Kirill Eremenko: 00:00:00
This is episode number 423 with Founder at STEMi Makers Africa, Amanda Obidike.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:00:12
Welcome to the SuperDataScience Podcast. My name is Kirill Eremenko, Data Science Coach and Lifestyle Entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you inspiring people and ideas to help you build your successful career in data science. Thanks for being here today, and now let’s make the complex simple.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:00:44
Welcome back to the SuperDataScience Podcast everybody, super excited to have you back here on the show. Have you before heard somebody say that Africa is the next big player in the world, not just in data science, in the world, in terms of technology, in terms of production, in terms of contribution to the way the future’s going to be developing, in many ways. And the main reason for that is that Africa has a huge population of over 1.2 billion. It’s a massive continent. It’s actually a gigantic space with lots of resources, lots of opportunities, lots of different countries, lots of different cultures. And a lot of the population is not online yet but with technology growing exponentially they will be online soon and that’s when they’ll be able to become part of this… as Peter Diamandis says, this global conversation around basically everything we do online.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:02:04
So there’ll be lots of new people coming online and they’ll be becoming part of this global conversation. So that’s what’s coming and I’ve heard that a lot of times, that Africa’s the next big player or Africa… and I love Africa. I personally grew up in Africa and I have a lot of great memories about Africa and it’s a great place. But I never had clarity or the right insights because I haven’t been back there for a long time in a substantial way. I haven’t investigated what’s going on, and this is the podcast to get an opportunity to find out more about that. So Amanda Obidike is based in Nigeria and she actually went through a lot of the challenges herself that a lot of people are facing in Africa. She was able to overcome them and not only overcome them but also help others overcome them. So in this podcast, you will find out what is going on in Africa in terms of specifically STEM, science, technology, engineering, mathematics.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:03:11
What are some of the challenges that are faced by countries and populations across the continent and how they can be addressed and specifically how Amanda’s organization STEMi Makers Africa is helping lots of people address those challenges. Specifically, we’ll be talking about three main challenges in Africa right now. Women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, unemployment and education. So those are some of the topics we’ll be covering off today and in addition, you will find out how you can participate, how you can help, how you can already today become a mentor and invest as little as two hours of your time per month to help change somebody’s life in Africa and help them get on tack with a career in science, technology, engineering, mathematics.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:04:02
So tune in for this conversation about Africa and find out how you can be a part of it and how you can help. Without further ado, I bring to you Amanda Obidike who is the founder of STEMi Makers Africa. Here we go.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:04:23
Welcome back to the SuperDataScience Podcast everybody. Super excited to have you back here on the show. We got a super special guest calling in from Lagos, Nigeria, Amanda Obidike. Amanda, welcome.
Amanda Obidike: 00:04:35
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I love to be here. Thank you.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:04:39
That’s so cool. 7:00 AM in Nigeria and you’re full of energy. You’re smiling. You’re happy. What’s your advice? How does somebody get into such a positive mood so early in the morning?
Amanda Obidike: 00:04:55
Well, it’s about waking up and being thankful for life, for one thing, because it’s not ours so when you wake up and you find out that you are indeed alive and you’re well, you have to take the day as it is. And I have quite a lot of goals to accomplish today so I think the best is just putting on a smile and executing it while it goes.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:05:21
Fantastic. Very cool. And what’s life like in Nigeria? I’ve never been to Nigeria. What can you tell us about Lagos and… I don’t know, if somebody where to come to Lagos, what’s the top three things they would love about your city?
Amanda Obidike: 00:05:44
Okay. So my country as Nigeria is we are happy people because I know you may have heard about some political instability, corruption as it is, but we are people of hope. And I think that’s what still keeps us moving. And coming to Lagos, I think you’re going to like our food. We have wonderful traditional delicacies. A lot of tourists love what we cook here and it is something that they go back to their country and they try to look for Nigerian shops that they can eat some. And people, you meet people. People who can be helpful. People who can support you, and also another thing, we are very kind people so interacting or blending in will not be a challenge.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:06:33
Mm-hmm (affirmative). No, I love it. I love it. So all the things [crosstalk 00:06:37] like cultural and about people. That’s amazing. Great. Well, yeah, I’d love to go one day. Sounds like a great place to be.
Amanda Obidike: 00:06:49
Thank you.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:06:50
And Nigeria has a big population, right?
Amanda Obidike: 00:06:53
Yes. We are the largest Black nation in the world.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:06:57
Okay. Wow. 195 million people in Nigeria.
Amanda Obidike: 00:07:06
Yes. Alarming, right?
Kirill Eremenko: 00:07:07
That is huge. That is huge. Wow. That is a lot of people. Amazing. Okay. So a large population and technology starting to pick up and so that’s where you come in, right? I’ve watched a few of your talks and appearances online of how you encountered a situation, I think it was in 2015, where you ended up underemployed. Tell us a bit about that because I think that’s where your journey into data science, and into STEM, and into helping others, really started.
