U-RISE – Chinenye Anikwenze: From an Academic in History to an Unconventional Advocate for Responsible and Inclusive AI
By Fawzia Zehra Kara-Isitt
Sometimes a story finds you before you go looking for it.
When ACM-W Communications Chair Çiğdem Şengül first encountered Chinenye Anikwenze’s writing, it wasn’t through a polished tech profile or a conference keynote. It was through an opinion piece on an online news channel called ‘The Cable’ that popped up on an everyday social media platform and stopped her mid-scroll. It was titled “X’s AI is undressing women in public, and the guardrails are non-existent,” and continued to explain in the world of AI deepfakes, a woman’s “dignity matters less than the entertainment”. Exploring Chinenye’s wider body of work – her essays, her blogs, her technical writing, her community projects – we had to connect. What followed was not just an interview about technology, but a reflection on courage, curiosity, culture, and the quiet determination it takes to step into spaces you were never explicitly invited into.
An Unconventional Beginning: When History Meets HTML
Chinenye’s journey began not in a computer science lab, but in the history department of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. As a History and International Studies student, she had a clear vision: to work in an embassy, immerse herself in international relations, and make a difference through diplomacy. She went to an embassy once as a young girl and loved its serene environment. Fascinated by diplomacy and global systems, she decided to study international relations so that one day she could be qualified to work in such an environment.
But by her first day at university, reality hit differently. The curriculum wasn’t what she expected. The closest course to International Relations she could study was History. Disillusioned but determined, she wrote a long essay to her lecturer, Dr Ngozika Obi-Ani, asking for guidance. Obi-Ani took her under her wing and introduced her to academic writing and research to express herself. Rather than giving up, she leaned into writing, research, and self-directed learning. Soon, Chinenye was publishing papers and presenting at conferences at a very young age! Writing became both her anchor and her bridge.
Yet something was missing. “There wasn’t really a [career] pathway with history unless I got higher education, maybe a Masters or PhD,” she reflects.
It was through a practical necessity at the age of 21, taking on freelance work to sustain herself, that she first came across coding, and that’s where she pivoted to. Email marketing templates led to editing HTML and CSS code. She started with no idea what those technologies were, but her curiosity unlocked a whole new world.
“I just wanted to see how it works. I heard HTML and CSS were something to do with computer programming. So, I figured, OK, let me just look this up anyway and see how it works.”
Then followed the lightbulb moment when she started watching tutorial videos explaining programming basics.
“Wait, I’m already doing the logic. It’s sort of like I’m doing a bit of this with these email templates. When one clicks this button, it does this action. I don’t need to be doing calculus. I don’t need to be doing mathematics at this stage as a programmer. I just needed to understand how and when instructions worked. Yeah, let me just give this a try. I can do this. In fact, I love it!”
That realisation, paired with the immediate feedback loop with frontend development, became her turning point. For the first time, programming felt accessible, tangible.
From then on, Chinenye taught herself relentlessly from what she calls “the University of YouTube, Coursera, and Udemy”, building confidence not through credentials, but through deployment. When Chinenye started, she set the same timeline she’d given herself at university: four to five years to master this field. Within months, she’d built her first to-do list program from scratch, mainly using her knowledge and logic, with no tutorials or copy-pasting code from other sites. These small victories of developing small pieces of code at the beginning of her adventures in programming meant far more to her than publishing her first mobile app on the App Store and Google Play.
Bridging Worlds: How History Shaped Her Code
What emerges clearly from Chinenye Anikwenze’s story is that her move into technology was not a sudden leap, but a gradual discovery. The same habits that had shaped her academic life, from reading closely, asking better questions and noticing patterns, simply found a new medium. That realisation mattered. It reframed programming not as an elite pursuit but as a structured language and one she was already fluent in through writing and research.
Many developers might see a history degree as irrelevant to tech. Chinenye sees it as her secret weapon. Where others saw a steep technical barrier, she saw opportunity. Chinenye speaks candidly about the fear that accompanied those early steps: the worry of not being “technical enough,” of being exposed as an outsider. But she did not wait for permission. Instead, she built.
“You stop arguing with yourself when the created project begins to exist,” she says. “When it’s live. When someone else is using it. History always teaches that everything has something that precedes it. So, for me, particularly with history, it’s like if something fails, you just need to trace it. Trace it to the roots. What’s breaking?”
