Nigeria, Nov. 29 -- t was the weekend, and the first story that caught my attention in the entertainment section was about a female engineer who had become an actress in Nollywood. The interview tried to unravel how she moved from the rigid world of engineering into the fluid world of performance, gliding between the two as though switching languages. But what fascinated me even more was not her acting; it was the simple fact that she had been a female engineer in the first place, an idea that still startles many people, as though it is an arithmetic error in the cultural equation. And that is how my internal conversation began.



For a long time, people have behaved as though brilliance alone is enough to study and master any field, ig...