Dr Neema Mduma, a successful computer scientist and lecturer at Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology in Tanzania is one of the young African change makers who deserve media coverage for her impact on society.
The young scholar focuses on building a generation of young African girls who take interest in Science, technology, engineering and mathematics to deal with the narrative that, these fields are solely male-dominated. To achieve this, Neema established an initiative called the “BakiShule” which purported to train young Africans, especially girls in the above-mentioned fields at absolutely zero cost.
“The wrong perception that STEM careers are for boys. This discourages most young girls to pursue STEM,” she said. She operates by regularly visiting second-cycle schools targeting and loading young girls with inspiration and mentorship in these fields. She equally motivates these young ones with her own story of how she has established herself in the tech world.
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Explaining her initiative, she mentioned stated that, “BakiShule initiative conducts free training, inspirational talks and workshops to secondary school students especially girls to encourage them to pursue STEM careers and expose them to fields such as data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence.”
“Specifically, I have targeted these fields due to the fact that they are fewer girls in computer science and technology. Through these visits, I interact with a lot of secondary school girls who are curious and eager to learn how I managed to become a computer scientist. I believe my story will serve as an inspiration to most of them and will help to ignite science passion and eventually become scientists in the future.”
By Richard Kwame Krah
