Irene Mpofu

Irene Mpofu, a South African, is registered for a master’s degree in Law at the University of Pretoria. Irene plans to join the National Prosecuting Authority as a state prosecutor specializing in fraud, money laundering and forensic auditing. Irene has completed two undergraduate degrees, one in law and the other in commerce, both from the University of the Witwatersrand, and is now pursuing two master’s degrees; one in law and one in fraud, risk, and money laundering.

Irene’s compelling motivation in all her work is to make South Africa a safer space for the 30 million women who live in there. She points to the low prosecution rates of white-collar crimes in South Africa (less than 7%) and unequivocally believes that women and children are the unseen victims of white-collar crimes, which most frequently steal funds designated for projects in impoverished communities.

As a young woman Irene witnessed a great deal of injustice against women and children within her community. She has always been concerned by the inability of the current structures in South Africa to provide adequate redress for the women in her community, including her own mother. It is her mother’s journey of navigating life in South Africa as a black woman that motivated Irene to want to change the status quo for all women in South Africa. The passing of her mother in 2018 solidified this ambition to work hard for the women in her life and all women in South Africa.

Irene volunteers as a debating coach for the South African Schools Debating Board.  She coached the South African national junior debating team, which in 2017 the team was the youngest to reach the finals of the Asian World Schools Debating Championships in Thailand. She has also volunteered at the Wits Law Clinic, where she focused on obtaining housing assistance for low-income families in and around Johannesburg, South Africa.

Nomagugu Nyathi

Nomagugu Nyathi is a Zimbabwean studying Law at the University of Pretoria.  Her PhD thesis is titled “Fostering the right to be heard: A critical analysis of child participation in South Africa's criminal courts."  The study is driven by her conviction that children who participate in the criminal justice system must be afforded special protections. Nomagugu is a highly driven and passionate human rights activist. She is interested in building the agency of marginalized and vulnerable people, particularly women and children, using law as the main tool for social change. Her passionate commitment to  human rights is influenced  by her own experiences of growing up in Zimbabwe where human rights violations are increasingly the norm.

Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked in the social justice sector in South Africa where she gained extensive experience in developing and implementing rights-orientated projects. Inspired by her South African experience,  Nomagugu established a children's community project called Scotch-Scotch Bhaza, (named after a popular children’s song) in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. To date the project has reached over 100 children through its life-skills-oriented and inclusive play component and has connected disadvantaged children with educational opportunities. Nomagugu's vision is that this initiative will one day serve as a community law center providing pro-bono legal services to children facing various legal challenges.  

Nomagugu currently serves on the editorial team of the South African Journal on Human Rights (SAJHR), where she specializes in editing manuscripts relating to freedom of expression, access to information,  access to justice, rule of law and children's rights. Nomagugu's dream is to one day occupy an influential position in the African region to influence the laws and policies affecting children and young people.

Nomakhosi Ndiweni

Nomakhosi Ndiweni is a Zimbabwean student, currently pursuing her doctorate degree in Electronic Engineering at the University of Pretoria. She obtained a first class pass in her undergraduate degree in in Electronic Engineering,  and proceeded under a Beit Trust Scholarship to the University of Leeds, where she obtained a master’s degree with distinction in Embedded Systems Engineering.

Her research and career goal is to help reduce maternal and infant mortality in under-resourced settings through early prediction and detection of pregnancy-related complications. A major step on this pathway is her PhD research, which seeks to develop a point-of-care testing system. The system will use sweat to measure glucose and protein levels in pregnant women and machine algorithms to predict pregnancy complications, including hemorrhaging and pre-eclampsia.

Nomakhosi believes women and children are the backbone of every society. Their health and wellbeing cannot be ignored. She dreams of a day where Sub-Saharan Africa’s maternal mortality rates are so low that no death of a woman will be recorded due to causes that could have been avoided through early diagnostics and prevention.

Nomakhosi gives back to her community by motivating and mentoring young girls to pursue science and engineering at tertiary level and to reach their full potential.

Nothando Dube

Nothando Dube is a Zimbabwean currently pursuing a PhD at the Centre of Augmentative and Alternative Communication at the University of Pretoria. Nothando was orphaned at a young age and despite extreme financial hardship, completed her A levels. She obtained a government bursary and completed a bachelor’s degree in African languages. She then went on to teach in rural schools in Zimbabwe. Her passion for inclusion in education grew as she noted the number of children with disabilities who were out of schools and had never had any access to education. Children with disabilities are still hidden away in homes and cannot advocate for themselves. She received a scholarship to study for an MA in Special Educational Needs and Inclusion in the United Kingdom.