Amanda Obidike: 00:07:55
Okay. So I went to a school in Nigeria and it’s actually one of the best universities in Nigeria. It’s called Obafemi Awolowo University and before we entered, we had this mentality of if you go to one of the best schools, you’re likely to get a better job upon graduation but the reverse was the case, because I had business management in school but upon graduation there was no job. And one month went by, eight months went by, you’re not doing anything and it resulted to me being so depressed. I was just so angry about everything. But it was not just about being angry. I needed to ask myself a lot of questions. I found out that the jobs were there, really, but we just didn’t have the technical skills to take those jobs and we had expatriates, foreigners, coming to take that jobs just because that was what the companies or our labor market needed.
Amanda Obidike: 00:09:03
And it was actually a very wide economic disparity because I was not the only one deprived. I had friends, I had families that were all saying the same thing. And after research I found out that technology has come to stay and there’re a lot of drivers in it. Afterwards I got an opportunity with the IBM. Someone just linked me up to them and said, “Hey, they’re training on business intelligence, data analytics and AI. It’s something you should try.” I was first of all discouraged because I didn’t have any prior knowledge to it. But when I went to the innovation center, I loved the ambience. I loved how they were doing things and I started to envisage myself in that world. I think that was what propelled me to put in my best in the training.
Amanda Obidike: 00:09:56
And [inaudible 00:09:57] training, [inaudible 00:09:59] I got a mastery award in business intelligence and AI but the whole mentality thing is after you have these skills you should be able to get a job, and a few of my friends did but I started looking inwardly. I said, “It’s not just about landing myself a job. Why don’t I help young people like me to have these skills because a lot of people do not know that this exists?” And that was what made me to start my NGO where we can train people, not just only in data science but other future forecast options that they can look into that our country needs and our continent needs. And it’s been a tremendous experience because I do not only help young people, I also helping businesses in evaluating their data, farmers in Ivory Coast and The Gambia. So it’s a field that I do not regret. It has been one of the life-changing experiences I’ve had. So yeah, that’s how I really got into data science.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:11:06
That is really amazing to hear. So this IBM training helps you kickstart, in the past five years, so I believe that was around 2015. Well, since then what kind of skills have you been able to pick up in the space of data science?
Amanda Obidike: 00:11:25
Okay. Yes. Machine learning for one thing. And what else? Data analytics, informatics and also people management. It helps me to not just only evaluate this data but also relating to maybe for example, staff. Integrating it into HR. I think that’s another deprived area that people look into. So people just look at data as okay, the business angle, generating profits, but I also channel it to talent management on how do your staff feel? Are they happy on the job? Is there we can do to make them better? Because I know that staff are… they should be the number one resources in a business.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:12:14
Yeah. Okay. That’s a good point. And machine learning you do that through Python, right? You said you’re learning R.
Amanda Obidike: 00:12:19
Yes. Yes.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:12:21
Yeah. Okay. Exciting. This episode is brought to you by SuperDataScience, our online membership platform for learning data science at any level. We’ve got over two and a half thousand video tutorials, over two hundred hours of content and 30 plus courses with new courses being added on average once per month. So all of that and more you get as part of your membership at SuperDataScience. So don’t hold off, sign up today at www.www.superdatascience.com. Secure your membership and take your data science skills to the next level.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:13:00
Do you have any example on projects you can share with us that you’ve done for other businesses or with these skills that you’ve learned?
Amanda Obidike: 00:13:08
Yes. Yes. So I usually refer to this project a lot because it relates, not just to business, but to our economy in Nigeria. So there was a project that we deployed two years ago and it’s a project in the lowest literate and densely populated state in Nigeria. It’s called Kano State. It’s so populated. And it’s not just only the lowest literate, it’s also a girl-child marginalized state. And they have this belief that Western educations it’s a sin or it’s an atrocity and this has actually affected young girls to dream, to go to school. So the whole mentality is if you’re 12 you should start getting married. Now that’s a problem. So we had to design this case solution that you can collect these gender disaggregated data and start informing digital policies.
Amanda Obidike: 00:14:08
We needed the numbers. We needed to know that even if this illiteracy is on the rise we have to start informing the government on the need to educate these girls. So it was so tough because now Nigeria, we aren’t really refined in data collection. It took us months to assess this data from the state education board. We did that. We evaluated and found out that it’s an alarming rate of… we have over 296,000 girls that are age four to 15 years that do not have access to quality education. And when we showed the numbers to the state government, they were also shocked themselves but it was not just about giving the numbers. We were asking ourselves, “What do we do to correct this existing cultural, social and gender bias, not just for education but for their livelihood?”
