From winning prestigious scholarships to working in international organisations across the world, nothing seems to stop the 23-year-old Cameroonian PHD fellow.
Sharp as a tack and smart as a whip, Myriam Nakita Aboya is a young Cameroonian who did all her primary, secondary and part of her university studies in Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital. While in Class five she braved the first school leaving certificate examination and lateron gained admission into the General Leclerc Government High School, an institution known to have trained renowned personalities.
While in primary school and even in high school, she was identified as an individual with high potential. She skipped three classes; class five, form five and Lower sixth. She did her GCE O Level while in form four, obtained her probatoire in lower sixth and finally her GCE A Level aged just 14.
After her A Level, she was admitted into the Economics Department of the University of Yaoundé II, where she studied for 3 years and obtained a B.A. in Economics at the age of 17 and then obtained her first M.A. in Economics, also at the same university, and a second M.A. in France (University of Rennes1).
After these two Masters, with a year at the Ministry of Economy in collaboration with the World Bank and international donors, at age 20, under an Italian competitive scholarship, she got into a PhD programme in economics at La Sapienza University, which is known to be one of the largest and oldest universities in Europe.
The following year, she enrolled into the Paris School of Economics, known as the 5th best university in Europe, and met economic scholars such as Thomas Piketty, Francois Bourguignon (a member of her thesis committee) and Philippe Aghion, who agreed to be her co-director.
At the UN, she worked in the very prestigious statistics division that produces the internationally renowned data for FAOSTAT: “When I started in the economic stream of the UN’s FAO, I spent my first months analysing the resilience capacities of 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Later, I worked on the harmonisation and data digitalisation for more than 81 countries.
This data is part of the World Census of Agriculture, which is published every ten years and can be found in FAOSTAT. She has won several awards and scholarships such as Erasmus, PON Scholarship and the Back to Zero Awards to be a Tedx Speaker in 2023. Outstanding Personalities such as Bill Gates have also been a Tedx! speaker. Myriam Nakita Aboya has been involved in various humanitarian activities such as blood donation, philanthropy and education.
On the Nelson Mandela Day last July 18, while in Italy, she was one of the main speakers to commemorate his memory. The Cameroonian has met with some of the world’s top personalities like Christine Lagarde, Gita Gopinath. As hobbies, she loves music and she is a member of the music school of her university – namely Musa Blues.
Her dream is to continue her career in international organisation such as the World Bank, the IMF or the UN, she said in one of her interviews.
