126 – Mathematics in Africa: Stories of Success

[00:00:00] Lily: Hello, and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I’m Lily Clements, a Data Scientist, and I’m here with David Stern, a founding director of IDEMS. Hi, David. 

[00:00:14] David: Hi, Lily. What are we discussing today? As you can see, my voice is still not perfect, but I’ll try my best. 

[00:00:21] Lily: It’s getting there, I’m sure. But yeah, I’m sorry about that.

 So there’s a article that I came across recently and it kind of got my attention. So it’s of this maths queen, a Ghanaian mathematician. 

[00:00:32] David: Oh, Angela. 

[00:00:34] Lily: Okay. Yeah. Clearly, you know. So the first African to win the big internet math off competition. 

[00:00:39] David: Angela is wonderful. Yes. 

[00:00:42] Lily: Okay, so you know Angela? 

[00:00:44] David: I taught Angela in 2013. I believe it was 2013, she was at AIMS, Ghana. And I taught her mathematical problem solving. We interacted quite a lot, she did her PhD in Glasgow. With another former student of mine from Kenya. Two very strong female mathematicians, you know, really shook up Glasgow mathematics.

[00:01:08] Lily: Wow. 

[00:01:08] David: And so the two of them got on quite well. She’s been at AIMS, I believe, for quite a while. I think she’s still there. So we’ve stayed in touch a little bit, not as much as I’d like. Yeah. She’s wonderful. 

[00:01:20] Lily: Oh, nice. Nice. Well, that’s really interesting. Of course, of course you would have known her. I thought you probably had come across the article. I thought you probably would have maybe had some interaction through the AIMS link and, yeah, that does make sense. 

I wonder, I mean this isn’t a conversation I guess for me to have because I’m not a kind of black female mathematician. I am a female mathematician. But it does make you wonder kind of the difficulties faced when going, like when she went to Glasgow and things. 

[00:01:50] David: Okay, the difficulties faced when she goes to Glasgow I can actually talk to. More from Cameline’s perspective maybe who was a colleague than for Angela herself because I’ve never really heard firsthand the difficulties Angela had at Glasgow. I’ve heard her success. 

[00:02:08] Lily: Oh, nice. 

[00:02:09] David: The difficulties of African female mathematicians, I can barely imagine. And it is way worse and harder for many of them than I want to believe. And I know it and I know for example, that one of the times when I was teaching at AIMS we had some female colleagues who came in and had a session with the female students, and of course, that was not a session I was privy to. 

But the impact it had on my colleagues of, you know, without me knowing the details, I know how much this was a small sample of, let’s say, 20 students from across Africa, and the experiences they exposed to these international female mathematicians had a noticeable effect to the extent that I know how serious it is, even if I don’t know the details. 

[00:03:12] Lily: Okay. 

[00:03:12] David: I’ve never really asked the details, I can imagine. I’ve worked in an African university for six years. I know some of the things that happened there, maybe while I was there, but certainly the stories were there. But I really, even with that knowledge, I know I’ve not seen the reality of how tough it is. So yeah, it is something where the challenge of going out internationally that I can speak to, because I’ve had a number of students go on that journey and I’ve been with them through that journey.

[00:03:50] Lily: Sure. 

I guess part of it is having kind of a role model that you could kind of look to who you can relate to. 

[00:04:02] David: Absolutely. And that belief that you belong. 

[00:04:06] Lily: Yeah. I guess that doesn’t even necessarily apply to African women per se, of having that kind of role model that you can look to. That’s coming out wrong. 

[00:04:20] David: So I think in mathematics, one of the things to sort of say is that women in general have had a long term struggle to really become established in the community. And internationally, there is a lot of work happening. What’s interesting is African involvement in international mathematics is something which is, it becomes an important topic and then it wanes. There’s no consistency. And so this is a really, really challenging issue.

Of course, the double whammy, if you want, being a female African trying to make your way in the maths world is extremely challenging, doubly so in certain ways. But I think that one of the things which I’m conscious of is that there are enough small initiatives, that these role models are emerging. Angela is a wonderful example, but she’s not alone.

