Zimbabwe & Ghana students shine at DStv Eutelsat Star Awards

Zimbabwean student Mallon Marume scooped the first prize for artistic creativity this year’s DStv Eutelsat Star Awards announced Nairobi, Kenya yesterday. The awards celebrated rising student interest in science and technology on the continent. The awards are organised by MultiChoice Africa and Eutelsat, a satellite company providing both TV and Internet connectivity.

Marume will visit Eutelsat in Paris to understand how satellites are operated and piloted in space. This is a consecutive win for Zimbabwe as Joseph Mahiya won top honours in the essay category last year.

A Ugandan, Benjamin Ibanda, was the runner up in the same category. The four winning schools attended by the overall award winners and runners-up were also rewarded with a DStv installation, including dish, TV set, PVR decoder and free access to the DStv Education Bouquet. 

The fifth edition of the DStv Eutelsat Star Awards, organised by MultiChoice and Eutelsat, reached a record participation with nearly 2,000 entries from 18 countries.

The essay category was won by Ayawen Asuinura from Ghana who was also awarded with a trip to Paris and onwards to a launch site to witness a rocket blast into space to place a satellite into orbit. This is the first win in the essay category for Ghana that has already produced two winners in the poster category. The runner-up in the essay category was Sara Eribo from Equatorial Guinea who wins a trip for two to visit MultiChoice facilities and the South African National Space Agency near Johannesburg. In the essay category, students were asked to interpret the quote by Socrates “Man must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives” and to show how satellites help understand and take care of our planet.

The jury of the awards was chaired by Paolo Nespoli, a European Space Agency astronaut and included, amoung other African science leaders, Dr. Perkins Muredzi who is Dean of School of Industrial Sciences and Technology at Harare Institute of Technology'(HIT).