Amanda Obidike: 00:15:11
That was when we started to talk to their religious leaders because they hold them in high cognizance and we now started encouraging them, also giving orientation to their parents on the need for these girls going back to school or having as little as just basic education. So it was one thing to address this need or to identify the numbers… And okay, let me also say that, the education level is just on a 2.04%, so it’s that bad. And we just not only had to give in the numbers but we had to design solutions that ensure that these girls are free to dream, they’re free to excel and they’re free to be who they want to be. So I usually use this example because anybody that is really conversant with Nigeria or Africa will know that Islamism, if I’m permitted to say that, does not really, totally, encourage education but we were able to forge a flexible policy that these girls can be part of to have education.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:16:30
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Very interesting. So with your data science skills you were able to derive insights and statistics about the population that weren’t visible before and then from that you were able to talk with the government or with other bodies to drive change to help people?
Amanda Obidike: 00:16:51
Yes. Yes.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:16:51
Amazing.
Amanda Obidike: 00:16:54
I can also chip in another one. This one is something we started last year and it’s also still going into 2022. So it’s about teachers also. So we have this wall of… we’ve inherited a fragmented education institution in school. I will give you an example. When I was in the university I even found out that a lot of friends who were in engineering, they were either switching courses in the year two, year three, simply because classes wasn’t exciting or teachers weren’t giving in that passion and enthusiasm in them. So it’s really demoralizing. And when we took out some data and we were evaluating them in three local governments in Lagos State, we found out that we have seven in eleven educators, that’s nearly 65%. They do not have access to practical teaching tools, they do not have access to a refined curriculum. So it’s still the same thing over and over again.
Amanda Obidike: 00:18:04
But it also required us talking to the government because we do not just… in a country like Nigeria, we do not just take actions on our own. We have to consult the government. And we said, “Why don’t we train teachers, giving them the right tools that they can integrate into their classroom, so that students can see science and technology as an exciting course?” Because they believe that mathematics is difficult, science is difficult but we needed to correct this from the foundation.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:18:38
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Very interesting. And how do you get this data? So do you go and survey people or… I mean, I’m just curious. How does that all happen?
Amanda Obidike: 00:18:48
Yeah. So we take out surveys, number one, but we also bring data from the government because now they have a basic education board so they have the number of schools, the number of students that are enrolled in that school, how many people are graduating. It’s just raw data because they haven’t really processed it or evaluated it but we take it, we evaluate it and we also return it to them saying, “This is the outcome. This is what we have found and how can we use this information going forward?” Yes.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:19:24
Okay. Okay. So it sounds like your life really changed after finishing university and being underemployed versus then taking some courses and learning data science, machine learning. Completely different. Black and white, right?
Amanda Obidike: 00:19:40
Yes.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:19:40
Day and night. Yeah. And so do you think that’s available to anybody? Do you think anybody can… like you said, there’s a lot of population in Nigeria and I heard that in Africa there’s about… I think this is a quote of yours, “200 million people aged between 15 to 24 and the unemployment in this youth population is over 40%.” Would you say that almost anybody can learn STEM skills and thereby increase their chances of employment and more importantly in a career that they will be enjoying?
Amanda Obidike: 00:20:25
Yes. Yes. We believe so, because we know that STEM is the solution one way or the other, and in a country like Nigeria where things are not totally working out, people are craving for solutions. So when we reach out to them or other organizations say, “We want to give you these skills that can make you to be self-reliant, you don’t necessarily need to depend on the government, or your parents.” Everybody is in and the passion goes in. And now because we now create jobs out of it, so because life has been… life is going virtual, a lot of them get to have remote opportunities. So they don’t necessarily need to go to Australia or the USA, they can have… whether it’s intern opportunities or virtual kind of work but it can give and their lives are better. So yes, STEM is actually the solution in our continent irrespective of our numbers, our alarming population numbers.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:21:27
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Interesting. And is that why you started STEMi?
Amanda Obidike: 00:21:32
Yes. I needed to address the leaky unemployment pipeline because as it is, sadly we have millions of young Africans who are underemployed and unemployed. So we wanted to train them, not just giving them that skills but also they can leverage on our connection or certain kinds of opportunities that we have that make them to start creating jobs for themselves or also match world standard or the continent standard in… in the labor force.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:22:09
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. And so STEM usually, we all know stands for science, technology, engineering, mathematics. You’ve added i, right? STEMi. And the name of your organization is STEMi Makers Africa. As I understand, i stands for innovation. Why did you add the i?
Amanda Obidike: 00:22:29
Wow, that’s a good one. So STEM has actually been in existence… we’ve had science, technology and all but that innovation is telling them that we can do STEM differently. So it’s not like the routine STEM that you know or just about bringing in project based learning resources, it’s about being able to design something. Because I say that, “No idea is new per se but your innovation, whatever you bring in that differentiates you from the competitor B or person B, is innovation.” So that innovation was what… innovation is actually what’s going to drive the science, technology, engineering and mathematics. And it was just a way of being unique. So it’s not just about STEMi as innovation but STEMi, like personify. Like, “I am STEM.”
Kirill Eremenko: 00:23:20
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Interesting. Very cool.
