Tahira Mohamed scored a 252 overall on the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE).
She may be one of the nation’s youngest Ph.D. recipients, but it didn’t stop her from excelling in the classroom.
Mohamed holds a doctorate in development studies from the University of Sussex at Brighton.
This is WoK’s description of what transpired to her.
Background
All seven of Mohamed’s siblings were born and raised in Moyale, Marsabit County. He is the fifth child overall.
Her mother was forced to take on two jobs in order to maintain the family due to her father’s mental illness.
In an interview with Standard, Mohamed claimed that her mother had a business in order to support the family.
I used to assist my mother in selling the incense she produced at home when I got home from school so we could eat, she said.
Education
Despite receiving low marks on the KCPE, Mohamed used financial aid to enroll in Moyale Girls’ Secondary School.
After a year of attendance, she decided not to continue past Form Two when the bursaries ran out.
Mohamed left home once his sister, who had already started college, chose to use her HELB loan funds to send him to Trikha Girls Secondary School in Thika.
She surmounted challenges to obtain a B+ on the KCSE exam, which is the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education.
She attended the University of Nairobi where she eventually graduated with the top honors in anthropology.
Mohamed outperformed the rest of his graduating class in 2016 with a cumulative GPA of 74.
Scholarship
She received a full scholarship after being admitted to the University of Nebraska’s Master of Arts in International Studies program at the Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies.
She transported people across the Kenya-Ethiopia border to finish her master’s thesis. She had to travel across the border several times for this, as well as visit police stations, look for brokers, and transport individuals.
Mohamed enrolled in the University of Sussex to pursue a PhD after receiving her master’s degree.
Her dissertation focused on how pastoralists in the Rift Valley of northern Kenya employ the moral economy to manage risk.
Mohamed examined the pastoralists’ lives in Isiolo from 1975 to 2020, concentrating on how they dealt with disasters such armed conflict, animal disease, and drought.
She plans to build a specific facility to improve her community.
She said, “I will continue studying and researching” because “the majority of the projects which are implemented in these pastoral areas are designed from the outside and do not consider local perspectives.”
Tahira Mohamed: From Managing Only 252 Marks In KCPE To Becoming One Of Kenya’s Youngest PhD Holders
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