Two leaders of a women’s education charity have been awarded the prestigious Yidan Prize for Education Development.

Angeline Murimirwa, executive director for Camfed (Campaign for Female Education) in Africa, and Lucy Lake, Camfed’s chief executive, were the first team to be granted the prize for development since the Yidan Prize’s inception in 2017.

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The Yidan Prize was launched in 2016 by Charles Chen Yidan, a tech billionaire who co-founded Tencent, a Chinese social networking site.

Pioneers of female education

The 2020 Yidan laureates were announced after a five-month judging process by the committee.

According to the prize organisation, Ms Lake has “pioneered award-winning strategies to achieve an unprecedented uplift in school retention and learning among marginalised girls, benefiting over 6 million young people, and culminating in a new generation of 157,000 young women leaders now at the forefront of a pan-African movement for girls’ education”.

Ms Murimirwa was one of the first young women supported by Camfed to go to secondary school in Zimbabwe, and is the founding member and first elected chair of the Camfed Association.

She is “uniquely positioned to bring the expertise of young women once excluded from education to inform policy and strategy at every level”, a statement from the Yidan Prize said.

Camfed is Tes’ international education charity partner.