Amanda Obidike: 00:23:22
STEM I.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:23:25
Yeah. And so what’s your mission at STEMi? Because this is the really interesting part, what you told me just before the podcast and what I learnt about your organization, I want to know the problems that you’re addressing in Africa, right? And you said Africa and the MENA region, which is Middle East and North Africa nations, right? North Asia., North Africa, North…. I’m not sure really. So basically I want to know what problems that you’re addressing. What are the problems that exist? This is a very interesting opportunity for me to learn more about this because a lot of the time I hear Africa, Africa. Africa is the next… First of all, I love Africa. I grew up in Africa, in Zimbabwe, but I haven’t been back there for so long but now I’m hearing that Africa is the next big player in the global market, in global world, because A, a huge population, right? Just Nigeria alone, a 195 million people, right?
Kirill Eremenko: 00:24:24
And the whole of Africa is a huge population. Huge landscape. It’s massive. A massive continent with lots of resources, with lots of opportunities, and also technology, right. There’s a lot of people who are not online but technology is growing exponentially so more and more people are going to be online. A lot of those people are in Africa. So I’m just hearing these things. You’re there, you’re living it. So I would love to know what are the challenges that are faced on the continent of Africa and what exactly or specifically does your organization do to address them at scale?
Amanda Obidike: 00:25:00
Okay. So first things first, we address the under-representation of women and girls in technology and STEM. We believe that women contribute majorly to the economic development of a nation and if we want that to happen, we need to champion these women at the forefront. So a lot of women, most times sadly, are confined to the kitchens or just get married and that’s all but one, we are preparing them that there’s more to life. And we are also catching them young. And one of the ways we do this is our mentoring program. It’s called Project Kuongoza. Kuongoza is a Swahili language for to lead, like leadership. So it’s empowering young women and girls to lead and we pair them to professional women in STEM who are either in diaspora or who are already in the continent to give them this career and academic support, and also the confidence that they need to navigate the market because graduating is one thing, being confident is another thing. So we’d have this program and it’s virtual and it’s a way of understanding different culture. So you’re not just only confined to you understand only Nigeria or Ghana. So it’s a way of mixing them up.
Amanda Obidike: 00:26:28
And it has been tremendous. Good enough, we’ve had support from very few women who are already giving in their time and resources to ensure that these girls are well prepared. Then another one is our increase in unemployment. We have the population but we ask ourselves yearly, “How many opportunities is the government preparing for them?” And you find out that it’s just two in 10 youths who’ll graduate from universities that are getting jobs. So what happens to the eight? So you see that this disparity is frightening and what we do around this is giving them certain kind of skills that they need to upscale themselves. So whether it’s about being an entrepreneur in data or web development, fine but just have these skills because these skills are not even… you can’t even find these skills in the university. We have this theoretical approach still in our universities sadly, so you just don’t have these skills. So we give them these skills through trainings, through webinars, workshops and also internships.
Amanda Obidike: 00:27:43
Then the third one is our education. Now, our education is also a sad thing because we have teachers that are not refined and most times teachers enter into that job because they don’t have opportunity to enter into the job market so they enter it because they’re helpless. And that’s not too good because when they enter because they’re helpless they are not enthusiastic on the job. They just teach and they do not care but we teach them on loving their jobs, adding a lot of excitement and energy just to ensure that they are building the younger generation. So that’s three major things, well, apart from certain political instability but that’s something that we can’t really do on our own. So the things that we can do on our own, we design programs around it just to ensure that we are either touching the teachers or the women and girls or the youths generally.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:28:45
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Wow, very cool. Thank you. So just to recap, three problems you outlined are under-representation of women in STEM, and more over it’s the whole mentality about the disparity between genders and what women are expected to do with their lives and not have a career and how that is changing and how women can and should be contributing to lots of different areas including in STEM. And that you address with the mentoring program that you have with Project Kuongoza. Then unemployment, so a huge population, unemployment you mentioned at the start that lots of jobs… I think this is what you mean by leaky job job pipeline that lots of jobs go to expats and people who have the skills, but actually it’s just a question of skills. So that you address by providing access to skills or helping people learn these skills that they need to get these jobs. And final one is education in terms of the teachers, right? So you actually help by training teachers to be able to teach in a way that they love and in a way that they will pass on this empowerment to other people.
Amanda Obidike: 00:30:06
True. True. Thank you.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:30:08
Okay. Okay. Very interesting. Oh, thank you. Very interesting. So let’s talk a bit about this Project Kuongoza. Is this the one that you mentioned before the podcast where you’re looking for people who can volunteer from anywhere in the world as mentors, whether they’re men or women? Is that the project?
Amanda Obidike: 00:30:26
Yes, it is. It is. It’s a virtual project and we’re calling out for… we’re in need of mentors because [inaudible 00:30:34] we have them already. The last application we had, we had 900 plus of them and we just had-
Kirill Eremenko: 00:30:41
Nice.
