Doreen Anene and Stanley Anigbogu launched separate initiatives to promote science careers to young girls and women in Africa. What motivated them to do so?
Anene, a final-year animal-science Ph.D. researcher at the University of Nottingham, UK, says her mother struggled to get a teaching job in Nigeria because she did not have a science background. Her experience inspired her to set up The STEM Belle, a non-profit organization in Nigeria.
“Growing up I had these stereotypes. ‘You’re going to end up in a man’s house. There’s really no need for you to stretch yourself because the end goal is to be married, right?’”
“My mother didn’t want her children to go through this so she started indoctrinating the benefits of science and her experience to us.”
Anigbogu, a storyteller and technologist, founded STEM4HER after meeting a young girl at a science fair. She told him that her mother thought that careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) were for boys, not for her.
“We discovered that girls in the rural areas were most affected by that societal mindset. Inventors are using science to solve global problems, but women are not in that space,” he says.
This is the fifth episode of an eight-part series on science in Africa, hosted by Nature Africa chief editor Akin Jimoh.
TRANSCRIPT
Akin Jimoh hears about two initiatives that aim to get more girls and young women into science careers.
Akin Jimoh: 00:10
Welcome to Science in Africa, a Nature Careers podcast series. I am Akin Jimoh, chief editor of Nature Africa. I work and live in Lagos and I’m passionate about promoting science and public-health journalism in my native Nigeria, and across Africa.
In this series, we are going to explore the practice of science in this wonderful continent, the progress, the issues, the needs, in the words of African scientists who are based here.
In this fifth episode, we meet two researchers who have taken it upon themselves to do their bit to address the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers in Africa.
They both inspire young girls to get interested in science, but in very different ways.
Stanley Anigbogu 01:27
My name is Stanley Anigbogu. I am 22 years old and from Nigeria. I’m a creative technologist and a storyteller. Currently, the founder of ArtecHubs Nigeria, a STEM education company that provides quality education in science, technology, engineering, and maths in Nigeria.
So STEM4HER is a non-profit project that empowers young girls. So we’re looking at young girls in primary to secondary schools within the age range of six to 18 years by providing them access to skills, and mentorship, to break the stereotypes about what women can do, and cannot do in science, and technology, engineering fields.
So STEM4HER provides young girls in suburban and urban communities with access to robotic skills, coding skills, and also storytelling skills, in order to encourage and empower these young girls to become future innovators, problem-solvers, and changemakers, using science and technology to solve problems around the world.
Akin Jimoh 02:25
Yeah, you know, you mentioned that you kind of wear two hats. You say you are a storyteller. And you are also into STEM, STEM4HER, especially for girls. That aspect of storytelling, what do you do? What kind of story do you tell? And how do you tell the story?
Stanley Anigbogu 02:42
So the majority of the stories that we tell, or I tell at ArtecHubs, Nigeria is basically the story for science, or in general storytelling for science engagement.
So the majority of the stories that I do tell are documenting the projects of our students while they were working on their projects, how the project finally ended up, and probably their success story. So we edit and document the stories, and we share them with the next cohorts of the program.
So this is to show them what people have done and to prove to them that they could actually become change-makers themselves, not because of their gender, but because of who they are and their ability.
So it’s more of a mindset shift for these young girls, to encourage them and to remove that backward thinking that they shouldn’t be in science or technology.
So I’m, for example...one of the projects that we did during the storytelling process of what we are doing in step four. So the Rocket Girl is a very good example. So this is a story about a 12-year-old girl that is passionate about space and science in general.
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