For Peace Ejembi, growing up as the fifth of seven children in a close-knit community with limited access to opportunities meant living with little exposure to the wider world. In communities like hers, talent often remains hidden by limited access to opportunities. When she graduated from secondary school in 2023, her classmates moved on to university entrance exams. Peace, however, was left behind.
“I saw my mates going to school… and here was I alone,” she recalls. “But through all the setbacks, I discovered that delay can be a blessing. It gives you time to know yourself and to wait for something better.”
Her family’s finances were unstable. With younger siblings still in school and older ones struggling to find their way, Peace knew her education would place additional pressure on the family. In 2024, she applied to the African Leadership University in Rwanda. She worked hard through the process but was offered only a partial grant, leaving a significant amount for tuition, travel, and accommodation that her family could not afford. In a household where having millions of naira was unimaginable, the cost was far beyond the family’s reach.
“Nobody needed to tell me to study; I had to study,” she says. She registered for JAMB again in 2025, but family emergencies disrupted her preparation. She came home just 24 hours before the exam, exhausted and unprepared. Hoping only to reach the 200-mark baseline, she surprised herself by scoring above 220.
Her breakthrough came when her brother sent her a link to the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at Pan-Atlantic University (PAU). Sceptical but determined, she applied. When she was shortlisted, she entered an interview room unlike any setting she had experienced before. “I’ve never had that kind of interview before,” Peace recalls. “It was a time of reflection—getting to know your dreams, your aspirations, your goals. It made me think deeply.”
In that moment of clarity, she shared her dream of becoming a software engineer, not just to write code but to create solutions for communities like hers. Her depth of thought carried her through, and she was selected for the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at PAU.
The PAU bridging programme helped Peace to close the academic gaps left by her two-year break. “I had been out of the academic space for nearly two years… cleaning my brain and facing my books was tough, but the programme bridged every gap,” she says.
The relief for her family is immense. At a university where annual fees run into millions of naira, Peace studies with full financial support from the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program. “Other people pay millions to study in PAU. My family has never seen millions, and now I see millions of Naira waived off. If anyone should be more grateful than I am, it is my parents. It has been a huge financial relief.”
For Peace, the journey from interview room to lecture hall feels like watching her dreams become reality. “Back at the interview, it was like telling a story,” She says. “But now, it’s like you’re living out your story, bringing it into reality. I see myself in a place of possibility.”
From her new horizon, she offers a message to others still waiting for their opportunity: “Do not rush the process. Trust the process. When we let God lead, we find ourselves in a better position.”