Rosatom announces winners of the “Atoms Empowering Africa” Online Video Competition

Rosatom announced the winners of the 6th Annual “Atoms Empowering Africa” Online Video Competition at the special online awards ceremony.

During the competition the participants were encouraged to post their videos on Facebook to explore nuclear technologies and how these technologies could be utilized to benefit their region. It could be a video about how nuclear technologies can assist in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in Africa, how nuclear technologies can help developing countries industrialize, how non-power related nuclear science and technology can benefit the country or community or another related subject.

This year the winners of the competition are: team of George Davis Bilali, student of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and technology in Ghana from Tanzania, together with his counterparts Alyaa Mahmoud Ibrahim Awad from Egypt and Fati Aruna Akoriko from Ghana; Mostafa Omran, Master student of the African Center of Excellence in future energies and electrochemical systems in Egypt; Noоmen Noоmen, student and communication manager at Panorama short film in Tunisia. Jury members were delighted with range and type of videos this year. That’s why Rosatom decided to establish a special prize for best collaboration that will go to three more participants: team of Munachimso Oguine together with Oguine Jane and Oguine Ozioma, students of the National Open University of Nigeria. A special prize for extraordinary creativity and video content was awarded to Wissem Dallali, young professional from Tunisia.

All winners will be rewarded with an all-expenses paid trip to Russia, where they will get the opportunity to visit several of the country’s world-renowned tourist attractions as well as various nuclear institutions and advanced nuclear facilities. The trip will be arranged in compliance with epidemiologic restrictions imposed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Videos were carefully selected by an independent expert panel observing various criteria including original content and creativity, overall quality of the video and content, accuracy and relevance of technical content, as well as ability to clearly communicate the content to an audience. Jury included representatives of nuclear enterprises such as ROSATOM, Nuclear Power Plants Authority (NPPA, Egypt), media practitioners like Influence Communications (Egypt) and regional nuclear NGOs Women in Nuclear South Africa (WinSA), African Young Generation in Nuclear (AYGN) and Nuclear Corporation of South Africa (NESCA).

The jury members shared their thoughts about the contestants’ works.
Gaopalelwe Santswere, National Executive Chairperson of South African Young Nuclear Professional Society, mentioned “a responsible approach and high-quality” of videos this year: “Courageous, smart, creative young specialists are the key to success in the development of Africa!”.

Another jury Tebogo Motlhabane, the president of Women in Nuclear South Africa (WiNSA), highlighted that many girls took part in the competition: “I would especially like to note that among the participants there were girls, which is also very important for the development of nuclear science”.

Mohamed Emara, CEO and Founder of Influence Communications, paid attention to the topics, taken into account by the participants: “A large number of videos which were sent by participants shows that the youth of Africa are really eager and passionate to achieve sustainable development goals to solve those problems which are in the countries, beginning from pressing medical problems to the climate change problem. A key factor of mankind’s steady future is the way of obtaining energy without pollution, and it’s the value of nuclear energy”.

According to Ryan Collyer, CEO of Rosatom in the Central and South Africa, nuclear technologies are the heart of many innovations from which Africa and the world can derive big benefits: “We are ready to support in every possible way your aspirations in achieving your purposes because it is important for us that talented young people could prove themselves. Our activity isn’t limited only to construction of the NPP, we (ROSATOM corporation) are also many-sided, as well as you are, therefore our purpose is to help you to study, to reveal, to develop and be useful to society”.

Rosatom congratulates the winners, who despite the pandemic difficulties, succeeded to make professional high-quality videos, and wishes them further success in creativity and studies!

About the competition
Over 5 years of running the competition, 51 winners received the accolades and prizes and one-third of them visited Russian nuclear facilities in Moscow, Obninsk, Tomsk, and Voronezh. The competition was selected by IAEA for its technical meeting on using social media for public communication and stakeholder involvement for nuclear programs and was featured in international and regional media such as Reuters, The Guardian, AllAfrica, ESI Africa, Engineering News, The Citizen, Business Report and many more.