Diversity and Inclusion in Chemical Sciences: The Untold Story for a Black child.

 

STEM programmes of Southern African universities, particularly larger universities, continue to struggle attracting and retaining talented black African students. Indeed, many black African students tend to gravitate towards careers in finance, medicine, and trade jobs. For those who do pursue a STEM career, engineering and tech focused fields such as computer science tend be more attractive. Thus, despite being the population majority in Southern Africa, black Africans are woefully underrepresented in the chemical sciences field. While many factors contribute towards the low number of black chemical science students, we believe a major cause to be the poor education on the versatility and value of a chemical science degree and the importance of chemical sciences in the modern world. Many STEM degrees, chemical sciences included, focus on giving students flexibility in their curriculum, providing them with a broad range of knowledge and skills in contrast to many fields such as accounting and medicine where the curriculum is much more rigid and focused. While the STEM approach has many advantages, it also creates mysticism surrounding the career paths available to a chemical science graduate, as there is no immediate and obvious career awaiting post-graduation. The onus is on the student to leverage the skills learnt into a career path suited to their talents and interests. We believe this mysticism to be a significant barrier in dissuading young black Africans students to chemical sciences. This is particularly felt in communities crippled with financial constraints, where resources such as internet access are scarce, further making it difficult to dispel the mysticism. Additionally, in such communities, there is significant societal and familial pressure to pursue a degree which will lead to a well-paying career that benefits said community, making chemical sciences seem even more unappealing. As students who grew up in such a community and having seen many of our peers dissuaded for the reasons listed above, communities nowadays should aspire to change that. At this point in time there is dire need  to shed light on the field of chemical sciences to black African communities, its importance in society and how to leverage the skills learnt into a successful career amongst many other topics. Careers in chemical sciences play a critical role in communities ranging from water chemists who maintain safety standards, to geochemists who help bring income and jobs into these communities; thus the hope to shine a spotlight on many of these careers is much needed and erection of a strong foundation for  long-standing connection with  communities by creating a voluntary database of students interested in chemical sciences, to support and lend assistance in navigating their way through the system.

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