Asha turned failure into a valuable lesson in her life

Pregnancy is one of the barriers to secondary education. After becoming pregnant, one is forced to leave school.

Asha Abinallah, an ICT expert, was lucky to go back to school after she got pregnant in Form Four. The first born in a family of two children says their father introduced them to books at a very young age. This made Asha fall in love with reading.

“The first present I was given by my dad was an Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, at the age of seven as a birthday present. This was followed by books in small sizes to very big editions. I was so happy to receive the dictionary because it was a big book but I never knew what to do with it until at the age of 14 or 15. By the time I was 18, I had a collection of over 800 books,” she says.

Asha tells Woman that she was a very bright student in primary school but things took a turn after she joined secondary school. She resented school. She lost interest in studies and spent most of her time in the maize farms alone reading her books.

In her Form Four national examination, Asha passed in only one subject. She got a ‘C’ in English subject and failed terribly in the rest. “I had a ‘D’ somewhere but I don’t remember in which subject. I never had exercise books. It was all play and fun.”

She got pregnant at 18 and recalls it to be a chaotic and painful moment but with worthwhile memories she carries to-date.Later on, the mother of two got an opportunity to go back to school, for which she is very grateful because it brought her where she is today.

Prior to returning to school Asha followed in her mother’s footsteps and became a seamstress. She learned the skill from her mother, Mama Karim, who was a very popular tailor in Mbeya, running a small tailoring mart comprising 12 tailors.

Asha became passionate about clothing materials, making clothes and patterns. Her inquisitive mind always thought of the best cuts... “Designing and cutting was my best attribute.”

She observed, learned and became a good tailor herself. Although her mother was not happy with Asha being a tailor, she had no choice - given that her daughter had no other skills and was not educated enough to get a good job.

It is when Asha’s marriage failed that she realised she really wanted to go back to school. “My education journey has been a bit of a reversal approach. I repeated my Form Four exams in 2006 as a private candidate, and passed in all the five subjects. I did my A-levels at Sangu Secondary School in Mbeya in 2007, where I also passed. I graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam in 2010,” Asha says proudly.

She recently earned a Master’s degree in New Media from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. She has done a lot of intensive courses in Research, Internet Governance, Digital Skills, Data and Visualisation and Business Management. She also did a one-year advanced course in ‘Media Development in a Democratic Framework’ implemented by the Fojo Institute, Linnaeus University in Sweden.

Asha’s journey to the ICT world started after she registered on JamiiForums in early 2011. She joined the online network following a complaint by some member of Parliament on some information that was whistleblown on JamiiForums.

She became one of the most active members on JamiiForums and later volunteered to assist the social networking website in content quality control and associated activities.

The network nurtured her in all ICT key components and all the required resources needed in information, innovation, technology and research. It also provided her opportunities in a variety of courses.

Asha says that her life in the last ten years has been an abundance of ingredients of things that have built her in the woman and leader that she is today.

Her start-up, Media Convergency Company, was founded during this period and started operations on September 1, 2020. The company - comprising a team of eight people - is a multi-disciplinary ICT-cored company that appraises information and applies technological innovations and applications that provide impactful digital solutions.

The inspiration behind is based on the fact that ICT is no longer optional in today’s world and that there are many challenges to conquer. To prosper and develop at an individual or organisational level, attributes of ICT are key, she opines.

Just like other start-up owners, Asha faces challenges with her start-up. She says most of the challenges are exciting, for they channel her team towards “our learning curve of the dynamics of the ICT space in Tanzania.”

She advises girls and women to avoid having too many friends; only a few from whom you can benefit - and vice versa. Asha says measuring the worthiness of friends lies in what you usually speak about when you meet. The bigger part of the conversation should be about growing up, learning, improving and inspiring one another.

“Establish a skill set that you will excel in. Choose one thing you like doing - and which could be a source of income - and then bank on it. Make sure you know everything about it: know how to do it best and keep learning, read about it, dream about it, perfect it and, eventually, connect it to how it could improve your life and those of people around you.”

Confidence is another thing she stresses, saying it gives us strength to make decisions of what is best for us. Asha says relations are an integral part of what flourishes you as a woman or destroys your spirit.

“Deep down, the person to know if the relationship is working or not is you. Never cling to a relationship that brings out the worst version of you.”

Asha says that, as a teenage mother with a failed marriage - but with two wonderful children - her sincere wish and thought of ‘success’ was for her mother to attend her first degree graduation ceremony.

“When I remember that, I always laugh. For, then, because I hated school when growing up, that was the highest success I had ever imagined; but: what a very small dream it was. Years later, I live by, believe and vouch on the saying that ‘The sky’s the limit.’ Asha is also proud of the people who believed in her and shared her vision.

“These people are there with me each step, giving me support. My mother - my pillar and sub-conscious of what is right and wrong to this age - is the Number One person on this list. I have never taken that for granted. I am so very proud.” Had it not been for her mother, Asha believes she would never have been able to correct the mistakes of hating school, dealing with being a mother at a young age - or be the person she is today!