Nigeria Abroad
Amid efforts to get Nigerian girls into tech, a concern remains: the complex ecosystem is also riddled with information overload—and many won’t know where to start. Learning how accomplished tech buffs navigated the process can be a good step.
“Math was fundamental for me,” says Associate Professor of Computer Science at North Carolina State University Kemafor Anyanwu, during a video interview with Nigeria Abroad. “Math and English were the only subjects my dad really cared about on my report cards. Math summons your creativity, logical reasoning and attention to detail in a beautiful way. Exactly the same as Computer Science (which is applied Mathematics).”
Kemafor’s father was an Ivy League-trained PhD in mathematics and was lecturer at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, (UNN) where her mother, also Ivy-League trained and a PhD, started the Computer Science department.
“I was born in the US. When I was four years old, my parents returned to Nigeria to teach at UNN. That’s where I grew up from primary school to university—on UNN campus. All our friends were families from the academia. I was certain I had had enough of academia and would be anything but one. But life always has a way of making you eat your words.”
Upon her graduation, Kemafor, 20 at the time and alone with her younger sister, moved back to the United States to begin life. But immigration had some surprises even for those with a bit of privilege. She found herself stranded right at the airport.
“It was all a big mix-up about arrival dates due to missed messages on the voicemail.” Her aunt – her proposed host based on arrangements made months earlier – had had to move to the Caribbean to take on a senior cabinet level position in her home country and had put up her house for rent. “Eventually, I tracked my cousin down (her son) and he picked me up.” However, since the house had been rented out, accommodation became a challenge.
“My other cousin’s roommate wouldn’t accept a squatter in their studio apartment and so my cousin and I came up with this ingenious plan. I would sleep in the office of the African Students Association at her university. You know, sleep there at night, and then come over to her place for a shower and change of clothes when her roommate had gone to classes, and so on. It was a hard time, but I am forever grateful for my boarding school experience in Nigeria. It prepares you for almost anything.
“My Nigerian secondary school also gave me another gift because as it would turn out, two sisters who went to my secondary school were also studying at this university in New York. They helped connect me to someone who was renting out rooms in their apartment without collecting so much money in advance.”
Further help came from a kind-hearted Nigerian, Henry Anakwe.
“Henry also lived in New York. A friend told him about two young Nigerian sisters who just arrived New York and asked him to look in on us. I’d never met him before, but Henry was at our place the same day,” grateful Kemafor says.
“From that day onwards, Henry was at our place every Sunday, with the Sunday paper. Then, he’d help me scour the ‘help wanted ads.’ He’d show up again on Mondays and sometimes Tuesdays (he was off those days), to drive me to job interviews. Often, after he’d left the house during the visits, I’d find groceries he left in the kitchen. Henry did all this for a princely sum of absolutely nothing. He never demanded, asked or suggested anything. Finally, I got lucky with one of those interviews and got a job as a biochemist.”
The job also had a Nigerian twist to it. Kemafor says the biochemistry firm had given a cold response after the initial interview. Months later, the firm called.
It turned out the owner was a biochemistry professor at Nigeria’s Ahmadu Bello University before the civil war, at a time many Nigerian institutions still drew a pack of foreign lecturers. “She was pleased to have me,” Kemafor beams, saying her White boss had pleasant memories of Nigeria and embraced one of its citizens now seeking actualization in America. But yet another twist was afoot.
“It was the time everything was being computerized,” the mother of two adults and a teen tells the magazine. “The company got a fancy computerized biotech machine in 1991 and I seemed to have the right instincts with it. I was fascinated by it. Later, I took evening introductory classes in Computer Science and decided to pursue a graduate degree in it. ”
While studying for the master’s program, she ironically got hooked on the appeal of an academic career in a research university (one category of universities) in the US. At a US Research-1 university, although you have some teaching and student mentoring responsibilities, you are heavily focused on innovation and advancing the science or whatever discipline you are in. She later switched her degree objective to a PhD which she got from the University of Georgia.
Kemafor, who is the only Black professor among over 50 faculty in the Computer Science department with North Carolina State University, says “sometimes you can be second-guessed,” in response to a question about potential racist encounter in her field. “STEM is a White and male-dominated field so when you are Black, female and foreign, there is a lot you will have to prove.”
After some fruitless expeditions trying to engage with science and education policy makers in Nigeria, she turned her focus to other things for the time being.
“I don’t think our politicians are interested in things like that.”
She, however, has some advice for especially young Nigerian girls interested in tech: “It is a very broad area from hardware, to system software to application software to data produced by applications and their analytics. It can be overwhelming to figure out where to start. So students should look out for STEM camps and short courses that have organized curriculum structures for study, often with hands-on components.”
The ones offered by NGOs are often more affordable.
For someone who “can’t imagine not being Nigerian,” her heart lies in how more women Black women, especially Nigerians, can embrace Math, the foundation that helped her, and tech.
“I found that often the problem with Math starts with a mental block or a bad start or teaching. Then, if you miss some concepts, the gaps only compound because concepts build on one another. If not addressed early enough, the challenge becomes almost insurmountable and students give up.” Dismantling the mental block is key, she notes, and often requires a good teacher.
“My kids are passionate about Nigeria,” she states. “In fact, my eldest daughter was considering going to do her NYSC. She absolutely loves the YouTube new show Keeping it real with Adeola. It is an entertaining, yet informative program that keeps her up to speed with African news. My other kids also had plans for this summer but we are having to reconsider all this because of the growing insecurity. ”
Read the full interview in Nigeria Abroad
