I recently read a post online where the best graduating student from Bells University of Technology, Ota, Nigeria (CGPA 4.89 out of 5.0) had been interviewed. The content of her interview or her responses to the questions asked is not what I intend to discuss on this post. Rather, it is the responses of people to her success that I would like to address. There were many comments about how easy it must have been for her to graduate with a first class because she attended a private university. Others were sure that if she had attended a public school, she would probably have graduated with a second class lower degree at the most. They undermined her success forgetting that in the same graduating set, 86 students had graduated with a third class degree, 119 had second class lower and 123 had second class upper degrees. Of the 28 who made the first class, this girl had come out tops. The comments not only baffled me but also started to infuriate me as I had...
My Iranian friend usually makes the mistake of referring to a male as 'she' and vice-versa. As usual, she offers an apology (which I do not consider necessary) and corrects her mistake. She had shared with me in the past that the Persian language had no gender designation and it got me thinking about the Yoruba language as well. As we sat down over coffee yesterday with our Chinese and Indian friends, I realised how related my local Nigerian language was to theirs. One thing stood out for us - none of our local languages had any gender differentiation. 'He' or 'She' didn't exist in our languages, rather we had words to differentiate between an older person and a younger person as a sign of respect - a trait completely absent in the English language. The French language is even more complicated and interesting on the gender qualification as even things needed to be qualified as female or male. We realised that languages had their different idiosyncrasie...
Women receive only 2.2% of Venture capital funding yet gender diverse teams produce over 30% higher return on investment. GreenHouse Capital aims to change that. Applications are now open to female-led tech startups f or the opportunity to receive world-class tech entrepreneurship training, a minimum of 100K USD and access to a global network of mentors and investors. Application Criteria Applicants must meet the following requirements in order to be considered for the program: • Must be an early-stage tech startup with at least one female member on their founding or leadership team • Must have identified a critical need in Africa and is building an effective, sustainable and scalable solution • Must have a team consisting of at least two members including one technical member • Must have developed, at a minimum, a beta-product and be in the process of refining a go-to-market strategy, building out sales channels and generating re...