I have the privilege of knowing a number of others across the world who are really making a name for themselves, leaving their mark, and they are the role models. And most of the ones I know, they have benefit from the fact that there are opportunities out there. They’re not huge numbers, but they’re there.

And the one I want to mention particularly here is an opportunity, I’m going to pronounce this wrong, the Schoenberg Foundation of Faculty for the Future. And I believe both Angela and Cameline benefited from this particular opportunity. And it is for female academics who are making their way in their career trying to do a PhD.

And it enables them to have a personal scholarship to do an international PhD at an institution, in some sense, of their design. So it’s not associated to the institution or the supervisor. It’s something which the student gets and brings with them to a PhD program. 

And I know the nature of this was extremely beneficial for both Angela and Cameline, who studied together at Glasgow and I believe both had this same opportunity. And one of the things that was so powerful to me about what the little I know about is the way that it also focused on building that community of people who are having that same experience, same time in different institutions. And that gave us that sort of sense of even if in your institution you’re alone, or in their case there were two of them you know that there were others alike going through similar things elsewhere. And that is really important, I think, in terms of dealing with this, with being this minority, which they were. 

[00:07:51] Lily: And that’s something that’s so kind of new and powerful that we can have these days is meeting people who are also in your unique situation through kind of having the internet. 

[00:08:06] David: Yes, of course, and this is sort of remote interactions. It wasn’t just remote. My understanding is that the foundation brought them together at certain moments in time, so they understood and they knew each other as a cohort.

[00:08:18] Lily: Yeah. 

[00:08:19] David: The idea of this cohort of people is something which I’ve observed and I really appreciate. And I think there’s wonderful examples which have created these. There’s not enough, and that’s something I am certain of, because I’ve spent long enough in environments, where the opportunities are not enough to meet the talent.

[00:08:48] Lily: I bet. 

[00:08:48] David: And that issue of actually that wasted talent, which is really there, I have a colleague who was never the wasted talent, never got the right opportunity, never was put in the position where he could thrive. He always had to create his opportunity. You know, he was extremely talented, you know, he went from being a pure mathematician to doing his PhD in physics because that’s where he could get a scholarship and then he became a data scientist. That’s where you could get another opportunity. You know, he’s kept battling his way through these opportunities, but never had it easy. 

This is, you know, the reality for many. There’s other contexts when the opportunities outweigh the number of people who actually have the talent to make the most of them. And part of that unbalance, you know, even within Africa, I know situations like that, and I will actually just mention very explicitly some fantastic effort which happened in Rwanda, where there were a whole flurry of postgraduate programs which sort of blossomed very quickly. And with a slight problem that hadn’t been the work on the undergraduate programs to predate it.

And so suddenly everybody who did the undergraduate made it onto the postgraduate programs. And the quality of Rwandan students went down, because there was an imbalance in the pipeline of the number of undergraduates coming through for those subjects and the number of postgraduate places.

And that imbalance meant therefore that there was sort of a change in standards. These things are real. I’ve observed them in a number of different contexts in one way or the other. It shows the complexity that, you know, many academics, as I used to be, you know, could put their life into creating a good program. And that program could live or fall on the quality of the students, and that’s outside the control of the person creating that program. 

So this idea of actually, you know, having a systems view is so important and so lacking in actually how we try to build these talent pipelines, especially coming out of the youngest continent, which Africa is. It has this amazing youth, it has talent across the continent, but it doesn’t always have pipelines to actually make the most, allow that talent to flourish. 

[00:11:30] Lily: Sure, because you can then have this talent which gets through this part of the pipeline, and then everyone’s now at one stage, and then the next bit’s not yet built.

[00:11:40] David: Absolutely, and in Kenya I was discussing this, there’s this term I love, tarmacking. 

[00:11:46] Lily: Yeah. 

[00:11:47] David: Which is where graduates would be going out and put the hours in with their CVs, knocking on everyone’s door on the tarmac, just bring their CVs to everyone, because there’s not enough jobs for the people who have the qualifications. And this is a new phenomena, but it is a phenomena which is repeating itself in the number of contexts where that imbalance between there’s a shortage of skills of a certain type and then somebody sorts out the program and there’s an abundance of skills of that type and so you can very quickly go from one extreme to the other. 

