Zainab Olaitan, from Nigeria, is pursuing her PhD in Political Science at the University of Pretoria. She is researching the impact of gender quotas on the substantive representation of women in Africa. Her research is based on the assumption that women’s increased participation in politics and governance improves the lives of women in the country.

Thanks to Zainab’s academic success, she became the first student in her secondary school cohort to be admitted on merit to the University of Lagos, at the age of 16. Understanding that the political system is where change in Nigeria will come from, she opted to study Political Science. In university, she engaged in many activities, from debating, to politics, to religious activities and volunteering. She excelled in debating, becoming the best debater in her university in 2014, and the best female debater at the All Nigerian Universities Debating Championship (ANUDC) 2015 and 2016 editions.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science with First Class Honours from the University of Lagos, Zainab completed her second degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Cape Town as a 2018 Mandela Rhodes Scholar. In the same year, her academic paper titled Enlightenment Ideas and Colonialism was selected for presentation at the 42nd World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology held at University of Witwatersrand. In 2019 she received a Mastercard Foundation scholarship and went on to complete a Master of Arts degree in Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria. In the same year she published her first academic paper titled ‘The role of African union in fostering women’s participation in peacebuilding in Sierra Leone’. Zainab is keenly interested in contributing to research on political thought, gender, conflict and peace studies, African politics and representation.