By ABDULLATEEF ALIYU, Lagos

Olalekan Adeeko, a teacher at Baptist Boys’ High School, Ogun has won the African Union Continental Teacher Prize 2020 for his work and dedication to the teaching profession.

He is the first Nigerian to win the prestigious award at the virtual event held in Addis Ababa on the 21st of December, 2020, it was learnt.

Olalekan said on Thursday that he dedicated it to all inspirational teachers in Nigeria and on the African Continent.

For the 2020 edition of the African Union Continental Teacher Awards, prizes of $10 000 each were awarded to top African teachers at the secondary school level.

The AU Teacher Prize has been established as a means for demonstrating respect for teachers and the teaching profession, by encouraging and celebrating the committed teachers in Africa.

The Prize raises the status of teaching, facilitates sharing of best practices in teacher excellence, and inspires the best possible candidates to join the teaching profession.

Furthermore, the AU Teacher Prize is meant to serve as a catalyst for similar programmes at regional and national levels.

Through a competitive process, the winning teachers were selected for engaging in quality teaching which results in high standards of student achievement; encouraging desirable behaviour among students through positive feedback and other methods; positive engagement with fellow teachers encouraging mutual learning.

Olalekan who was the 1st runner up at the 2018 Maltina Teacher of the year, winner of Inspirational Educator of the Year in 2019 and 1st runners up Presidents Teachers & Schools Excellence Award, 2019 has been involved in several educational projects and interventions in Ogun State and Nigeria in the last 15 years.

Adeeko, a Microsoft Certified Educator and Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert was awarded a Teaching Excellence & Achievement Fellowship in Washington DC in 2015 by United States Department of States and International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX).

He was awarded Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert, Dubai in 2015, Singapore in 2018 and became a fellow in Paris, 2019. He is specialist in Education Technology and 21st Century Learning Design.

All these he achieved through persistent pursuit of his goals and relentless hard work. His new found love is Data Science with a special interest in how to use data and Artificial Intelligence to promote UN Sustainable Goal 4 – Quality Education. During the lockdown, he played an important role in the OgunDigiClass project of the Ogun State Government and also helped several schools transit to remote learning.

Olalekan has trained over 10000 teachers in 19 states in Nigeria and represented the state and country at international programs and competition in Ghana, Mauritius, South Africa, Kenya, Dubai, Singapore, France and United States in the last ten years.

He won the 1st Prize Union Bank Edtech Challenge with the development of Edubox; a device that brings online educational contents to communities without internet access to bridge education divide and promote inclusive and equitable quality education.

He is the co-founder of Tedprime hub, an edtech social enterprise with projects like Codeliners, Edo Girls Can Code, Teach Right and STEM HER, all to advocate for 21st century teaching and learning and promote STEM/coding in schools. (Daily Trust)

Update news