For me education was key and the question I asked myself was, ‘how will I make these kids want to go to school?’

Faydah Yahya is a young Nigerian woman with a background in computer engineering and a passion for teaching and education. While searching for a job in computers, she began teaching underprivileged students in government secondary school in Abuja.

“That was how the idea of using digital literacy as bait to get these kids interested [in school] came up.”

To build the idea further, Faydah joined EAI’s Tech Camp as a fellow where she learned to identify the significant problems facing her community and used her background and experience to come up with solutions. With the support of her mentors at the Tech Camp, she launched a digital hub.

A digital hub abuzz 

Since the end of the fellowship, Faydah has been working on sustaining the digital hub by building a circle of young instructors and facilitators who are implementing a train the trainer model. 

“I am training students to tutor incoming students so that every year the new set of students will be trained by the previous set.”

Faydah is also buying additional equipment; introducing more advanced software and projects to the children; and providing online classes via social media to people looking to acquire basic ICT skills. But she wants to do a lot more.

“When I get the funds, I hope to sponsor at least one person who shows technical promise additional professional training in a field of their choice – be it programming, graphic design, web development, or any other field.”

An icon that every student aspires to be like

A regular guest on Arewa24 where she talks about the importance of digital literacy, Faydah is exceptionally proud that children are now excited to go to school and learn.

With my students, I laid a solid foundation that focused their minds on positive narratives. Now everybody wants to pursue a practical computing qualification. At least it’s far from the narrative of truancy, rebellion, or societal nuisance. It is now an issue of dream chasing.”