Helen Ochuko Kwanashie is a Professor of Pharmacology and a Guidance-Counsellor. She obtained her PhD Pharmacology from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, Nigeria; undertook postdoctoral training at the University of Dundee (in the UK), and attained Full Professorship of Pharmacology in 2004. She had also earned two Education qualifications from ABU, namely: Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) and Higher Diploma in Guidance and Counselling Education (High.Dip.Guid.Couns.Educ.). A career academic, Kwanashie has been teaching and researching in the university setting for over four decades (from 1982 and mostly at ABU); but is now at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) since 2021. Her expertise had been in Perinatal Biochemical Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmacology Education; and more recently, in Open and Distance eLearning (ODeL). Kwanashie is a Past-President/Member of the West African Society for Pharmacology (WASP), Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society (BPS) and a Councilor on the 2018-2022 Executive Committee of the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR).In the last two years, Kwanashie has switched her research model from mammalian systems (principally mice and rats), to the highly versatile fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster; for which purpose, she established KwanashDroso Lab (KDL). Her current research, teaching and advocacy interests deal with interphasing Drosophila and ODL, gender concerns within ODL institutions as well as mitigating distance-learning student attrition via online counselling. In today’s presentation, she hopes to share some of her experiences as a science professor operating in the distance learning domain within the broader context of the challenges we face in Africa and the opportunities available to us with respect to lifelong learning.