Sunshine Blogger Award Nomination

1 August 2018

Editor

Yesterday we received a nomination many miles away from Africa – a nomination for Sunshine Blogger Award by The Journal of Stories in Science based in the United States. We are very excited by this nomination. We feel that the nomination is a recognition of our little work to enhance the visibility of Nigerian and African scientists which we hope would help to inspire the future generation of African scientists.

What is the Sunshine Blogger Award?

We learned that the award is a peer recognition of the inspiring, creative and motivational work done by bloggers. It is passed from one blogger to another, and each nominee passes the nomination on to 11 of their favourite bloggers to keep it going. By accepting the award nomination, one follows a few rules:

Thank the blogger(s) who nominated you and link back to their blog.
Answer 11 questions the blogger asked you.
Nominate 11 new blogs to receive the award and ask them 11 new questions.
List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award in your post and/or on your blog.

We deeply thank The Journal of Stories in Science for nominating our blog for this award. We are very pleased to respond to the questions

What is the story behind your blog?

Since 2013, we have been running public engagement activities in Nigeria and a few other African countries to inspire the future generation of African scientists and enhance public understanding, trust and support for science. Through this, we came to meet and interact with over a thousand students and also learned that many of these students often see scientific innovation as a thing of the West, partly because of the lack of visible science role models around them and/or stories of science driven by African scientists. In response, we started Science Communication Hub Nigeria to enhance the visibility of scientists in Nigeria and Africa and make them and their science stories accessible to students and the public.

What has been your biggest struggle when it comes to blogging?

We are all scientists, busy in the lab and often frustrated by failed experiments, grant or article rejections. Alongside, we volunteer to run Science Communication Hub Nigeria. So it is usually difficult getting the a good time to dedicate to our blog.

Where do most of your readers or listeners come from?

As you would expect, over 60% of our readers come from Nigeria. Surprisingly, this is followed by the United Kingdom, United States, Malaysia and Maldives.

What is one thing you wish people knew about your blog?

That we are always thankful when they read and share our stories

What is one way you relieve stress at the end of the day?

Sometimes sitting quietly to watch the beautiful sky or just let the brain wander

What destination in the world would you like to visit next?

Florida

What will your blog be like in 5 years?

We hope it would develop into a science network that Nigerian and African students would visit to find mentors or inspiring stories, journalists to find science experts and scientists to identify potential collaborators.

Where do you find inspiration for your blog posts?

Often social media posts by Nigerian users about science or scientists. We also get a lot of inspiration from The Journal of Stories in Science, Ghana Scientific, Traces Dreams, among others.

Dogs or cats?

Cats

What would you do if you received a donation of $10,000 for your blog?

We would definitely expand to run more activities and attract visitors. For example, in addition to science stories, we organise a radio programme called “Ask A Scientist” in Nigeria, which allows scientists to talk about their work to the public and respond to public questions. We would invest in that to make it happen more often and across all regions of Nigeria.

What is the one quote that inspires you?

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step

Answers provided by Mahmoud Bukar Maina

Now that we have answered the questions, we are excited to nominate

Questions for our Nominees