Nigeria

Temitayo Olofinlua graduated with a bachelor's in English literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University. After, she continued on for her master's in the same course at the University of Lagos, where she started writing as a student. As a student journalist, she was the editor-in-chief of Socioscope News Agency, a news outfit in her university. She was later elected as the vice president of the Association of Campus Journalists.

Passionate about her writing, Temitayo has worked hard so that her works could appear in many newspapers and online. She has won several awards for her writing, like the Women Learning Partnership Essay Competition in 2010, the Center for International Private Enterprise Essay Competition in 2010, the Heinrich Boell Foundation’s “Unity in Diversity” Essay Competition in 2010 and the Living Earth Nigeria Foundation Essay Contest the same year.

For her, journalism is a medium of writing, but also another means of probing issues as they happen around her. She joined GPI in 2009 because she saw it as an interesting platform to work with other women journalists around the world while honing her journalism skills.

Each subject that she has covered for GPI has taught her a lesson, but the most persistent of the lessons has to be that stories are everywhere - one just has to keep following them until one gets to the root.

In five years, she hopes to have a Ph.D., to have written a novel, and to be doing more journalism than she is now.