women-scientists-from-kenya

"It is a very hard truth for Africans to think about is who is going to take over after I have left. You always have to think about that. I don’t want my work to leave with me. I want it to stay and continue impacting"

"Parents who provided more learning and playing materials reported that their children did better."

"It’s Africa’s moment to take that leap, seeing AI as a tool to elevate human flourishing in Africa, providing opportunities for development that have long been out of reach."

"I remember performing unauthorised experiments in the chemistry lab, often with unpredictable consequences."

"It’s about how am I applying this technology to my everyday life based on the infrastructure that I currently have."

"...as AI evolves, the responsibility to regulate and innovate must be handled with extreme care. We don’t know where this technology is taking us"

"What we need to do is put measures in place to protect human dignity and human lives, but on the other hand, allow for innovation to go and be built."

"“I would say to women who would like to be scientists that they should seek mentors who have excelled in their field of interest. Such a person will steer your career in the right direction."

"The fact that they are always surrounded by people may have benefited them somehow."

"The fact that you are not there does not mean the work is not important. The work needs to continue and outlive you."

"Africa showed the world how to use the mobile phone; (…) and we are going to show the world how AI can actually improve people’s lives. Don’t be left behind in this journey."

"For every 3,500 people, there’s one doctor... With AI, there is the potential to provide better healthcare services, such as first-line diagnoses through mobile platforms. If I can take a photo of my disease (…) and send it to a bot that uses AI to provide me with a potential diagnosis, even at 80% accuracy, it’s better than no diagnosis at all."

"In Kenya, we have the highest per capita use of digital financial services in the world,"

"Sovereignty means that I need to be in charge of my destiny and able to control my future. This involves understanding the context in which you’re operating and not allowing others to define that context for you."

"A year later, an opportunity presented itself to pursue a PhD in the US. It was the fresh beginning that I needed. It helped in the healing process and enabled me to cope with my loss."

"When AI becomes practical, when it’s not just a hype word, that’s when we will truly see the impact of this technology on our continent."

"Technology was never seen as a way to employ people. The more the President talks about it, the more it changes the mindset of people."

"It’s unsustainable to depend on imports. A country depending on imported food cannot grow."

"Let us first invest in high-yielding varieties and bring in investors to put money into irrigation systems and soil fertility, that is make fertiliser cheaper by producing it locally. Then educate farmers on how to store the surplus harvest to avoid losses."

"It is time for Africa to begin thinking and operating as a stakeholder, rather than accepting the ‘victim mentality’ created by opponents of biotechnology. The priority of Africa must be to food its people and to sustain agricultural production and the environment."

"Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food."

"It is a profound honour. This award is the continent’s foremost recognition of individuals and institutions transforming farming from a struggle for survival into a thriving enterprise. For me, it affirms that African indigenous vegetables are central to the transformation of African food systems."

"For example, indigenous bambara nuts and pigeon pea yield relatively better in low fertility soils and with low rainfall, compared with beans," she notes. "And this allows a diversified, sustainable production model that insures nutritional security and prosperity."

"It is also the fulfilment of a dream I held since the age of ten – that these vegetables would be valued and accessible to all who need them for food, nutrition, health security, and economic empowerment."

"Then increase mechanisation in ploughing and processing the harvests. For instance, instead of farmers doing manual shelling of groundnuts, they use a machine."

"I don’t believe we can address the issues of nutrition security, poverty, and health in Kenya without relying on African indigenous crops. With a soaring food crisis, and maize harvests predicted to be 16 percent below former years as a result of changing Kenyan weather patterns, the only grains that could adequately replace maize in my opinion would be indigenous millets and sorghum, which are more drought tolerant."

"Lately I am also interested in complex networks from two angles. That is, using genetic programming for the automatic inference of graph models for complex networks, and developing fast algorithms to determine critical nodes in complex networks."

