology.
At a special event held this week in Lagos, it was announced that the essay section of the competition was won by Leoul Masfin of Ethiopia and the poster section by Emmanuel Ochenjele of Nigeria.
The sixth annual competition attracted more than 1 000 entries from 20 countries across Africa.
Levels of accuracy, creativity and originality were judged to be higher than ever before, in both categories.
The topic of the essay category for 2016 required entrants to envision the role played by satellite technology in the Africa of the future.
The winner of the essay category, Leoul Mesfin, won a trip to Paris and to a launch site to witness a rocket being launched into space to place a satellite in orbit.
Runner-up in the essay category was Davids Bwana of Tanzania, who won a trip for two to visit MultiChoice facilities in South Africa and the South African National Space Agency near Johannesburg.
Poster category winner Emmanuel Ochenjele will visit Eutelsat in Paris to learn how satellites are operated, and will also visit a satellite factory. Aobakwe Letamo of Botswana was runner-up in this category.
The four schools attended by these overall continental award winners and runners-up were also each rewarded with a DStv installation, including satellite dish, television set, PVR decoder and free access to the DStv Education Bouquet.
Liz Dziva, publicity and public relations manager of MultiChoice Zimbabwe, said that in past years Zimbabwean students had done well at international level.
“This year we were not lucky and the top continental prizes have gone to other countries, but we know that judges were delighted with the quantity and quality of entries from Zimbabwe and we look forward to continued entyry by Zimbabwean high school students when the 2017 competition takes place towards the end of this year,” she said.
In 2010 MultiChoice Africa and Eutelsat combined their expertise to initiate an annual pan-African student competition called the DStv Eutelsat Star Awards, which is aimed at encouraging 14 to 19-year-old students to write an essay or design a poster on a satellite-related topic.
Country winners are named in each category and they then compete with colleagues from across Africa for the overall awards.
Country winners for Zimbabwe this time were: Andile Dube (18), of St Columba’s High School, Bulawayo who won the essay section, with runner-up being 16-year-old Ruvimbo Jongwe, of St Dominic’s High School in Chishawasha .
In the poster category, Shaun Matondo (16) of Hartzell High School in Mutare was named winner, and the runner-up is 17-yearold Brandon Murira of Mutare Boys High School.