Exuberant is a word that perfectly describes Dr Cheick Diarra. He has a special passion for all things related to the youth in Africa, especially what the private sector can do to assist the youth to lead better lives through education. And he could talk for days! Diarra's "game plan for Africa", as he calls it, is that the youth will become exceptional adults and leaders in whatever field they choose to pursue.

It's now little over two years ago that Diarra agreed to relocate from the West African town of Nioro du Sahel, Mali, to Johannesburg, to join the Microsoft Middle East and Africa team. After earning his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Howard University in Washington D.C., Diarra was hired by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa); in 1988, he joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, as an inter-planetary navigator (JPL is Nasa's lead centre for the robotic exploration of the solar system). Diarra worked as a mission designer, calculating spacecraft trajectories of the Magellan mission to Venus, the Ulysses mission to the poles of the Sun, the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Mars Observer mission. He then served as a navigator on the much-publicised Mars Pathfinder mission design team.