Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Nigerian novelist and short-story writer and recipient of a 2008 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born September 15, 1977) is a Nigerian writer of Igbo descent. She has been called "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors "which is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature" Early life and education.
Born in the town of Enugu, she grew up in the university town of Nsukka in southeastern Nigeria, where the University of Nigeria is situated. While she was growing up, her father was a professor of statistics at the university, and her mother was the university registrar.
Adichie studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half. During this period, she edited The Compass, a magazine run by the university's Catholic medical students. At the age of 19, Adichie left Nigeria and moved to the United States for college. After studying communications and political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia, she transferred to Eastern Connecticut State University to live closer to her sister, who had a medical practice in Coventry. She received a bachelor's degree from Eastern, where she graduated summa cum laude in 2001.
In 2003, she completed a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University. In 2008, she received a Master of Arts in African studies from Yale University.Adichie was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005-2006 academic year. In 2008 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She has also been awarded a 2011-2012 fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
Ory Okolloh
Kenyan activist, lawyer, and blogger. She currently holds the position of Policy Manager for Africa with Google
Ory Okolloh is a Kenyan activist, lawyer, and blogger. She currently holds the position of Policy Manager for Africa with Google. In 2006 she co-founded the parliamentary watchdog site Mzalendo (Swahili:"Patriot"). The site sought to increase government accountability by systematically recording bills, speeches, MPs, standing orders, etc.When Kenya was engulfed in violence following a disputed presidential election in 2007, Okolloh helped create Ushahidi (Swahili: "Witness"), a website that collected and recorded eyewitness reports of violence using text messages and Google Maps. The technology has since been adapted for other purposes (including monitoring elections and tracking pharmaceutical availability) and used in a number of other countries.
Okolloh also has a personal blog, Kenyan Pundit, which was featured on Global Voices Online.Sh e also works as a legal consultant for NGOs and has worked at Covington and Burling, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, and the World Bank in the past.Okolloh is part of a wave of young Africans who are using the power of blogging, SMS and web-enabled openness to push their countries forward and help Africans to truly connect. Tools like Ushahidi help to link a people whose tribal differences, as Okolloh points out again and again, are often cynically exploited by a small group of leaders. Only by connecting Africans can this cycle be broken.
She earned an undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh and graduated from Harvard Law School in 2005.Okolloh lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, with her partner and two children.KECHIE'S PROJECT
KECHIE'S PROJECT 2012 ROLE MODELS
ROLE MODELS
As we help KP girls to find themselves through education and reach their fullest potential, we are hoping that they will emulate and aspire to walk in the foot steps of our 2012 Role Models.
These amazing women inspire us and we thank them for making Africa proud! They were not born rich but look at what they have become! They are where they are today because of education and persistent drive to succeed in life.At Kechie's Project, we believe that education equals empowerment! Join us!!Bience Philomina Gawanas
Commissioner of Social Affairs on the African Commission
Bience Philomina Gawanas (Born 1956 in Namibia) is Commissioner of Social Affairs on the African Commission. She was a Commissioner on the Public Service Commission in Namibia from 1991 to 1996, and an Ombudswoman in the Namibian Government from 1996 to 2003.
She has also been a Lecturer in Gender Law at the University of Namibia, Director of the Board of the Central Bank of Namibia, and involved in many non-governmental organizations including Secretary-General of the Namibian National Women's Organization and patron of Namibian Federation of Persons with Disabilities.
As Chairperson of the Law Reform Commission she oversaw the passage of the Married Persons' Equality Act. The commission also did extensive work on Rape Acts and other important laws that were eventually passed after her time.
She attended secondary school at St Theresa Catholic school in Tses, Karas Region, southern Namibia. From Tses she went to University of the Western Cape (UWC) in Cape Town, South Africa, to study law; Catholic sponsors helped her resist the pressure of apartheid officials to switch careers from law to nursing. Namibia was occupied illegally by South Africa until 1990. "When I decided to study law, a white schools inspector told me that as a black child my intelligence was lower than that of a white child and that maybe law was not meant for me," she said to one interviewer. "Today I am a lawyer and I have proved that intelligence has got nothing to do with a person's colour."
Asha-Rose Migiro
Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations
Asha-Rose Migiro of the United Republic of Tanzania took office as Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations on 1 February 2007. She is the third Deputy Secretary-General to be appointed since the post was established in 1997. Ms. Migiro served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation from 2006 to 2007 — the first woman in the United Republic of Tanzania to hold that position since its independence in 1961. Before that, she was Minister for Community Development, Gender and Children for five years.
As Foreign Minister, Ms. Migiro spearheaded Tanzania’s engagement in the pursuit of peace, security and development in the Great Lakes region. She served as Chair of the Council of Ministers’ meetings of the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region, a process that culminated into a Pact on Security, Stability and Development in the Great Lakes Region.
Ms. Migiro was also Chair of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Ministerial Committee of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation and President of the United Nations Security Council during its open debate on peace, security and development in the Great Lakes region. As Chair of the SADC Organ, Ms. Migiro coordinated SADC assistance to democratic processes, including elections, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as support for national elections in Zambia and Madagascar. At the time of her appointment, she was chairing an important SADC ministerial troika meeting ahead of the national elections in the Kingdom of Lesotho.
Prior to Government service, Ms. Migiro pursued a career in academia. She was a member of the Faculty of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, where she rose to the rank of senior lecturer. She headed the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law from 1992 to 1994, and the Department of Civil and Criminal Law from 1994 to 1997. Her work was published widely in local and international journals. Ms. Migiro served as a member of Tanzania’s Law Reform Commission in 1997 and as a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 2000. Ms. Migiro obtained a Master of Laws from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1984 and a doctorate in law from the University of Konstanz, in Germany, in 1992. Ms. Migiro was born in Songea, Tanzania, on 9 July 1956. She is married to Professor Cleophas Migiro and has two daughters. In addition to English, she speaks Kiswahili, basic French and German