Name: Apiwe Hotele
Role/Occupation: Technology Commercialization Specialist at SARAO, Founder of the Enlighten tutoring app and the IMBASA programme
Country: South Africa
Apiwe Hotele works as a technology commercialisation specialist at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO). Her duties involve introducing new products made at SARAO to the market as well as initiating development projects in the Northern Cape, where the famous MeerKAT telescope is located. One of Hotele's biggest achievements was designing and building the multi-sensory monitoring system for the MeerKAT telescope’s oil-immersed and liquid-cooled grid supercomputer; she said that “seeing the system work and knowing that I built it from scratch is quite an accomplishment for me personally.”
Surprisingly, Hotele never considered computer science as a career path, “ I did not even know it [computers] existed. I used to see computers but I did not know the theory behind them”. Initially, she aspired to be a medical doctor, however due to the poor educational facilities in her disadvantaged community, she was unable to qualify to study medicine. Her dreams were shattered and she was depressed. Incidentally at that point when she would fetch water from the communal tap she would meet students with similar grievances due to the lack of appropriate educators and she reach the realisation that she was not alone, “from that day onwards I made a promise to myself that I would improve the mathematics and science situation in disadvantaged communities.” She would always wonder, “how could I ensure that students from rural areas receive quality tutoring in mathematics and science?” And then she found a solution and created the Enlighten app, an online tutoring application that offers remote tutoring services to disadvantaged communities in mathematics and science. She still gets excited whenever she thinks about it, “I cannot explain how I feel every time I think about this, the technology is designed specifically for their needs.”
Hotele's biggest motivation is her six year old daughter and she works hard to ensure that her daughter grows up in an enriching environment, “I would fail as a mother if my daughter has to face the same problems I faced because I could not do anything about them.” Another source of inspiration to her are the many opportunities now available that were previously withheld from people of colour during Apartheid; she feels that “one thing that our freedom fighters left us with is access, we have access to things they did not have access to. It is our duty to carefully choose what we do with this access and to ensure that we open doors wide enough for future generations to enter freely.”
Hotele likens being a woman in STEM to being on a rollercoaster ride with alternating good and bad days and feels that as such your responsibilities extend beyond your workspace to society as a whole, “other women look at you and admire you, some look at you and think “well do you really think you can do it?” Then you get men who are generally okay and men who judge you and think you are trying to prove a point. You constantly have to prove yourself merely because you are a young black female engineer/scientist.” Her thoughts with regards to women entering the STEM field is that “there is still a long way to go, but women are coming together from all parts of the world to create an environment that accommodates females, so please do not be discouraged by the environment… it's not about how long it takes to get to the finish line, it’s about the process of getting there… Walk your journey with pride and never compare yourself with others.”
She initiated #Breakingthestereotype at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, an annual event focused on motivating young female scientists and engineers. Through this event, Hotele aims “to dismantle the mind set that science/engineering is for an elite few. Science is for hard workers, ambitious and dedicated people. It has nothing to do with gender or colour.”
Without a doubt she believes that Africa is a land of opportunity and she personally feels that “the continent is making a steady progress but… we need to move faster, there is a lot to be done. The fourth industrial revolution is here!” She also shares her thoughts on the four areas that Africa as a continent needs to focus on namely, data scientists and data analysts, education technology, agriculture and entrepreneurship. These points were discussed in further detail during the interview.
Read further to engage more closely with Apiwe Hotele's ideas as she shines her telescopic vision on the world of STEM, a vision possibly more inspiring than the one provided by the famous MeerKAT telescope which she helped to construct.
Apiwe Hotele was interviewed by Dhruti Dheda, the founder of the African Steminist on behalf of Geeky Girl Reality. The full interview can be found here.
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