That history mindset, with the ability to reverse-engineer to trace causes and analyse patterns, became her philosophy for debugging and creation. As for her copywriting background? That gave her something many technically trained developers typically lack: “understanding and empathy for the user at a deeper level”. Chinenye explained that copywriting really makes one think of the client and the audience. “It’s more of putting myself in the user’s shoes. I’m always reverse-engineering the user’s journey.”
This fusion of skills of analytical thinking from history, user-focused design from copywriting, and technical execution from programming has made Chinenye a rare and valuable voice in tech.
“If I had done tech from the very beginning, I would be so tunnel-visioned on getting all the languages, on being maybe the best at JavaScript, the best at TypeScript, trying to write the most complex function. But at the end of the day, what matters is the person you’re building it for. Do they like what you’re building? Is it even helpful?”
Throughout her journey, Chinenye resists the idea that her path was unusual because it was fragmented. Instead, she frames it as responsive and shaped by curiosity, necessity, and a willingness to begin before certainty arrives.
Imposter Syndrome and the Validation That Keeps Her Going
Despite her rapid growth, Chinenye still battles imposter syndrome. She smiles and adds unassumingly,
“I’m actually shocked that you reached out to me because I genuinely didn’t even think that I was doing anything really. I just thought, oh, I’m in my own little corner working on some things.”
What keeps her going? Validation of her work by others. Seeing her work published. Hearing users praise the apps she’s built.
Seeing her work live in the world became Chinenye’s antidote to imposter syndrome. From building mobile applications like Balanceè to leading the front-end development of Homnics, a web-based EMR and telemedicine platform, each deployment reinforced her sense of belonging in tech.
Balanceè began as a personal challenge to move beyond web development and into mobile engineering. Through Balanceè, she gained hands-on experience navigating the complexities of mobile deployment, device-specific constraints, and live app management across major platforms.
Chinenye joined Homnics as an intern and was retained full-time for her contributions. The mission resonated deeply with her. “Health is the most important thing in life,” she says. Despite limited resources, she manually implemented internationalisation features, enabling the platform to support English, Igbo, French, and additional African languages. Seeing the system used at medical outreaches, including deployments by the American Association of Nigerian Physicians (ANPA) in 2025 with expansion plans to continue in 2026, was deeply validating.
Each release, whether for healthcare or mobility, became proof that this was exactly where she belonged. When doubt creeps in, she calls her friends. She opens the app. She reads the feedback. She reminds herself: This was my handiwork.
Building AI for Africa
Her trajectory into AI-based projects followed a similar pattern to her earlier projects; one not driven by trend, but by relevance and a real necessity. Working with African languages, healthcare contexts, and local systems made it impossible to ignore how poorly many technologies accounted for culture and lived experience. For Chinenye, AI was never just about models or performance metrics. It was about consequence and a sense of responsibility. She noticed who was missing from the datasets. Whose languages were unsupported.
Chinenye’s most ambitious work lies with Tonative, a community-driven initiative focused on extending AI datasets for African languages. Africa has over 2,000 languages. Yet most AI models only work well in English, French, Spanish, and a handful of other mainstream languages. For billions of people across the continent, AI remains inaccessible. The absence of linguistic representation in AI systems is not a minor oversight; it is a structural exclusion. She explained,
“When I chat with Gemini, ChatGPT or Claude in my indigenous language (speech-to-text, text-to-speech), they don’t quite get the language correctly. It doesn’t get the audio. So, if we are doing text-to-speech in a country like Nigeria, it’s not really good for us yet.”
The Tonative project validates datasets for African languages, starting small but with a vision to scale. For Chinenye, this isn’t just a technical challenge. It’s personal: “If by 2050, one in three young persons is going to be from Africa, then AI will be more integrated in our lives. We need to be part of the conversation. Our data needs to be correct and accurate.”
She was inspired by Ijeoma Onwuzulike, the founder of Nkọwa okwu a project that created an Igbo dictionary and API. When she discovered Nkọwa okwu, it struck her: this can be done. Now, Chinenye is carrying that torch forward with Tonative, founded by Sharon Ibejih and Cynthia Amol.
“Africans are usually communal beings. She continued. If it’s something that is related to our culture, to our background, our villages, our language, our food, we are ready to jump in on it. It is all about promoting the work we’re doing and getting more people to contribute.”