Amanda Obidike: 00:30:42
… we just had 45 mentors. So you can see how desperate we need hands to come on board.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:30:50
Yeah. Wow, that’s very cool. So how can somebody listening to this podcast… So just to clarify, this project helps young women and girls get up to speed and be empowered in this area of STEM, but the mentors can be from anywhere. So this project is focused on young women and girls in Africa and the MENA nations but the mentors can be from anywhere in the world, right? From America, from Europe, from Africa-
Amanda Obidike: 00:31:23
Yes.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:31:23
… from Australia, Asia, anywhere. And can be either male or female. So pretty much anybody listening to this podcast can get involved. How? How can they get involved? Where do they contact you or there’s an application form and what does it entail? What does this involvement require?
Amanda Obidike: 00:31:40
Okay. So we value our mentors also. We know that they already have their lives and they have work so one of the commitments we usually seek out is availability. If you’re willing to give at least two hours in a month which I know that most times we get a positive response on that. So it’s about the timing. And if you’re willing to give at least two hours please sign up. You mustn’t have tons of years of experience in data or in technology. We just want these girls to hear your story and how you excel in whatever you do. They can learn from it and all. So in reaching to us, we have social media pages on LinkedIn. You can give us a follow or send us a message and it’s also on our website. There’s a form under the STEMi women in the website. So you could indicate interest and we’ll reach out to you immediately.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:32:42
What’s the website?
Amanda Obidike: 00:32:49
Stemiafrica .O-R-G @.org
Kirill Eremenko: 00:32:50
Stemiafrica .O-R-G. Okay. Gotcha. And then you go to STEMi women there?
Amanda Obidike: 00:32:55
Yes.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:32:55
Yeah. Okay. Fantastic. Two hours a month, that is not much at all. I thought you were going to say two hours a week but two hours a month virtually, anybody should be able to find two hours a month for a cause like this, to help people. And you said what? You have 900 applications. How many mentors do you have at present?
Amanda Obidike: 00:33:13
Presently now, we had 45 this year but we’ve had 37 the preceding year and why… we had a new strategy because they are so few. So we started pairing them four to one. Four mentees to one mentor, but in a very convenient manner where you don’t necessarily need to have different meetings with them, you can create a WhatsApp group, for example, or just on Telegram and you can have a conversation with them. And you can decide on, “Okay, when is the day that everyone will feel comfortable to have a Zoom call?” So everybody is coming on board at the same time. So it’s a collective one and it’s also a way for these mentees to learn from each other, peer to peer mentoring. So yes.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:34:09
Okay. Fantastic. And you’re planning to scale this initiative?
Amanda Obidike: 00:34:13
Yes. Big time. 2021, we’re ready.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:34:17
Okay. okay. What’s your goal?
Amanda Obidike: 00:34:22
Well, we would like to reach out to more of them especially under… also reduce the ages and increase… We used to put it at age 15 to 25 but we’re looking at putting it 15 to 30 because we also know that there are people in late 20s like me that they’re also passionate about this but they do not have the opportunity. So we want to increase the age limit.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:34:50
Okay. How do you address the problem that some of these people, as you said especially in these highly populated areas, they don’t even have access to internet or even a computer? How do you… or maybe not at the moment but do you have a plan on how you will help people like that in those situations sometime in the coming years?
Amanda Obidike: 00:35:13
Yeah. That’s a good question. So we had some mentees in Uganda who are in remote villages and they do not have [inaudible 00:35:23] data, which we still have issues of data in Africa and in Nigeria. So we work with some centers. For example, there’s a center called [Makuba 00:35:35] Center. They have systems, so these girls go on a particular day to use their system and have a meeting if maybe with their mentors. So we know that these challenges exist but we try to look out for local partners who can help these girls to access this mentoring.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:35:56
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Okay. Gotcha. All right. So what kind of results are you seeing? How many, I don’t know, girls or… We’re talking about unemployment so youths or how many teachers have you been able to help along the way? How long have you been doing this for?
Amanda Obidike: 00:36:20
Okay. So two plus years. February-
Kirill Eremenko: 00:36:22
Two plus years.
Amanda Obidike: 00:36:23
Yes. February will make it three years that we got established as STEMi Makers Africa. And the numbers are increasing because we are not just only in Nigeria, we’re already in 19 Sub Saharan countries and by February [crosstalk 00:36:41] we’ll be adding two more, yeah. So you see that the need is arising and resources is needed so we’ve been fortunate to partner and collaborate with organizations like the IBM Good Enough, the US Consulate has also been good to us. But we would like to design sustainable programs for these girls. I’ll give you an example. Some of these mentors have really been so amazing to these mentees. So while on the… during the mentoring program, they share opportunities.
Amanda Obidike: 00:37:14
I learnt that two mentees are going to be getting scholarship to go in for their master’s by next year. Now that’s awesome because they’re transitioning from point A to point B. So it’s either they are transitioning from education to employment or they’re transitioning to advanced education. So but that’s why we want to partner with as many people as possible because we know that these opportunities are out there but we want us to have us a middleman to connect them to these opportunities.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:37:52
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Speaking of opportunities, this is another quote of yours from an interview, “Globally the need for STEM jobs accelerates between 38 to 42% every year.” Are you seeing the same thing in Africa and what are the industries specifically where this STEM jobs are growing?
