CAN ONE GIRL CHANGE AFRICA’S FUTURE?
Image source : Google images
I have a question, how many girls does it take to change the continent of Africa?
My answer is ONE. One girl with a passion for science can change the entire continent. Because if you have a passion for science, you can really shift things, you can make things change fundamentally, and that’s what I am interested in. A passion for science in the right hands can have that impact, but a passion for science in the wrong hands, can be a bit of a problem, as I discovered myself when an acquaintance of mine was getting married.
He had only one job to do, and that was to organize the honeymoon. He has a passion for science, and he obviously chose that he and his wife should visit a mathematical institute in New Mexico for their honeymoon. Just after one day on the honeymoon, he realized that a mathematical institute was the last place on earth to spend a honeymoon, in fact it was the worst destination on earth for a romantic experience.
When he was asked the reason why he was attracted to this institute, he said it was because it was a place where people study complexity science and chaos theories. He had a particular interest in these areas.
Although this was a very hilarious experience, I had something in common with his passion, and that was the fact complexity science and chaos had to do with small actions leading to tremendous changes, for example, the possibility that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Nigeria could cause an earthquake in South Africa. And this is what I am all about - the idea that slight changes in the initial conditions, can drive massive changes in the end, particularly in the context of changing Africa.
In the context of Africa, there is this underlying thinking and mindset when it comes to changing Africa. It is a mindset that believes that if you want to change Africa, if you want to see massive changes in Africa, you have to put in massive inputs, you have to have huge projects, you have to have huge numbers of people in order to drive any sort of change. And what am wondering is whether the ideas that come out of the butterfly effect tell us that there may be different ways to do this. There may be ways to do this, where actually, slight changes can ripple through the systems and cause massive outcomes. And that’s what am interested in.
If we take a step back and just think about the scale of Africa where 1.2 Billion people live on the continent, and 40% of us are under the age of 15, that’s about 500 million people under the age of 15. It’s a staggering number. And if we think about intelligence, and we assume as we should do that Africa has the same normal distribution of intelligence as any other continent around the world. So we are looking for geniuses, 1 in 1000 people have that level of intelligence that you might call a genius.
Image source : Google images
In the African context, that means there are 500,000 young people, that if they were anywhere in the world, would be classified as genius. And if we push it further up to Einstein level of intelligence, someone said that you would have to look for 1 in 25,000 in other to find someone with that level of intelligence. That means that in Africa, there are 20,000 children today, across the continent with Einstein level of intelligence.
With that outstanding and astonishing level of intelligence been born in a village or on the edge of a city, you have that sort of brain power, but you don’t have the resources and opportunity to use it. How demoralizing that feels. We need to be looking for those young people and developing them. And that’s what am campaigning about. We have to look for those young people with astonishing level of intelligence, and give them the opportunities to use their intelligence to make changes across the continent.
Those young people are our butterflies. Those are the ones we should be determined to find and take them into programs to develop them, that they shall have the opportunity to flap their wings, and cause a ripple effect of change across the continent.
Image source : Google images
One thing I believe we can do is to open up science academies where girls can study science and mathematics. The school should be designed specifically for young women across the continent, to come to the school, and focus ttheir attention on their passion for science and math. All their fees and wellbeing should be taken care of, so that they have nothing to worry about.
Image source : Google images
Outside of their core subjects, they study other things, from computing to Chinese, they read fiction to feminism, developing them as young women to express themselves, to think, to argue, to explore, and then unleash them to the world, and lets see the ripple effect that they cause.
Back to the question, howmany girls does it take to change the African continent?
Image source : Google images
ONE – one girl with the passion for science, and with the opportunity and the resources to really make use of that passion, unleash it on the world, flap their wings, and cause ripples across the continent. This is what she looks like.
Image source : Google images
Writer : Gabriel