Holding AI to Account When Ethics Fails
In early January 2025, Chinenye logged into X (formerly Twitter) expecting New Year’s resolutions. Instead, she saw something that made her blood boil: people were using Grok AI to generate images of fully clothed women and “undress” them publicly. She realised just how normalised this harm has become and how easily such tools circulated, how casually they were discussed, and how quickly responsibility was deflected. The technology itself was not new, she noted. What was new was the scale, the speed, and the absence of meaningful guardrails.
“What disturbed me most,” she explains, “wasn’t that the technology existed. It was how little urgency there was around stopping its misuse. If these edge cases are not properly tested before being deployed to production, if they’re not properly checked at this nascent stage of AI integration, it’s really going to be downhill from there.”
Her critique was not abstract. It was rooted in her lived experience as a woman, a technologist, and a member of communities disproportionately affected by algorithmic harm. She noticed how often discussions about ethics were framed as optional add-ons, rather than foundational design requirements. And she noticed who bore the cost when systems failed.
For Chinenye, neutrality is a myth. The technology reflects the values and biases of those who build it. AI systems trained without cultural context, gender awareness, or accountability mechanisms do not merely malfunction; they reproduce harm at scale. And when platforms respond slowly or not at all, then silence becomes complicity.
Her work in AI has therefore been guided by a simple but demanding question: Who is this serving, and who is it putting at risk? The same questions had run through her technical projects, her writing, and her community work. Whether supporting African language datasets, contributing to healthcare-focused applications, or mentoring others navigating tech spaces, she insists that inclusion cannot be retrofitted. It must be present at inception. Through collaborative initiatives and shared learning spaces, she has seen how collective voices can challenge seemingly immovable systems. Speaking up has a cost, but not speaking carries one too, and it is rarely distributed evenly. When Chinenye faces doubt, and she does, often, she asks herself one question:
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
It’s become her mantra. Her guiding principle. Her way of pushing through fear.
This year, she has gamified the pursuit of growth with a ‘100 Rejections’ challenge. She’s applying to fellowships, to roles in automation, to AI safety initiatives, to opportunities she might have once disqualified herself from. She puts on a brave smile and adds, “The other day I was like, wait, I haven’t gotten my rejection email for today. And then I opened my mail, and I saw a rejection. I was like, yeah, that’s the way to go. Next! What’s the worst that can happen?”
Once that question is asked, she believes, decisions change. Movement becomes intentional rather than reactive. Confidence follows action, not the other way around.
For women considering a move into tech, especially those from non-traditional backgrounds; for them, her message is: use the skills you already have. Writing, research, communication, cultural awareness, whatever it is, these are not detours from technology, but foundations for better systems. And to especially young Black women considering a career in tech, her message is clear:
“You are enough. You don’t need to add on. As long as you’re improving on yourself, you’re enough just as you are in this space. Show up with your skills. Your skills are going to speak for you despite the bias.”
Advice for Her Former Self — and for You
When the conversation turns to advice, Chinenye does not prescribe a single route, nor does she romanticise difficulty. Instead, she returns to her mantra. If Chinenye could speak to her former self, the 21-year-old copywriter hesitantly clicking on her first HTML tutorial, she would still say this:
“Don’t doubt yourself too much. Allow yourself to be a beginner. The brain has neural plasticity. As you’re learning, it’s rearranging everything. It’s OK to not know things. It’s OK to be a beginner in the field. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Chinenye believes that women, particularly those on the edges of technology, are rarely encouraged to inquire. Too often, the narrative is written in advance: who belongs, who qualifies, who gets to lead. Chinenye’s own journey required her to step outside those scripts and decide what she wanted her life in tech to stand for. “Once you start asking yourself that question,” she reflects, “your decisions change. You stop moving by fear or expectation, and you start moving by intention.”
What Success Means to Her and the Legacy She’s Building
For Chinenye, success isn’t a destination. It’s cumulative. First-time Git commit? Success. Learning about a tool and a little more the next day? Success. Publishing an article. Success. Getting featured in the ACM-W newsletter. Success. Having her app on the Play Store? Success. Each small win counts.
Chinenye’s journey is far from over. She’s exploring grad school and scholarship opportunities in a shifting political landscape of changing rules for student visas. She remains deeply grateful for her brother’s and family’s constant support. Her discipline comes from her family; her father taught her to be meticulous, and her brother, Udoka Anikwenze, who has always been and is her champion supporter, always encouraged her to be resourceful and consider different perspectives.
