“I want to be a computer wizard, just go crazy with computers,” Leah Kahindi proclaims.
Leah joined the Leadership Academy at the Nice Place Foundation when she finished her secondary school studies.
Using the skills in Information Technology she acquired at the academy, she worked at a cybercafé and was eventually asked to go back to the academy, this time as an ICT mentor.
Leah is now a student at the Nairobi Aviation College pursuing a Diploma in ICT. She is well on her way to realise her dream to work with computers.
Nice Place, located in Kimana, Kajiado county, near the Kenya-Tanzania border and a five-hour drive from Nairobi is a sanctuary that is the brainchild of Nice Leng’ete, who has emerged as a global ambassador for the campaign against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
The award-winning Kenyan human rights activist has changed the lives of over 20,000 girls in Kenya and Tanzania by enabling them to escape early marriages and FGM.
In addition to offering a safe space for girls escaping from the cultural practices, seeds for a brighter future are getting planted through an educational hub that empowers girls by ensuring that they get an education and then they are also able to advocate against FGM and child marriage.
Areas of focus in the Leadership Academy are leadership, advocacy, personal development as well as computer and coding.
When Leah enrolled, she only could switch on the computer and that alone made her happy. But she took to the computer and coding lessons like a fish to water and was soon able to swim in the deep end.
Leah’s description of her progression is full of youthful exuberance: “Thereafter I was taught how to use a computer, how to type, how to use Excel, how to code, what is coding… I was taught about HTML by the way, and I loved it because I want to do language programming.”
Duncan Limo is the Lead instructor at Nice Place Foundation and he is a firm believer in the adage that if you educate a woman, you educate a society. His focus is on the computer and coding: “I think digital skills are required in almost every field. So we want to prepare girls to be to have the digital skills, so that they can be able to be effective in their work environments, but also take part in their transformation in the technology that we are seeing.”
For a long time, the ICT centre did not have enough computers which meant that the students couldn’t practice what they learnt. The challenges are a thing of the past after the center received 20 refurbished computers and five laptops from Safaricom under the Ndoto Zetu initiative.

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This story is part of Safaricom Newsroom’s celebration of the International Day of the Girl which is celebrated annually on 11 October. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the International Day of the Girl and the theme is “Our time is now — our rights, our future.”