Karima Grant, the entrepreneur who wants to revolutionize education in Senegal

Karima Grant is a social entrepreneur committed to improving education in Senegal. She has founded Kër ImagiNation, a Cultural and Educational Center for young Senegalese. Through this initiative, she aims to develop creative and critical thinking among the youth in her country to make them actors of change in society.

For several years, through her cultural and educational center, Karima Grant has been promoting creative education. After spending her whole life in the USA, she went back to Senegal to work as a teacher. But, she realized that there was a gap between the content taught to children in schools and the needs of the 21st century. She then decided to commit to a more innovative education in her country. “With over twenty-five years of experience in the field of human development and education on three continents, I seek to change the ecosystem of learning for more than one million young changemakers by Africa,”she wrote on her Linkedin profile.

Approached several years ago by the British Council to run an exhibition for children, she suggested instead to organize a workshop with children on books production. Despite the opposition of some teachers, she managed to organize a 3-day writing workshop attended by 40 children who published their first book and subsequently organized an exhibition which attracted more than 2000 children. From this experience, she came up with the idea of launching a project that would involve children and attract others. She thus created ImagiNation Afrika in 2009 and then opened Kër ImagiNation in 2016, a learning and innovation space for children.

The aim of the center is to develop children’s creative thinking and leadership skills. It offers play and activity areas for children from 6 months to 19 years old. It also aims to be a setting where children are encouraged to develop practical and innovative solutions. The center’s approach consists of transforming several subjects into games, in particular mathematics, in order to make learning more enjoyable. These games are also connected to the local context of the child. In 2019, Karima Grant also founded Kër Imagination educational services.

She graduated with a master’s degree in Fiction writing from Pine Manor College. In 2009, she was also an Ashoka Fellow. Karima Grant has also been an international leadership facilitator consultant.