Amanda Obidike: 00:38:08
Yes. It’s alarming in Africa, especially in Nigeria. I don’t have the precise numbers in Nigeria because it will require us getting as many data as possible but even in this alarming number, we are not only relying on okay, jobs for them but we’re also teaching them to be self-reliant. You can be a data scientist and be a consultant on your own. You don’t necessarily need to wait for a nine-to-five job, you can be an entrepreneur. So it’s about them creating jobs for themselves and it’s a way of keeping their hopes balanced so it’s not like you have the mentality that, “After I finish being trained by STEMi, I’m going to have a job.” We’re also telling you that, “If the job don’t come, you need to start something on your own,” and it’s been beautiful by the way.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:39:01
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay, okay. Great. And so what are your best tips for somebody who’s gotten the training, how to get a job or how to start something on their own?
Amanda Obidike: 00:39:15
Okay. So I usually tell them during our webinars is connection. You have to connect with as many people as possible, like on LinkedIn for example. We also teach them… we call it LinkedIn Make-up. So it’s a way of designing your LinkedIn profile in a very good way so that in case recruiters come on your page, okay, they’re encouraged and so it’s about pitching themselves on social media and also following influencers like in data science or in technology, read from their stories. Sometimes they give tips and hacks. You can learn from it and you’re also building yourself an experience. So yeah, that’s what we do. We just tell them okay, collaborate, connect with people because you never know who your “helper” is so you just get prepared.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:40:11
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay, okay. That’s great advice. Connection, absolutely important. Do you do anything to facilitate those connections?
Amanda Obidike: 00:40:22
Yes. One thing is our Project Kuongoza community. We have this community of women and they’ve been amazing. Most of them are researchers, PHD candidates or lecturers. So we try to leverage on their network and most times if we see something similar to what a youth read we just connect them and they take it up from there.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:40:48
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay.
Amanda Obidike: 00:40:50
I don’t know if that answered your question.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:40:52
No, no. Absolutely. Absolutely. Community is absolutely important to get things going like that. And I liked your quote, one time you said that, “The world is moving and it cannot wait…” You said, “It cannot wait for Africa in the sense of technology and that we need to step up.” And I think that’s beautiful that like the world is moving on and everybody can make that conscious choice, “Do I step up and participate in something like this and grow my own skills and move forward?” Yeah. It’s important for people to be able to help each other but also to make that decision to go forward. Do you see people picking it up with enthusiasm or do you sometimes or often see resistance and people being like scared about STEM or being maybe doubtful that this is the right path for them?
Amanda Obidike: 00:41:59
Yeah. So it depends on their geographical location. Take for instance, the North, that on a normal day they do not really believe in education. [inaudible 00:42:09] asking them or making them see reasons for STEM is another… we experience such challenges but we try to identify with local stakeholders who are ready for change. I believe that anybody that is ready for change will be ready for STEM because we ask them, “Do you see how Germany or the USA their economy is…” and everybody is nodding. We say, “Why don’t we look into STEM because I think that STEM and research… I know that STEM and research are one of the strong things that the USA really invest in.” So we try to identify with stakeholders that understand the need to integrate development whether it’s through education or through research or through STEM itself. And we have resistance all the same but we still keep pushing because I know that it doesn’t come easy, but the resistance will be there, but we just look for strategies around it to make them understand that whether or not you like it we need to integrate all this.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:43:17
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). That’s good. That’s a great way of putting it. I have an interesting question for you. Might be a bit tough… a tough one to investigate but still it’s important I think. What do you do or how do you define whether STEM is the right thing for a certain person or not because there are people out there who don’t want to go into STEM, they want to maybe learn arts and they want to maybe learn… have a career in nursing or something like that that’s completely unrelated to STEM. I think it’s very admirable to create the opportunities for people to learn STEM but how do you make sure that or do you ask this question… is there a way for you to tell if a person is actually going to be happy going into STEM?
Amanda Obidike: 00:44:21
Okay. Yeah. So first things first, we don’t encourage everyone to go into STEM because we also have wonderful opportunities outside of STEM but we look at someone’s creativity for instance or you’re doing certain things in some machining and some kind of things that you’re able to design. We try to look at this and say, “Okay, we can give you project-based learning tools that you can integrate into this to make it better. We can connect you to a programmer or a prototype engineer to refine it.” Why I’m saying this is we don’t [inaudible 00:45:00] for everyone to enter into STEM. We just see that, “Okay, this child has a passion for engineering or for technology and why don’t we do this for the person?” Yeah.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:45:14
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. So you look at the passions that they already have.
Amanda Obidike: 00:45:16
Yes.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:45:18
Okay. Makes sense. So we talked a lot about Project Kuongoza and how people can participate in that and the mission to help young women and girls. I heard that in Nigeria there’s about 13 million children who are not in school. What initiative do you have there? You mentioned the skills, like helping people get the skills. Is this a specific project that is undergoing? Can you tell us a bit about that?
