Nurturing a dream: icipe’s commitment to Fiona Nelima Mumoki’s rising scientific career
Nairobi, Kenya, 30 March 2015: In a continent where scientific dreams die young, especially for women scientists, Fiona Nelima Mumoki has managed to keep hers alive, nurtured for the past five years at icipe. Now about to commence PhD studies at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, Fiona describes her journey so far, her hopes for the future, and how an AWARD Fellowship will enable her to continue being mentored by icipe.
As a young primary school pupil in Kenya in the 1990s, Fiona Nelima Mumoki happened on a publication containing profiles of winners of the General Motors Cancer Research Awards. In one of the articles, the winner described scientific research in a manner that would have a life changing impact on Fiona’s life.
“The scientist used what I found to be a fascinating analogy to explain the concept of research. He likened it to entering a dark room in search of, say, a chair. Success, he said, comes to the person who withstands the inevitable bumping and tripping to locate the item they are searching for,” Fiona recalls.
That analogy stuck in Fiona’s mind, marking a turning point in what was, by her own admission, a rather mischievous adolescent phase, characterised by antics that had prompted her parents to transfer her from a school in the capital city, Nairobi, to one in rural western Kenya.
“Although at that age I couldn’t entirely comprehend what such a career would entail, I formed a very strong desire to become a researcher, and from then on, I became serious about my studies,” she explains.
Fiona’s focus paid off, and based on her good performance in her primary school finals, she was admitted to Loreto Limuru, one of the top girls’ secondary schools in Kenya. Here, she found great teachers and, more importantly, the freedom to focus and flourish in the subjects that she loved – chemistry, biology and mathematics. So passionate was she about these subjects that she was allowed to study in the school’s biology lab, where, surrounded by images and symbols that others might find gross, she developed an even deeper enthusiasm for the subject.
She returned splendid ‘O’ level results, gaining admission into the University of Nairobi to undertake a BSc degree in biology, starting in 2005. At first, she was unsure how she would make a career out of biology. However, this uncertainty waned when she was offered the opportunity to work in the tissue culture laboratory, alongside her studies.
Fiona describes balancing university course work with the tissue culture lab duties as challenging and gruelling, yet rewarding. But she realized that she loved ‘putting in the hours’. Importantly, she also obtained the first real feeling of research, as well as the chance to see biology in practice, and to recognise its utility in issues pertinent to Africa, such as food security.
In 2009, on completion of her undergraduate studies – with a first class honours – Fiona successfully applied for a Consortium for National Health Research (CNHR) internship, tenable at icipe.
“I sought this internship because of its structure; the fact that it involved mentorship. I also envisioned that it would help me decide, once and for all, whether I really wanted to be a researcher,” she explains.
During the six months of the internship, under the tutelage of icipe’s head of the Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics Unit, Dr. Daniel Masiga, Fiona worked on a project to study surface proteins of trypanosomes, the parasites that cause the devastating human and animal trypanosomiasis (more commonly known as sleeping sickness andnagana, respectively), in large parts of Africa. Trypanosomes surface proteins increase the ability of the parasites to effectively establish and maintain infections in their hosts. As a result of these studies, Fiona enhanced her skills in molecular research techniques, and also experienced first hand the pressure of working and attaining results in a proper research environment.
The end of Fiona’s internship coincided with the start of the National Science Foundation Basic Research to Enable Agricultural Development (NSF BREAD) project, a collaborative initiative between icipe and Pennyslyvannia State University. She was invited to stay on as a research assistant on the project, not only continuing to work with Dr. Masiga, but also with two other icipe scientists, Prof. Baldwyn Torto and Dr Ayuka Fombong. These studies involved pilot surveys on the health of honeybees, their pests and parasites, as well as their pollination services, in relation to beekeeping practices in East Africa.
“Through this project, I acquired knowledge and embraced the “message” regarding honeybees – their importance to livelihoods through commercial products such as honey, and to agriculture as pollinators. As a result, I felt a great desire to understand these insects more. Therefore, in 2012, I enrolled for an MSc degree at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), to investigate the possible link between honeybee nutrition, health and diverse hive types. My studies, which I conducted at the South Eastern Kenya University (SEKU) Kitui, eastern Kenya, also investigated the extent to which honeybees are genetically related,” says Fiona.
In December 2014, Fiona was awarded an Organisation for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD) Postgraduate Training Fellowship, to undertake PhD studies at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, starting in April 2015. She will be working with Profs. Robin Crewe and Christian Pirk, and Dr. Yusuf Ahmed Abdullahi, himself anicipe alumni. Her research aims towards advancing knowledge on bee parasites, especially in regard to how they manage to dominate their hosts’ colonies.
Yet another major milestone for Fiona came in February 2015, when she was accepted for the AWARD Fellowship, a highly competitive, merit-based, career-development programme, which aims to foster and mentor women agricultural scientists across sub-Saharan Africa.
“I applied for the AWARD Fellowship because I am now at the point in my career where hard work or intellectual ability are no longer the sole distinguishing factors from my peers. To excel, I need to be able to address the challenges in balancing my life as a woman and as a researcher,” she explains.
The AWARD Fellowship pairs the fellows with a mentor, and in Fiona’s case this will be Dr Masiga. Together, using tools provided by the Fellowship, they have devised a ‘purpose’, i.e, the overall goal that Fiona envisions for her professional career. She has stated it as: “‘To contribute towards empowering smallscale farmers, especially women, to improve their livelihoods through sustainable beekeeping and pollinator conservation”.
This sounds like a grand goal, but the Fellowship provides guidelines for fellows and their mentors to visualise a clear roadmap towards their purpose around three thrusts. The first is knowledge generation and dissemination, which allows the Fellow to understand the kind of research they need to undertake and how it can bring them closer to their purpose. Second, is in regard to their careers, enabling them to consider the jobs or roles that the Fellow should aim for, to maximise the ability to achieve their purpose. The third point relates to identifying and nurturing the interpersonal and scientific skills that the Fellow needs, to achieve their purpose.
The AWARD fellowship provides a mutually beneficial opportunity for Fiona and icipe. She is grateful that Dr Masiga will continue mentoring her, providing a link with icipe, the institute that has largely nurtured her dream to become a researcher.
“icipe appreciates the opportunity to collaborate with AWARD towards advancing Fiona’s career. Beyond the primary mission of providing her with the guidance that she needs, the Fellowship will also help to improve my skills as a mentor, by acquiring more formal tools for successive mentorship. Overall, this process creates a merger of missions between AWARD and icipe towards remedying the disproportionate representation of women in scientific research,” Dr Masiga notes.
For Fiona, the AWARD Fellowship has the additional benefit of equipping her with tools that will help her mentor other women working in agriculture, to contribute to their ability to realise their dreams, as she herself has done.
Written by Liz Ng’ang’a