“You’re representing your family. Whatever you’re doing, it should be worth doing well. A good name is worth more than riches. That representation of my culture, representation of my family and that’s what keeps me pushing.
She speaks about community not as an accessory to success, but as its infrastructure. To grow, she seeks out people who share her values and challenge her with care. She is an active member of The Girl’s Manual, led by Miyyah Ogunbanwo. This peer mentorship group helps Millennial and Gen Z women grow and support each other at every career stage. She advocates for more safe spaces like this. If a space doesn’t exist, she believes in building it.
When asked what legacy she wants to leave, she doesn’t hesitate:
“I refuse to let Africa and Nigeria be an afterthought in the world of AI and technology. I want us to be a leading voice in the industry. My goal is to champion the development and progress of our continent. We have the population, but we need to translate that population to impact.”
Black History Month: Reflecting on How Far We’ve Come
As a Black woman in tech, she is acutely aware of how often the burden of being an afterthought in the Tech world falls unevenly. Black History Month, she reflects, is not only about celebration but also about continuously recognising that progress is built on sustained courage. She recalls discovering a 1959 university rejection letter for a now-renowned doctor, Marion Gerald Hood, solely because of his skin colour.
“Understanding the weight of this history requires more than a seasonal check-in. We need dedicated, ongoing reflection to understand what happened, what is still happening, and how we actually move forward.”
And moving forward, for her, means lifting others up.
“We really need to promote the voices of women, of Black women, of Black people in tech. And also encourage more women and more colours, languages and nationalities too, to get into this space too and be part of its make up. When you see someone that looks like you in those rooms (leaders like Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chimamanda Adichie, Bozoma Saint John, and Mo Abudu), you just think, OK, I can be in those rooms as well.”
As ACM-W Global marks Black History Month, Chinenye’s story reminds us that history is not only something we study, but also something we actively write. Sometimes in essays. Sometimes in code.
Final Words: Show Up. Your Voice Matters.
As we close this interview, Chinenye leaves us with one final, powerful message, added with fierce conviction:
“Show up unapologetically. Don’t disqualify yourself beforehand. There are areas in tech that need your expertise. There are areas in tech that need your unique perspective.”
From a history degree to a GitHub account. From copywriting gigs to leading front-end development on an EMR platform deployed across Nigeria. From a reserved introvert to a fierce advocate for AI safety and African language preservation. Chinenye Anikwenze isn’t waiting for the world to hand her opportunities. She’s creating opportunity. Challenging the norm. Rewriting the rules.
Her journey reminds us that unconventional routes are not about certainty, but about courage in motion.
Keep walking your winding route, keep writing your code — and don’t wait. The worst that can happen might just be the beginning of something fantastic!
Connect with Chinenye Anikwenze:
LinkedIn: Chinenye Anikwenze
Portfolio: https://chinenyeanikwenze.com/portfolio
Writing: Undebugged Logs (Substack)
Passions: Tonative – African Language AI | AI Safety
References
- Ahegel. “From Arts to Tech: Chinenye Anikwenze’s Journey and Experiences at Homnics.” Available at: https://ahegel.com/chinenye-blog
- Anikwenze, C. (2026). “Hard-Coded: The Beliefs You Didn’t Choose.” Undebugged Logs. Available at: https://undebuggedlogs.substack.com/p/hard-coded-the-beliefs-you-didnt
- Anikwenze, C (2021). “The Long Walk to Equality: Historical Influences on Women in Igbo Society.” The Republic. Available at: https://rpublc.com/december-20-january-21/the-long-walk-to-equality/
- Anikwenze, C (2026). “What OpenAI’s Health Push And Google’s AI Rollouts Really Mean for Africa.” CIO Africa. Available at: https://cioafrica.co/what-openais-health-push-and-googles-ai-rollouts-really-mean-for-africa/
- Anikwenze, C. (2026). “X’s AI is undressing women in public and the guardrails are non-existent.” The Cable. Available at: https://www.thecable.ng/xs-ai-is-undressing-women-in-public-and-the-guardrails-are-non-existent/
- CNN (2025). “Africa has thousands of languages. Can AI be trained on all of them?” Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/world/africa/african-languages-ai-spc
- Nature (2025). “AI models are neglecting African languages — scientists want to change that.” Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02292-5