Amanda Obidike: 00:45:54
Okay. Yeah. We have undergoing projects. Last year for instance we partnered with the US Consulate to train teachers in three local governments in Lagos State and for next year we’ll be training five states. It’s going to be huge though in Nigeria. And it’s also located in the South Eastern region where my parents are from. I live in Lagos in the city but my parents originally where from the eastern part of Nigeria. So we not just only want to train these teachers to integrate better learning into their classroom but we also want to help them serve as role models and also better their lives. Like I earlier said, not all teachers are really passionate about teaching. Most of them just find themself there out of helplessness, no job and all but we want to also build them in capacity.
Amanda Obidike: 00:46:54
We know they have wonderful dreams so it’s a way of, “You don’t necessarily need to be a teacher forever. We are giving you these opportunities,” setting kind of free courses that they do not know exist. We have this e-learning platform where they can access certain courses like that for free. Learn on it and if it’s a particular job you want for example in business intelligence, you can give it a shot. So it’s not just about them pouring in, we also want to pour into these teachers because they have aspirations as well.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:47:27
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Okay. Very cool. And have you noticed… so you’ve been doing this for three years, have you noticed any kind of shifts that have been happening in the whole of Nigeria or maybe in Africa? How has the playing space, the playing arena for technology and employment… how has it developed? Is it becoming better or is it becoming worse over time? Are there more people that are getting employed, more STEM opportunities that are being filled by locals or is the situation becoming more alarming?
Amanda Obidike: 00:48:18
Well, it’s a process. It’s really a process because a country like Nigeria where things have long been mismanaged. We can’t just snap our fingers and everything goes right. For instance, during the training we had with teachers earlier on, we gave every of these teachers in different schools a task to have STEM clubs in their schools. Now, the good thing about it is before COVID happened in March 2020, these schools were able to design wonderful projects and we were able to get investors for three of these schools. One designed a smart home device. I know we already have something related to that but it’s so cheap, wherever you are you can control your home and the appliances, but we looked at this talent and we were amazed because these kids are just 15 years old but you can see how with good mentorship from their teachers and refined teaching they were able to design something.
Amanda Obidike: 00:49:28
So I’m saying this because we are seeing changes whether it’s on the education level and whether it’s even on the employment level. For instance, farmers that we helped give some IoT and help them in their data, we helped them in Buea, Cameroon because we heard this… farmers do not have good preservation method in tomato. So they plant tomato and when tomato comes out, it comes out in large quantity and they end up spoiling it. So we helped these farmers to manage losses, to manage preservation, to know how the quantity of these tomatoes are going to be. So it’s not just about education or employment but it’s also coming down to whether it’s the informal sector or sectors like agriculture.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:50:26
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Interesting. So from this discussion I’m gathering that some of the major areas that require technology or STEM skills are agriculture, including farming?
Amanda Obidike: 00:50:38
Yes.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:50:39
Population, right? So communities things and governmental things that are to do with population because it’s growing so fast. What are maybe some… maybe mining? I guess there’s quite a lot of mining happening in Africa, right? So that’s another field. Any other fields that come to mind where there’s quite a lot of demand into which some of these people that you’re training or teaching that eventually they might be able to get jobs in those fields?
Amanda Obidike: 00:51:07
Yeah. Yes.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:51:10
Any industries that you can think of apart from agriculture, government and mining? Anything else?
Amanda Obidike: 00:51:17
Okay, yeah. Well, entrepreneurship. [crosstalk 00:51:21] because now that jobs are not available, a lot of people are going into online… being online vendors, buy-sell, you bring from China, you sell. So they’re creating jobs and they’re establishing businesses on their own. Then another striking one is the fintech industry because Nigeria we have… that’s another emerging field because we do a lot of transactions and a country that we import a lot of things. The fintech industry is growing in an alarming rate but we have little traction into that. So what we just do is we try to partner with organizations who can give these younger people internship opportunities or job shadowing where they can learn on the job for six months and after that they get to do something… they look out for something better.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:52:19
Got you. Awesome. Amanda that’s a very cool overview of what’s going on on the continent and what you are participating in. Anything else you’d like to share with us before we wrap up with our audience, any other interesting things, opportunities or, I don’t know, wishes for the future?
Amanda Obidike: 00:52:42
Well, yes. I would like to encourage the audience on data. We have this saying now, I think I made a thread on it on Twitter. It said that, “Data is the new oil.” Why I said that is because Africa for instance, we depend solely on your mineral resources, on our natural resources, Nigeria depends on crude oil. That’s where all our money comes in. And I tell them that data is the new oil because one way or the other, things are going to replace this oil. We already have energy cars. We have solar panels, we don’t necessarily really need to depend on fuel generators. Now, I’m saying this because now that is emerging we need to prepare ourselves. We need people that are going to be managing this data and evaluating it for whether business proposes or whether better decisions.
