A heart for increasing access to quality education in Africa

CMU-Africa made a difference in the life of MSIT student Rahma Ahmed. “My dream is to be an educator with a purpose,” Rahma says. She plans to be an entrepreneur and have a foundation so that she can fund schools across Somalia to train doctors, engineers, educators, and scientists.

As an undergraduate student, she served as a peer mentor at her university. At CMU-Africa, she is a member of the Women in Tech club, which focuses on training women in the technology fields. The club started a training program, which teaches programming to women in undergraduate and graduate programs in Rwanda with Artificial Intelligence (AI) Saturdays. AI Saturdays Kigali Chapter is part of a wider program that runs in several African cities aimed at improving the knowledge of African engineers in AI.

Growing up as a refugee, Rahma had faced numerous challenges that helped in her resolve and determination to find a way to meet her full potential. After studying software engineering as an undergraduate student in Saudi Arabia, she was determined to continue her education. She applied to eighteen universities in different countries, but became discouraged when she found out that she would not be able to get the visa or scholarships needed.

When she learned about Carnegie Mellon University’s campus in Rwanda, she was elated because she could have access to the paperwork needed to study in Rwanda. She applied, and was accepted into the Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) program. 

CMU-Africa provided an opportunity for Rahma to follow a path to success and pursue her dreams. The Innovators Forward Fellowship Fund is helping her on that path.

Each year, CMU-Africa’s Innovators Forward Fellowship Fund is investing in building technically strong engineers, trained in the African context and prepared to make a transformative impact on their communities and the world. Give today to provide students just like Rahma the opportunity to pursue their dreams.