Nigerian ICT genius gains admission to a US university at the age of 13

Emmanuella Mayaki, a Nigerian-born thirteen-year-old, has set a new record as one of the youngest people to be accepted into a university in the United States.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria, Mayaki has been accepted into the Program for the Exceptionally Gifted at Mary Baldwin University in the United States to study Computer Science in the spring.

Mayaki’s letter of admission made available to NAN in Benin read, “Dear Emmanuella, congratulations on your acceptance to the Programme for the Exceptionally Gifted at Mary Baldwin University! Welcome to the PEG class of 2026.”

In her Scholastic Aptitude Test, she received a 91 percentile score of 1,300.

Mayaki’s personal achievement at the age of 11 in the year 2020 was the establishment of an Information Communications Technology Academy for girls in Abuja, Nigeria.

Her mission was to provide long-term empowerment for girls to learn digital skills and close the digital literacy gap, as well as to train and equip children in digital technology.

Mayaki stated that the academy’s vision was to secure the future of the girl child.

The academy, named ‘CodeKid’, which was incorporated under the companies and Allied Matters Act 1990, on the second day of December 2020, with registration number (RC: 1741234), was set up to train the girl-child on the basics of computer literacy from simple Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint functions to the more complex skills like programming and coding.

The young tech developer and programmer has always nursed a strong drive to share knowledge and positively impact people, especially the girl-child.

This led to her decision to launch the after-school, weekend and holiday club in Nigeria. Mayaki noted that this programming school was influenced by her experience with the United Kingdom after-school club experience, which she successfully duplicated in Nigeria.

Her focus is on the girl-child who falls within the age range of 6 to 15, which includes a beginners’ class to Information and Communications Technology.

Here, newbies to the endless possibilities of the ICT are tutored on Introduction to Computer, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Desktop Publishing, WordPress, Graphics design, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, among others such as object-oriented programming – Python and Java.

In addition, Data Science Nigeria, invited young Mayaki as a guest speaker during their Interactive Workshop for kids and teens with the theme, “How to start a future in Data Science and AI”.

Besides, in May 2022, she was nominated as a STEM icon by STEM Kids New York City. The organisation went on to name her as their inspiration after researching social justice issues around their target audience for their app.

Mayaki was first offered a teaching appointment in the UK while she was aged 11 at the Southfields Primary School in Coventry, England.

Her preferred area of study is in the field of Computer Science.

NAN reports that her passion for Information and Communications Technology beginning from the basics of desktop publishing which includes Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Corel Draw came when she was aged just seven.