The power of ingenuity is still relevant and not bounded by age.
Meet Emmanuella Mayaki, a young 10-year-old girl who was born on 7th January 2009. She made it into the hall of fame in the world of ICT at the age of seven.
History has it that at age 7, she had graduated as an expert in Computer Publishing, Advanced Excel, Adobe Page Maker, Advanced PowerPoint and CorelDraw. 2years later, she enrolled to study web development and graphic design at NIIT and also signed up for the development of mobile applications at Tech24. She then developed her mobile app and designed her own website, known as Emma’s ICT Academy.
All of these made her a unique expert in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, WordPress, PHP, MySQL, Graphic Design, Java and Python. Despite this technological know-how, Emmanuella remained undaunted in her pursuit to be more.
In an interview session with the Sunday Vanguard, she iterated how she would love the Nigerian Government to put up infrastructure that would allow kids to become vast in computer and coding. In her words, “I want to become a machine learning engineer because I have experience in programming and my job is to program a machine to perform specific tasks. My knowledge of modern software such as Eclipse, which I use to program Java applications, is also part of the reasons I want to be a machine learning engineer.”
During the interview, she revealed that she was a student of the after-school clubhouse, Southfields Primary School, Coventry, England where she volunteers to impact other students after the school’s session before she was spotted for her passion and given an appointment. She mentioned that she has a resolute passion for reproducing her likes and building a world of technocrats in children as it is capable of birthing a better society. Moreso, the future is technology. In her words, “In the code club, I am teaching HTML and CSS, also Graphics because if you build a website you need some graphics to add on to the page. In the Club, there are currently about nine pupils. Hopefully, the club will increase its members in September.”
Also, she enjoined parents not to withdraw computers from their children above age 6 as they can do much more beyond their thoughts. In her words, “I think it’s wrong for parents not to allow a child that is up to six or seven years to go near their computer, fearing that they will spoil it because part of what helped me was a privilege of accessibility. Today, my Academy App among others is already on Google play store where I pass on knowledge of coding and graphics. I remember at age seven, I set a target to become a professional web designer and analyst at age nine, and I have accomplished it.”
Meanwhile, no time is too late to start.
