Karima Grant

After several years working and developing both school and overall organisational leadership as a leadership consultant across Africa and the UK, Karima founded Imagination Afrika, an innovative social enterprise dedicated to facilitating the development of an empowering ecosystem around young children, and Ker Imagination, francophone Africa’s first children’s learning and innovation hub, in 2011 and 2016 consecutively. In 2019, Ker Imagination went on to win the Best Children’s Museum award by Hands On and the European Council of Museums. Imagination Afrika counted among its partners, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the United States Embassy, the Open Society and the Bernard Van Leer Foundation, USAID, the World Bank, UNICEF, ANCTP Senegal (ministry overseeing early learning), as well as many local and regional CSOs and government ministries. Karima is also the writer of 5 children’s books.

A mother of 4, Karima Grant was born in the United States to immigrant parents: a Senegalese mother and a St. Lucian father. She and her husband moved to Dakar, Senegal to support education, innovation and child development in West Africa.

Karima is proud to continue her mission to positively support how parents in the African Diaspora and on the continent facilitate and promote the learning and development of children as a Van Leer Foundation representative.