The Kenyan school which changed an American boy's life

According to Waihiga Mwaura BBC Komla Dumor 2018 award winner, Devon Brown would have been just another statistic - one of the 486,900 black inmates in US state and federal prisons by the end of 2016. But an academic year in Kenya during his seventh grade changed his life forever. He said it turned him into the man he is today. From a boy with limited options in inner-city Baltimore to a man who has now run an ice-cream company with revenues of $400,000 (£310,000) as its CEO," he reflects. Mr Brown's childhood had all the ingredients for failure. Born on 9 January 1990 in East Baltimore, his late mother was addicted to heroin and cocaine while his father drank too much. Outside their house, the harsh streets of Baltimore only compounded the situation as drug dealers, addicts, broken families and a crowded school system offered little hope for a better future. By the time his grandparents took over parental duties, Devon was an angry boy, bitter about his circumstances with low self-esteem in tow. He told BBC that it was embarrassing to have a mum who was not stable and that was difficult for him to understand. When she was sober it was great but when the drugs took hold of her it was another case altogether.

His sixth grade was a blur of school suspensions as he constantly found himself on the wrong side of the school administration.