Meet the ‘Queen’ who wants to use maths to solve problems in her village

Mathematics is generally regarded as a no-go area for ladies in most parts of the world particularly Africa.

This narrative, however, is being challenged and rewritten by the current generation of females who are venturing into all fields and making a huge impact.

ABC News Ghana has observed one of such people, Cameline Orlendo, a Kenyan National who has big plans of using Mathematics to change the lifestyle of her people in Western Kenya.

Cameline intends to apply mathematics in solving problems in her hometown ranging from finding solutions to diseases, researching into its causes and developing long lasting solutions to it and also teach young people particularly ladies coding and other principles in mathematics.

She makes the case that mathematics could be applied to every facet of human life to improve or cause a change for the better.

Cameline Orlendo’s mastery of mathematics has resulted in the alias ‘Maths Queen’, ABC News Ghana can report.

She adds that her passion for mathematics and the background where she comes from motivates her to keep get going, when she faces challenges in her studying of mathematics and its application.

“When I began doing maths we were learning the theoretical part of algebra but I think in my second year I came to realise that maths can be used to solve a lot of things in the world. It can solve things on field dynamics, it can solve things in biology and that is where my interest really is because where I come from there are a lot of diseases. Mostly in Africa we are more towards the control of it rather than trying to find out the origins and the scientific component of it and hence that can help us to really control the disease. I can guess it is a combination of my passion and background that drove me to do my studies in disease dynamics” she detailed in an interview with Femafricmaths, a page on Facebook dedicated to telling the stories of excelling ladies in the field of mathematics and related courses.

Cameline Orlendo is a recent graduate of the University of Glasgow where she successfully completed her PhD in Mathematics specialising in applied mathematics.

Her thesis was aimed at finding out how the immune system of a sheep evolves towards an infection.

Caroline has dedicated herself to the study of mathematics having studied it for her undergraduate studies, and subsequently obtaining a Postgraduate degree in mathematics before going on to read her PhD.

The Maths Queen disclosed that there are a series of activities that she has embarked on and initiatives she has rolled out that are ongoing in selected schools in Kenya to teach mostly girls to appreciate the course better.

Cameline added that together with some colleagues of hers, they have been running a maths clinic for students in Senior High Schools for the past 7 years.

She explained that during vacations, they spend time with them teaching and taking them through practical lessons for them to see in reality the application of what they learn.

“We have done some outreaches to girls, not necessarily girls boys in high schools. We are teaching them about maths and how fun it is and how important it is. We have run the maths camps for 7 years whereby we go to high schools in Kenya for weeks, I think two weeks during the School holidays and sometimes we even invite them into the university where they are able to learn coding, they are able to see the computers and they are able to see fun things that the codes are doing which is really good” Caemine Orlendo stated in the interview monitored by ABC News Ghana