"We were looking for someone who could bring administrative experience, interdisciplinary research excellence and their international worldview to our Integrated Engineering program. We are lucky to now have Shahryar leading Engineering at Brock. He is already actively involved in moving the department forward."

"I am interested in research on efficient design and application of computational intelligence techniques especially evolutionary computation genetic algorithms and genetic programming, swarm intelligence, especially on particle swarm optimization, and artificial neural networks. A major application area is in optimization with a focus on combinatorial optimization, multi objective optimization, and optimization in dynamic environments."

"I thought I was going to inspire them [the children]. Instead, I was inspired too."

"There’s a satisfaction you get from going to a school, talking to the children, and seeing their reaction and their anticipation. A 12-year-old boy in eastern Kenya even told us, ‘I used to think scientists lie, but now I believe in science."

"If we are to rethink foreign aid, as AfricAvenir is suggesting and as we discussed in the dialogue forum and the workshop today, we need to move beyond the language of ‘help’ to think of moral obligations to justice if we are serious about addressing historical and contemporary injustices not just in Africa but elsewhere in the world."

"Companies import because they cannot get timely delivery of adequate and quality supply of required volumes. If we organise farmers into groups and train them in producing huge volumes of adequate produce, we will reduce imports like rice; 80 per cent of rice consumed in Kenya is imported."

"If you look at the way the world operates, it’s almost blind to the fact that women bear the biggest burden and brunt of climate change."

"The potential of laying the foundation for the rise of a planetary counter-hegemony."

"If we really care about biodiversity, if we really care about carbon that is in the peatlands, if we really care about the Indigenous people, why are we not putting our money where our mouths are?"

"I would like to build an observatory there and invite people to come and learn about space and watch special events like meteor showers. I want to have a little base, somewhere for us to sit and enjoy the sky with whoever wants to share it."

"There’s something about the sky that makes you want to experience it with other people."

"Anybody who's working with these issues — biodiversity, climate change, and the underlying drivers of it — realize the interconnectedness of it,"

"Unlike in Western countries where labelling a product as ‘eco-friendly’ is considered a positive by consumers and it is quickly snapped up, in Kenya it can be seen as a negative … as if the product is of lower quality, that view is slowly changing, but it is taking time. We know there is a market. We just have to reach it.”"

"I feel very strongly that we again need to focus on how we can safeguard these collections for future generations as well."

"What we’ve been focused on in our work is this story — on the upright, walking ancestral life of hominins."

"It is a very important time in the world to realize that we do have a common past and we have a common future."

"“We were just dumping all the plastic in the landfill. It didn’t make sense. We knew there had to be a better way, We wanted to do something with all this plastic waste, and after a lot of brainstorming, research and experimenting, we came up with a value-added product with market demand that would also help to reduce all this plastic in the environment.”"

"At age 12, the discovery of the Homo erectus from the west side of Turkana was a very exciting time, because we were at that site for quite a long period, we were able to engage and help and excavate it. There was a real sense of excitement about that excavation."

"Everybody enjoys being out-and-about as a small child looking for fossils, so it is second-nature to anyone to do that, I guess I was able to keep at it longer than most."

"“We examined the properties of plastic and glass, and then we literally cooked empty shampoo and vegetable bottles in a big drum and mixed the molten polymer with sand crushed from glass waste, it looked like a strange porridge, but once placed in moulds and cooled, we found we had a very strong and durable product.”"

"I have chosen the political identity of “feminist” because I believe in my own autonomy, choice and freedom—as well as those of all other women. African women continue to face the denial of autonomy, choice and freedom in all areas of life, alongside an enduring lack of access to and control of all kinds of opportunities and resources."

"What I want for myself and for all African women, is autonomy, choice and freedom, health, and happiness."

"And so we need inspiration. I am inspired by people in all fields who devote energy, intellect and time to honing their skills and excelling. I am inspired by African artistic work and culture, past and contemporary, and by African intellectual work and thought. I am motivated by collectivity and solidarity, and by love."