[00:12:24] Lily: Yeah, but, then I guess I’m now being slightly facetious, but we’re currently writing a course, we’re currently writing a master’s course for kind of, well, the area that obviously I’m interested in is the kind of data skills area, but in general, a lot on the kind of mathematical science. 

[00:12:40] David: It’s a program in maths innovation. It’s very exciting. The Open University of Kenya is leading this, Maseno University as well. I’m really excited. Yes. 

[00:12:51] Lily: And a lot of fun to write. But let’s say, what if this really succeeded? What if this course was, like, beyond our wildest expectations and more?

[00:13:00] David: It’s not beyond my wildest expectations. 

[00:13:03] Lily: Well, what if a whole group of people went through it, a whole host of students went through it, and then they were experts on the other side? Then what? 

[00:13:14] David: This is why we’ve been involved in designing the course.

[00:13:18] Lily: Okay. 

[00:13:19] David: And we’ve been working with the people at the Open University and at Maseno, because there are a number of courses already in the Mathematical Sciences. This course is designed to help bridge the needs of, well, the greater needs for people with mathematical skills and the fact that there is actually an abundance of graduates coming out in Kenya who have talent, but not necessarily the skills which are needed.

So the course itself is designed to enable lifelong learning in six different domain tracks, if you want, three tracks, but six domain areas, and it’s designed so that the people going through it have the skills, broadly, the skills needed to teach, the skills needed to interact with technology and create technology, and the underlying mathematical problem solving skills, including data skills, modelling skills, and so on. 

Most of the people I expect to apply are likely to be teachers, because many math teachers in Kenya want a further degree partly as a way to leave teaching and get other opportunities. But even if they stayed in teaching, the hope is they’ll be better teachers and they’ll be able to bring what they brought in to the teaching. So even if they were absorbed into the teaching, this is intended to support Kenya and its transition to the competency based curriculum for mathematics. That’s really what’s been conceived, to give teachers the tools and so on.

But it’s not just intended for teachers, for those who gain the skills, there is a need in industry, in public sector, for people with data skills. It’s intended to give people the basics, and enough of that, that they can now actually contribute. So those who go on hopefully have the skills to be able to contribute, maybe in data, maybe in modeling, you know, maybe in edtech.

Now that’s another component of actually building technology to support education. So the hope is, it’s a degree in mathematics innovation. It’s intended to create graduates who are able to teach, which is needed at scale in Kenya and in the region, but to teach imaginatively, to be able to give them the skills to do and to actually be engaged, and there’s a need for those skills more widely and so hopefully some people will do it either not as teachers or, you know, go off into other areas, you know, supporting people with their data. 

Or, you know, actually to create something, giving people those problem solving, those innovation skills. Great. Tech innovation is part of what would create jobs of tomorrow and Kenya is in some sense within Africa a hub of this. But it doesn’t always have the substance behind it. 

Whereas this innovation I believe the people coming through this, they’re not just going through with sort of some wild idea. They actually should now have substance to anchor it. They should have, you know, the mathematics behind it. They should also have some of the education, the pedagogy of how do you actually engage people and think about those interactions. Anyway, I’m excited. It’s a very exciting degree. 

[00:16:59] Lily: No, absolutely. But before that, you were talking about this kind of tarmacking and people going around, kind of door to door. 

[00:17:06] David: I don’t believe you could have these skills in too large numbers. And I’ll give you another example in Kenya. When I was first teaching Kenya in 2008, actuarial science was the hot topic. And so it was the most popular mathematics degree. And the problem with that as the most popular mathematics degree is that it is designed to take you into actuarial sciences and be an actuary. 

[00:17:37] Lily: Okay. 