While Nothando is aware that the national policy environment in Zimbabwe limits the participation of children with disabilities in education, she is also acutely aware that, for children with disabilities, a major barrier to participation in education and society is the lack of communication modalities.

She saw that communication technologies for children with disabilities are unaffordable and inaccessible to many families in Zimbabwe, and decided to explore the effects of low-cost augmentative and alternative communication strategies such as the Picture Exchange Communication System for children with developmental disabilities. She is committed to training various communication partners, with a specific focus on siblings, as a pathway to building communication strategies for children with disabilities.  Nothando believes that giving children with communication disabilities a voice will enable them to participate more actively in society and advocate for their rights.

Rose Otema Baah

Rose Otema Baah is from Ghana and is a food scientist currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Pretoria. Her passion for food science and nutrition stems from her real-life experience as well as interactions with moderate to severely malnourished children in her community.

Her PhD research seeks to address child malnutrition and diet-related non-communicable diseases through the use of modern technologies to understand the macro and microstructure interaction of biopolymers. The aim of the study is to reduce the estimated glycemic index of sorghum meal, a staple food in west Africa, and to enhance food with health-promoting properties. The positive impact of a nutrient-dense intervention snack on the health of children over a short period has led her to explore innovations that can convert local produce into nutritious foods.

Her career objective is to use the skills and knowledge acquired from her research to build a long-term career in the health and wellbeing of school children in her country, and, internationally, by developing good food from indigenous crops, to promote good nutrition. She also dreams of leveraging her skills and expertise to help improve and sustain the school feeding program in Ghana by building a manufacturing plant that will focus on producing healthy snacks for children, mostly using the underutilized crops grown by small scale women farmers in the country.

Aside from being a food scientist, Rose is passionate about the empowerment of the girl child and seeks to continue mentoring young girls to become strong advocates for equal education and opportunities for the girl child.

Tebuhleni Nxumalo

Tebuhleni Nxumalo, from Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), is currently completing a PhD in Multidisciplinary Human Rights Law at the University of Pretoria. Having worked with survivors of child sexual abuse, her personal life experiences alongside those of other women led to the realization that “safe spaces” were no longer safe. Instead, sanctuaries like churches had been invaded by sexual predators dressed in priestly robes, hidden in plain sight.

Tebuhleni holds a master’s degree in Educational Psychology and believes that her multidisciplinary training gives her an edge in tackling the unique interplay of psychological, legal, and spiritual factors at play in the sexual abuse of adult women by men with religious authority. Her research focuses on accountability mechanisms for sexual violence in religious spaces, with a particular focus on adult women whose adult status assumes they are excluded from discourses of vulnerability, power, and consent in the context of gender-based violence in the church.

Tebuhleni is a wife, mother, daughter, sister, and a woman committed to making a difference. As her referees say, she is “that rare combination of an exceptionally brilliant mind paired with compassion, outstanding work ethic and commitment to justice.” “She is a born leader and inspires trust in others.”

Zainab Olaitan

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.

Zakiyya Laher

Zakiyya Laher is a South African enrolled in a PhD program at the Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication, at the University of Pretoria. She is a school-based speech therapist and audiologist working at a government-funded school. Her research focuses on the effectiveness of communication intervention approaches for persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD). Zakiyya’s extensive experience as a therapist has shown that intensive interaction opens possibilities for communication, teaching and learning for persons with PIMD. She is deeply passionate about creating communication opportunities for children who are frequently “written off” by society and aims to train teachers, therapists, families and school administrators to communicate with persons with PIMD.

When Zakiyya was growing up, her mother refused to perpetuate gender-based roles and her father had the strength, courage, and wisdom to nurture her goals in the face of societal and cultural constraints towards girls. These values passed on by her parents made her deeply passionate about creating communication and participation opportunities for children with complex communication needs who are frequently “unheard” and “unseen” in their homes, educational, and social environments.  It is a legacy she hopes to share with her colleagues and patients.

Zakiyya’s goals include undertaking evidence-based research that will assist and train families, teachers, therapists, nurses, and teaching assistants to interact and communicate with persons with PIMD in ways that enrich their own lives as well as those of children with PIMD.

She volunteers with support groups for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder, Down Syndrome, and PIMD. Zakiyya also organizes parent and staff training workshops on augmentative and alternative communication strategies for children with complex communication needs.