“Growing up, I wanted the average African girl to name me as her role model,” says Ada Nduka Oyom. It’s a desire rooted in personal conviction, the kind that bends destinies and redefines futures. Her answer to systemic inequality wasn’t protest or politics, but code. And from that spark rose She Code Africa, now the continent’s largest tech sisterhood, shaping the future one girl at a time.
Ada’s journey began in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where she pursued microbiology yet found her truest passion in lines of code. One Google Student Ambassador meet-up, where she stood nearly alone as a woman among developers, crystallized a truth: this world needed her voice, and many others like her. Without waiting for permission, she built She Code Africa in 2016, a community forged from necessity, empathy, and vision.
What started as a few enthusiastic meetups grew into an ecosystem that now spans over 60,000 women across more than 20 countries. Ada didn’t just teach programming, she designed experiences: mentorship circles that bonded strangers into colleagues, hands-on workshops that turned novices into open-source contributors, and events where seasoned developers shared both wisdom and opportunities. Every line of code written in SCA is a step toward closing Africa’s gender gap in tech; every success story is a testament to collective purpose.
In its heartbeat lies a completion rate exceeding 93%, a figure that speaks volumes in a region where many begin initiatives only to see them fizzle. How? Ada committed to structure, assigning dedicated teams, securing funding, and forging partnerships with global giants like Google, FedEx, Zoho, and Bolt. When the Bolt partnership was announced in 2022, the collaboration wasn’t just headline-worthy, it was catalytic, offering training that reached women across four nations simultaneously.
Beyond She Code Africa, Ada co-founded Open Source Community Africa, a sister movement designed to shift the continent’s relationship with open-source development. Her efforts helped build a network of thousands contributing to projects that underpin the digital world, affirming that African-built code deserves global recognition.
Ada has earned accolades, Forbes Africa 30 Under 30, Developer Advocate of the Year, the ELOY STEM award, Digital Female Leadership in Germany, but those pale next to outcomes she measures in empowerment. A girl in Lagos who debugged her first Python script; a university graduate who grew confident enough to publish her first open-source library; a rural technologist who dreams of launching an app for her community. Each one carries Ada’s vision forward.
What makes her story so compelling isn’t just the scale of her impact, but the soul of it. Ada is neither a consultant nor a celebrator of optics, she is a craftsman of opportunity. She mentors, codes, travels to speak, listens to indigenous challenges, and molds solutions that respect local context. Her style of leadership is personal, precise, and permeable, inviting participation, not passive applause.
Ada’s story offers a richer narrative: that code is not cold, but catalytic; that community can be craft; that empowerment flavors every algorithm and unlocks dreams. And she continues to widen the aperture, venturing into developer relations at Google for Sub-Saharan Africa, serving on international boards to shape policy on AI ethics, nurturing networks that span gender and geography, ambition and ancestry.
In a world eager for grand gestures, Ada offers something more enduring: a sisterhood. One where skills are shared, voices amplified, and futures recoded. She’s bridging continents, connecting hearts through keys, and ensuring that when another African girl says she too wants to build software, she belongs.
That is the quiet revolution Ada Nduka Oyom is coding, an ecosystem of inclusion, resilience, and infinite possibility, one girl at a time.