[00:17:37] David: There are a finite number of places for that, and that’s what led to the idea of tarmacking and so on. You know, in many contexts, people do the actuarial science exams after they’ve got a more general degree and they specialise. But what happened in Kenya was this desire to have degrees that were directly useful led to a degree which was very popular, very successful in actuarial sciences. But there was too specialised. And so that’s the danger, that’s what leads to the tarmacking, that now you have people with actuarial science degrees who are doing things which have nothing to do with actuarial sciences.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you can’t have too many mathematicians. I absolutely believe you can and in many high resource environments we’re sort of reaching that point in some sense. We’re maybe not using them in quite the full range of ways we could, but mathematical science PhDs, for example, are not always in demand in the way that you might hope they would be outside of academia.

[00:18:45] Lily: Okay. 

[00:18:46] David: So I think there’s definitely ways in which, some of these skills, you can go too far. I would certainly argue that what we’re aiming for with this master’s is giving people not a narrow set of career defining skills, but a wide range of career enabling skills. And there’s a subtle difference between those two.

And within the Kenyan context right now, from my observations, but also the observations, the colleagues who are developing this program, this is what we believe is really needed. There is a demand, there’s a hunger, there is an issue, which is the Competency Based Curriculum, which needs this innovation to support it and to enable people to come through and find solutions for themselves.

And that’s what we hope this master’s program will hopefully create. Its very early days, hasn’t been fully approved yet, it’s going through the process, but it’s very exciting, well, for me anyway. 

[00:19:57] Lily: No, it is exciting , and I guess I just wanted to clear up that idea on the other side of the program. Because I know that you think these things through and it’s a very interesting point to me anyway, I guess that this kind of change in these opportunities have to be across more levels, or all levels. 

[00:20:14] David: Well, it’s this very interesting thing where actually in high resource environments, everything gets specialised. 

[00:20:23] Lily: Yeah. 

[00:20:24] David: And that works as long as everything actually is going alongside. And you occasionally get within societies these anomalies which appear because things weren’t lined up well. Let’s say, at a certain level people were going to recruit lots of undergraduates of this type. But for whatever reason, those undergraduates suddenly don’t exist. And, you know, those mismatches occasionally happen.

But generally speaking, you can trust there are people working at the other levels to be able to make sure that all levels work. What I appreciated so much about my experience, well, particularly in Kenya, where I spent six years as a lecturer at Maseno University, was finding myself in that position where I recognised that I achieved a lot at an individual level, but I had to start thinking about the other level.

You know, I had to start thinking, well, if these undergraduate degree programs are very popular, where are the students going to come from who are going to be able to populate them? Who are going to want to do them? Who are going to have the preparing in school to do that? And similarly for the postgraduate, nearly all the way.

[00:21:34] Lily: Yeah. 

[00:21:35] David: And it taught me a lot about that joined up thinking, because it was needed there. 

[00:21:40] Lily: Interesting. No, very interesting. I guess just a final kind of thought from me, which goes back to the start of our conversation on Angela and Caroline. 

[00:21:49] David: Cameline. 

[00:21:49] Lily: Cameline, sorry, is that you met them in 2013, which I think that… 

[00:21:54] David: Cameline I first met in 2008. That’s a whole nother story. 

[00:21:57] Lily: Okay. 

[00:21:58] David: I should get her on this. She’s wonderful. 

[00:22:01] Lily: Definitely. I think I bumped into her in Rwanda, in AIMS Rwanda. 

[00:22:05] David: You did. You were teaching a course at the same time that she was teaching something else. 

[00:22:10] Lily: Yes. Yeah. Which is very nice. But anyway, so it’s nice to put a face to the name with her. So then with Angela then, so in 2013, unfortunately, you’re there for only three weeks to do the kind of teaching. 

[00:22:21] David: Actually, I wasn’t. That year, I was there the whole year. 

[00:22:25] Lily: Great. 

[00:22:25] David: That’s where I know Angela and her cohort better than I know most, interacting with her throughout the year.

[00:22:33] Lily: So then that was going to be my question, was like, how do you spot an Angela? 

[00:22:37] David: Oh, you don’t miss Angela. 

[00:22:39] Lily: Oh, okay. 

[00:22:41] David: She was impressive from the first time I met her, which was basically when I taught the course. And, yeah, she stood out. Within that group, her pure maths ability, I was teaching a course in mathematical problem solving, and so it’s designed to help people to come out, but she was just mathematically minded.

