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Farida Mohammad Kabir was born in London, UK, on the 25^th of July 1992. Coming from Nigerian roots, Kabir had a bulk of her education on Nigerian soil. She attended primary school in Lagos and secondary school in Kaduna, Nigeria and then proceeded to study at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria from January 2009 to April 2014, graduating with a Bachelors of Science in Biological Science.

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In 2015, she was trained as a front line field epidemiologist by the Nigeria Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). She later got a scholarship from the Visiola Foundation to study software development in 2016. Kabir also holds an MBA from the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank. The above blend has given Kabir a collage of skillsets for impact. Summarily put, she is an epidemiologist, a software developer, and technology entrepreneur. Kabir is the team lead for Google Women TechMakers and co-organizer for Google Developer Group, Abuja. She is also the founder/CEO of OTRAC, a health technology company that develops enterprise software systems for the healthcare sector in Nigeria. Talk about a loaded vessel.

Career

Kabir started her career in public health as a data analyst with the NCDC during the 2014 – 2015 Ebola outbreak in the country. She has also worked with the Lassa fever emergency operations centre as the assistant communications officer under the social mobilization and communications unit of the NCDC. After her study scholarship from the Visiola Foundation, She went ahead to intern at hotels.ng, a software company. She has also worked on various software projects with companies like eForge solutions and SAMS. In 2017, Kabir made a move to the private sector to work in the area of health technology. She founded OTRAC, a health technology company that develops enterprise software systems for the healthcare sector in Nigeria. OTRAC was founded in 2017 and is currently active in Nigeria and South Africa. Kabir also served as the Federal ICT advisor for the Department of International Development (DFID)’s Partnership to Engage, Reform, and Learn (PERL) programme. This is a five-year project that focuses on strengthening government institutions and increasing citizen participation. This programme links governments and citizen groups to collectively address governance challenges for improved service delivery.

Current Engagements

As earlier stated, Kabir is the current ambassador and team lead for Google Women TechMakers Abuja. Google Women TechMakers is a program that supports and encourages more women to get into the STEM field and help those that are already in STEM. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. She is one of 100 women named in Leading Ladies Africa (LLA)’s 100 Most Inspiring Women in Nigeria list for 2019.

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In 2017, she was the only Nigerian among five Africans that was given an award by the French President, François Hollande, in recognition of her pioneering entrepreneurial strides in Health Technology.

Other activities

Kabir has been actively engaged in a lot, some of these include:

Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative, Member
World Health Organization AFRO, Member of the steering committee for developing and implementing the framework for scaling health innovations across Africa
Toastmasters International, Member
Center for Strategic Enterprise Development, Board Member
Africa Innovation Convention, Advisory Board
Google Women Tech Makers Abuja, Ambassador and Team Lead

Recognition and Publications

For her remarkable innovations and strides, Kabir has been recognized by the following:

Laureate du Digital Africa by French Development Agency (2017)
Innovator by Verdant Zeal Group (2017)
Guardian Woman by Guardian Newspapers (2018)
Nigeria’s 100 most inspiring women by Leading Ladies Africa (2019)
YTech100 by the Future Africa Project (2019)

She also has the following publications to her name:

From Zero to Mobile App – Building with Ionic Framework
Mobile Health and Telemedicine in Africa: Opportunities, Challenges, Modern Tools and Future Innovation
Applying a Gender Lens to Young People’s Access to Health Services: A transformative Approach
21st Century Skills in ICT Business.

Sources: Guardian NG Wikipedia Freejournal Featured Image Source: Wikipedia

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