I am a 22 years old Nigerian female tech enthusiast living in Nigeria and my best hobby is traveling. The irony is that I’ve never been out of Nigeria but I’ve seen different worlds, tasted intercontinental dishes and have met the nicest strangers in books! This is due to the fact that I did not come from a rich home so I had little to no access to technologies as a child. My only other best option was books, so I read any and everything from newspapers to fictions to documentaries and biographies. And then I decided it would be cool to also write my experiences, with hope that a child would find it and see the world through it.

I’ve always been a curious person and as a child I asked a lot of questions about technology. Like the time I asked the hairdresser few blocks away from my house “how the heat got into the hooded dryer”. She had a television in her shop and I and my siblings would stand outside the shop for hours on end just to watch our favorite shows and no thanks to me and my “stupid” questions we were told to stop coming.

Thankfully, my dad is hardworking, he soon got us our own television set and what’s more, it came with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS)! My country to this day has a power failure problem and the UPS was able to power the TV set minutes after the power outage. This meant that sometimes, if we were lucky enough, we could finish watching our favorite shows before the TV went off or we could decide to retain the power and use it at any time we like to watch the shows. This had to be the coolest thing I ever saw as a child. I read the user’s manual but still couldn’t understand the sorcery behind the UPS, how it was able to retain its own power and then give some to the TV set long after a power outage. I told my classmates and every other person who cared to listen about the UPS.

Some smart parents (thankfully, mine included) knew that formal education wasn’t enough and their kids needed skills to thrive in the society. So it became a social ritual, after secondary school and during the waiting period to get into the university that most of us were meant to learn a skill. Usually the males took computer science classes, driving lessons and “site” jobs (basically, interns at a construction site) while the females took more domestic skills like hairdressing, tailoring and catering. This period of skill acquisition usually lasted for about 6 months to a year.

This was the period I first experienced the marginalization of females in the tech industry, though out of 100%, my family was about 55% gender biased with more favor given to the male so even though we couldn’t afford the lesson fees because my dad preferred saving up for my university tuition, I was allowed to work as a typist (not with a typewriter but with a regular keyboard) at the local cyber Café down my street for free and at my free time. I would often get the “what’s a little girl doing in here” and “I hope she knows what she’s doing” comments every minute of the day coupled with perverts and pedophiles who would in pretense of showing me something on the screen try to sexually harass me but I kept my job till I got into the university.

As you may have wrongly guessed, I didn’t do a STEM related course and this is mostly because I’ve always been at variance with conventional and formal education especially those with outdated syllables and modes of operation like the one we have in Nigeria and I only attended uni because I had no other option (my parents were my sponsors and they would hear of nothing else). So I figured if I absolutely had to go to the university, I’d rather study politics seeing as I’m part of the “delusional” group who thinks and believes that they can change and rule the world. Little did I know that I wasn’t going to learn how to lead but how dead white men led their countries in the 18th and 19th centuries and what’s more, anyone could be president and governor, they didn’t need to know the science of politics to lead.

Through the payments I got from some side hustles in school, I was able to buy a laptop and pay for a technical analysis course. We were just 2 females out of over 30 people in the class and the comments and perversion continued. I added hate to the anger I already had for males and soon I also became angry at females… why weren’t they actively involved in the tech space? Its not like there were people stopping them from joining in, or could it be that they’ve truly believed, even in their subconscious that technology was for males and they should therefore naturally drift towards more “feminine” career paths like the sales of hairs, bags, shoes and makeup?

These questions and the quest for answers led me to start my first organization at age 20 called Queens Investments Network (QINs). The idea was to get females who were involved in these domestic skills to join in and then find a way to make their skills technical by accepting cryptocurrencies as a mode of payment, transferring their skills to others willing to learn through virtual classes and exposing them to the fact that they can bring recognition to their business by creating their own websites etc.

It wouldn’t be a male dominated world, there wouldn’t be any unhealthy comments and perversion and it wouldn’t be a very technical community as they would gradually transition into tech. I thought this would solve the problems females were facing that caused them to avoid tech but I was wrong. The community failed, and I figured out the reasons for its failure to be because of the fact that I was inexperienced, I didn’t really know how to lead a community with such great goals and then I wanted a $15 fee from any female interested in joining the community (in my defense, I needed it for data subscription, and other things needed to make the community a success) but then no female was interested because none paid.

But back then, I blamed every female but myself for the failure of the community and just as I was about throwing in the towel, I attended a Blockchain conference where the guest speaker was a female legal tech lawyer called F8. I was so impressed and fascinated by her that I immediately connected with her. Thankfully, she was warm and kind and further relations with her exposed me to a world of amazing females and not just Nigerian females, who were all in tech! She introduced me to a community called LadiesDoTech where I’m currently learning programming for software/blockchain development with other talented females for totally free.

Being in the community has equally exposed me to other female tech communities like She Code Africa, Fintech_girl etc. These communities aren’t male dominated, we’re a sisterhood and we support and treat each other with love and respect plus females are gradually transitioning into tech daily with the help of these communities. So my initial problem was simple to solve, I just hadn’t been in the space long enough to find the sisterhood.

I’ve come a long way in my tech journey, failing and succeeding but I know it’s just the starting of a fun-filled and successful career. At least now my dad does not look at me with disappointments in his face when he says “you go press phone from morning till night like say na phone you go chop” and my mum has stopped with her nagging of how no man would tolerate it if I don’t properly wash clothes with my hands, go to the market, pound foofoo and make the best dishes. I’ve been able to prove to them that with technology I can become anything I want even as a “lazy, successful, rich and happy housewife”, I don’t have to suffer to prove my worth.

The journey ahead of me is an overwhelming but exciting one, I’ll be traveling out of Nigeria for the first time this year, I really don’t care where the universe takes me to. Tech would literally take me to different worlds, where I’ll taste intercontinental dishes, meet the nicest strangers and sip wine while watching the sunset at beautiful hotel balconies. I’ve strategically positioned myself to take advantage of emerging technologies and its subsequent market and I’m not ignorant of the fact that tech has to be ethical, responsible and accountable.

You see? I know I’m ready and I have what it takes to follow this path, my ancestors made it for me and The Source would fortify me.

*I wrote this article as an entry into pollicy’s annual inaugural short story collection but on second glance, I saw that they wanted speculative fictions and this is my real life experience so I decided to bring it here.

*This is just a rough summary of my experiences and journey as a black woman in tech so stick with me if you want updates as I go by following me here and on my other social media, thanks!