[00:23:03] Lily: Okay. 

[00:23:04] David: And yeah, what I would say is that I had no idea what she’d go on and do. I would argue I still don’t know what she’s going to go on and do. It’s one of those wonderful things where I might get to throw it in the news. She’s that good. But it’s you know, it is that thing where her talent was clear from the onset but that journey is hard, it’s hard for anyone.

And, yeah, and where it will take her, who knows. If I have a criticism of her from way back then, to even some more recent interaction, it’s that I don’t think she’s always known how special her talent is. Sometimes I felt that what she finds easy, she expects others to find easy as well. And I’d be really interesting to learn whether, you know, the time since I’ve known her, it sort of, it has sort of really sunk in just how much harder other people to find certain things than she finds them.

Because, as I say, she was such a talent that, you know, certain things were just natural for her. This is what you want when you’re teaching the elite mathematical minds. But it’s also that self awareness that this is not the same for everyone is not always easy.

[00:24:26] Lily: Sure. Well, I guess, you know, you come across someone like that and in a place where opportunities are sparse, as you say, it’s difficult to know how to kind of get them to where they are. So it’s fantastic that she’s now got this. 

[00:24:45] David: And I am absolutely confident I can take basically no credit for that.

She deserves everything, but also, you know, her project supervisor at AIMS did help her to sort of create the link with Glasgow and so on, which led to that opportunity. And those things were, it has taken individuals doing that. And I believe individuals can take credit that without them she wouldn’t have had the same opportunity.

But for her in particular, for Cameline I can take a little bit of credit, for Angela I can take no credit whatsoever, you know, she didn’t need help. This is the thing, when you’re surrounded by so many people who are so good and all deserving, there’s some people who you’re only there to help them if they need it, but the assumption is they don’t.

And with her, she’s never needed help from me. Not once since she reached out to me for anything. I’m not saying she hasn’t faced challenges, but I’m saying that I believe she, as many of her colleagues knew I was always someone they could come to. And she never needed. 

[00:25:54] Lily: Really interesting. 

[00:25:55] David: There are some of her other colleagues who have done very well. Andre, who’s in Australia, having finished her PhD and settled there now, who’s also, what a talent, in a very different way. I’d argue that Andre was for data, what Angela was for maths. Anyway, that’s another story. 

[00:26:12] Lily: I’m sure, I’m sure it is, but it’s really interesting to hear about these talents.

[00:26:17] David: Anyway, this has been nice, nice to think about Angela and Cameline and Andre. 

[00:26:24] Lily: Yes, absolutely. And nice to think about them and then I guess it just makes you wonder as kind of, you know, a teacher, as we come to these courses, these open university courses, how do we spot these talents through online courses. 

[00:26:39] David: So I do have some experience on that, and I don’t believe it’s going to be difficult. I’m looking forward to it. And it’s something where I’m conscious, there was a time when I did know the students coming through all of the AIMS centres. Actually, one year I went to all of the AIMS centres and I got to know all the students a little bit. 

I’m not close to students anymore. As you know, you’ve been teaching some of the courses that I used to teach and it is a shame to be that bit further removed now. And I do hope that for myself, I will get the opportunity to engage a little bit, because it’s such a privilege to be able to interact with such talent when it’s growing, when it’s maturing, intellectually and in other ways. 

[00:27:29] Lily: And, I mean, just to add, as you say, I’ve been taking on some of these courses now and things, and it’s kind of like, well, I just hope that if I see that talent, I hope that I can spot it. 

[00:27:39] David: You don’t need to in some sense. This is the thing. It’s about supporting the people when they need it. You can’t support everyone. And you certainly can’t support everyone all the time. But you can sometimes make a difference. And it’s recognising those moments where you can make a difference. And you know, I had a call relatively recently, and it was just that call at that point in time was all they needed to re evaluate the opportunities they have in front of them. They don’t even need necessarily new opportunities, but just being able to recognise the opportunities they have and see that in the past, they didn’t have opportunities. Where they are now. They do.

[00:28:24] Lily: Wonderful. Well, thank you very much, David. 

[00:28:28] David: Thank you.