Nyekachi Douglas rose to fame in 2019 as she represented Nigeria at Miss World 2019 and placed in the Top 5 at the end of the event finale. She also won the Miss World Africa 2019 continental title and the coveted Top model award during the competition. Nyekachi’s reaction on her friend Toni-Ann Singh being crowned Miss World 2019 also garnered a lot of appreciation on women supporting each other at the coronation night.
Recently, the stunning African beauty was the star at the Forbes Africa Leading Women Summit in Johannesburg, as part of the International Women’s Day. For the 21-year-old Nyekachi, hers was not totally a different ball game growing up like other pageant aspirants. Agbani Darego was her idol growing up and is proud of how far she has come.
Nyekachi shined in the spotlight talking about her journey from a dreamy little girl to becoming Miss World Africa. She exuded grace and glamor in a lovely dress as she sat with CNBC Africa’s Fifi Peters for a one-on-one interview to talk about her role and vision as Miss World Africa 2019. Nyekachi also spoke glowingly about her primary project in Makoko slum, the largest floating slum in the world and how she is planning to extend it to other communities in Africa.
As for discussing her job as Miss World Africa 2019, Nyekachi said, “Oh my job is to sit down and look pretty (jokes). I think that for me, Miss World Africa is really for me to be able to reach out to the communities. First of all, to start with from where I’m working with I am trying to improve the communities known as the largest floating slum in the world and it’s in Nigeria; it is called Makoko in Lagos. They really have very poor waste management system there and that’s something that I’m really trying to work on infection prevention and control.”
She continued, “So, my job pretty much is to meet these people, improve the way they live, get funding. We just finished building a school there and now we are going to start teaching these kids not just to learn biology. In Nigeria, most people focus on the book, book, book; you must be very, very book smart, you must be an engineer, a lawyer. And I want them to explore this part and to explore their creative sides like the fashion designers, the hairdressers, the makeup artists, the artistes and all these things. So that’s what I want.”
Nyekachi wants to teach these kids about their personal hygiene in a way that they would learn it and teach it. She believes it’s just a generational thing and they would just keep going and keep growing as her job is to teach and to learn at the same time.