Amanda Obidike: 00:53:37
So there’re a lot of wonderful opportunities in data science [inaudible 00:53:41] that I would admonish people to look into, whether it’s solution architecture or business intelligence, whatever, please look into it. Grow yourself in that skill because it’s an emerging field and the need is there. We have very few people that are data scientists and data science is already coming into all the industries, whether formal sector or informal sector but we ask ourselves the question, “Do we have the people who are going to be championing this data?” So it’s time that we look into this [inaudible 00:54:17] wonderful experience, it’s a life changing one. So let’s consider it.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:54:24
Fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you so much Amanda. It’s been a pleasure and also in addition to what you said, I recommend for people to check out this project where they can be mentors. Once again it’s at STEM S-T-E-M-I africa.org. You can find information about it there. Thank you so much Amanda for coming on the show. Oh, one more thing [crosstalk 00:54:50]-
Amanda Obidike: 00:54:49
I had one. Yeah. My favorite book.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:54:53
Yeah, your book. Yeah, that’s exactly it.
Amanda Obidike: 00:54:56
Yeah. So I started reading this book. It is amazing. It’s actually called Understanding Machine Learning: From Theory to Algorithm. It’s a book by Shai Shalev-Shwartz and Shai Ben-David. I don’t know if I pronounced it well. But the book gives us a deeper understanding of machine learning and algorithm that we can implement from scratch and I think a lot of people would like that. And it’s one of the perfect references that I give for implementing algorithm yourself. So please look into the book. You’ll find it amazing.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:55:33
That’s very cool. I haven’t heard of this book before and indeed it’s Understanding Machine Learning: From Theory to Algorithms by Shai Ben-David and Shai Shalev-Shwartz. Very, very interesting. Okay, cool. So that’s the book and where can people follow you or contact you and find out more about these projects?
Amanda Obidike: 00:55:54
Okay. So my name on Twitter is amandachirpy and I don’t know if I can type this here.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:56:02
No, no. It’s okay. We’ll share it in the show notes. So Twitter and LinkedIn I guess.
Amanda Obidike: 00:56:06
Yes. Yes.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:56:07
[crosstalk 00:56:07] on LinkedIn.
Amanda Obidike: 00:56:09
I’m active-
Kirill Eremenko: 00:56:09
And the website? Website we’ve talked about stemiafrica. So you said you were active?
Amanda Obidike: 00:56:15
Okay. Yes. I don’t really say much on Twitter but I’m always available. I like watching what we do there. And yeah, I would also like to talk about a just concluded program we did. I don’t know if you may have heard about it. Is-
Kirill Eremenko: 00:56:29
Which one?
Amanda Obidike: 00:56:31
… BlackInData. We had this… last week it was one of the largest data week we’ve had ever. So it was [crosstalk 00:56:39] a day of collaborating with young data analysts and professionals that are Black people, whether Black Africans or whether in diaspora and we put in a wonderful week program. We brought in phenomenal people in data to talk to people and also give them certain opportunity that they did not know existed. So yeah, I just wanted to talk about it.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:57:05
Amazing. Amazing. That’s very cool. So where can people find out more about that?
Amanda Obidike: 00:57:11
On… Oh, sorry. On Twitter. It’s called blkindata. BlackInData
Kirill Eremenko: 00:57:14
Okay.
Amanda Obidike: 00:57:16
Yes.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:57:17
Awesome. Fantastic. Amanda, thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s been a lot of fun and I learned quiet a bit about what’s going on in Africa.
Amanda Obidike: 00:57:26
Thank you so much. Although I didn’t really talk about data science which I would have loved to but all the same.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:57:31
Thank you. So there you have it everybody. Hope you enjoyed this podcast as much as I did. I personally loved learning about what is going on in Africa, and what, on one hand, some of the challenges are but also on the other hand how they are being addressed and how Amanda is participating in addressing those challenges. it sounds like while there are challenges, the future is bright and with the announcement of technology more opportunities will open up and more people will be able to get onboard with programs such as the STEMi project including Project Kuongoza. More and more people will be able to develop their skills and be part of the workforce in the space of technology. Very exciting episode. If you have those two hours per month that you would like to invest into helping somebody in Africa or in the MENA region, get on their feet, get up and going and build a career in technology, then you know where to go. The website is stemiafrica.org and there you can join to participate in Project Kuongoza or other initiatives that Amanda and her team are running.
Kirill Eremenko: 00:59:00
As usual, you can find the show notes at www.superdatascience.com/423. That’s www.superdatascience.com/423. There you’ll find the transcript for this episode, the video of our session, any materials we mentioned, any books, and of course the URLs for the stemiafrica.org website, Amanda’s LinkedIn and Twitter. Make sure to connect and get in touch with Amanda and see if maybe you have some suggestions or some questions. And if you enjoyed this episode and you know somebody who is passionate about Africa or is passionate about helping people, or would like to learn more about what’s happening in the continent that is going to bring so many people to this global conversation, send them this episode. It’s very easy to share. Send them the link www.superdatascience.com/423. On that note, thank you so much for being here today. I enjoyed to have this conversation, hope you did too and I look forward to seeing you back here next time. Until then, happy analyzing.
