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Nigerian physicist Rabia Salihu Sa’id talks about her struggle and determination to pursue a career in science. Now an atmospheric researcher at Bayero University in northern Nigeria, she began her academic studies at the age of 29 with four children. She now has six children. Dr Sa’id had to sell dowry jewellery and run a nursery school to pay her way through university. As Dr Sa’id tells Claudia Hammond, she is now a role model for young Nigerian female scientists, and treated like a celebrity when she visits girls schools in the Muslim-majority North.

Image credit: Atmospheric physicist Rabia Salihu Sa’id with one of her MSc students at Bayero University in Kano, Nigeria