SSEMPALA OF WORLD BANK IS AN OG OF NAMUTAMBA DEM SCHOOL

Ssempala heads the international affairs in external affairs section of the World Bank
20 YEARS OF DIPLOMATIC WORK, SSEMPALA TAKES ON WORLD BANK
By Arthur Baguma
WITH hands on her hips and the elbows standing out, she leans forward. She pays attention to every detail in her surrounding as she occasionally waves back to passers-by.
She speaks with confidence, illustrating her points with gestures. Dressed in a simple black skirt, a white striped shirt and matching black shoes, she exudes an air of diplomacy.
She looks like a 20-year-old. She laughs when I ask her about the contrast between her age and physical appearance; she jokingly shrugs off the issue with a smile.
“Women don’t state their age,” she says and admits, this is a question that often comes up when she meets people. She laughs again, sighs, looks at her ring before hesitantly saying: “I have peace and fulfillment in my life. I live my life one day at a time.”
Edith Grace Ssempala is the new director of international affairs, in the external affairs vice-presidency of the World Bank. Ssempala has a wealth of experience in diplomacy stretching over 21 years. She has served as Uganda’s top diplomat in different regions of the world.
“I didn’t expect to get the job,” she reveals, in a thoughtful posture. “I have worked hard for all my achievements.”
Ssempala’s new calling is a blessing to the Ugandan woman? One would wonder how a poor Ugandan in a typical rural village can benefit from an up class career woman sitting in Washington. However, Ssempala elaborately states that her new job is about helping the poor of the poorest.
She argues that the basic source of funding for developing countries like Uganda which benefits from the International Development Agency is the World Bank. Ssempala says once this funding is increased, poor countries like Uganda will benefit more. The World Bank funding also includes the International Finance Cooperation, which finances the private sector comprising mainly small-scale businesses which are the majority in Uganda.
“My work will have an impact on ordinary Ugandan women. We have almost doubled financing to agriculture where most Ugandans, especially women derive their livelihood,” Ssempala says. She says studies have shown that agriculture has three times the potential to reduce poverty than any other sector.
It has not been a rosy rise to the top in a world where the male ego and stereo types rule. “Every challenge is an opportunity. I have not looked at myself in terms of being disadvantaged as a woman. All one has to do regardless of their gender is working hard, be focused, committed and love what you do,” she says.
Ssempala has a passion to serve others. Her hands-on skills in diplomacy manifest in her career spanning over 20 years. She occasionally cites several sayings that have helped her through the rough journey of her career.
For instance she explains that you may not determine what happens to you in life, but you can determine how you react to it. And that is what makes the difference, because in life, what you may see as a huge challenge, another person sees as a challenge that strengthens you.
Born in 1953, Ssempala was raised in a village setting in Namutamba village, Mubende district. She comes from a family of seven. She went to Namutamba Demonstration School for her primary education, Gayaza High School for O’ level and Nabumali High School for A’ level.
Ssempala attained a degree in civil engineering from Lumumba University in Moscow, Russia in 1978. After graduating, she took up a job with an electronic company in Sweden. When a calling came for volunteers to liberate Uganda, she offered her services.
Ssempala did external work for the liberation struggle which ushered in the Movement Government in 1986. After the war, she was appointed ambassador to the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden). She served in this portfolio for a decade.
Later, she was appointed Uganda’s ambassador to the US where she served for nine years.
Ssempala’s most recent position was as the Ugandan permanent representative to the African Union and the United Nation’s Economic Commission for Africa, as well as ambassador to Ethiopia and Djibouti.
Ssempala says she had never nurtured a dream of becoming a diplomat although she has a passion for politics and all her role models are politicians. They include President Yoweri Museveni and internal affairs minister Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda.
Ssempala has a long history of being a performer wherever she has served. “She represented Uganda well. And I am a firm believer in her style of work. She will definitely deliver,” says a retired diplomat who worked with her.
When she speaks, Ssempala portrays a wide vision not only for Uganda, but Africa. She argues that what Africa lacks is aid that can put countries on their own feet — and that is aid to the private sector. She says aid should be a facilitator not an end.
In her position, Ssempala is responsible for international affairs functions, managing North America, civil society, speaker’s bureau teams in Washington, offices in Europe and the United Nations liaison offices in New York and Geneva.
Her turning point was when she committed her life to Jesus in 2000. She loves reading, especially Christian books. She also spends her time with her three daughters whom she describes as the best thing that has happened to her.

SEZIBERA, THE NEW SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE EAC IS AN OB OF NAMUTAMBA DEM SCHOOL

Richard Sezibera, the new EAC Secretary General.


The new Secretary General of the East African Community has come a long way quickly, and his journey of course will be familiar with any Rwandan who ever grew up in exile.
Sezibera

Not that there was doubt from the beginning that the soft-spoken Rwandan refugee kid would go places despite the fact his schooling started in appalling conditions in camps for displaced Rwandans in Burundi.

Richard Sezibera was diligent in his studies; he always seemed to be at the top of his class; he was good with numbers and with language and he aced his year’s Primary Leaving Exam when he sat it at the Namutamba Demonstration School; he passed so outstandingly he was admitted to what is generally considered one of the best secondary schools in Uganda – St. Mary’s College, Kisubi. Not many kids who suffered the double whammy of losing a father before they were born – his father was a victim of Parmehutu pogroms in Gikongoro – and growing up in conditions of severe material deprivation would hope to finish primary school, leave alone go to an elite secondary school where a place is almost as rare as chicken teeth.

When we sit down with Minister of Health Sezibera at his offices in Muhima you can hardly tell this is the man who just got confirmed to the EAC’s most powerful job by the region’s heads of state.

From outward appearances, he exhibits the same level of excitement about it as you would if someone invited you out to lunch. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. Not that one would be expecting a dignitary to be gushing on about what a great gig they have gotten. With Sezibera however there isn’t even the faint air of gravity some men would affect if they got elected mayor of a district; there is not the slightest hint of self-awareness here that the man will be participating in policies and making decisions affecting the affairs of over 120 million people. He just looks at me politely, in his dark, plain suit and waits for the questions to begin, answering them in measured, careful terms.

To look at Sezibera is to be reminded one more time of how often people serving in the Rwandan administration seem to be so underage relative to the posts they hold. Here is a health minister who is just a few weeks short of his forty seventh birthday – he was born on 05 June 1964 – who also is the best candidate Rwanda could nominate for secretary general of the EAC! In terms of the years in experience it would require in another country for one to even be named permanent secretary of the ministry of health, the man is a baby! Like him, most Rwandans with senior posts have been compelled to grow into their jobs, but few of them as much as he.

One remarkable thing is that Sezibera seems to work hard to dispel impressions you may have that he has been named SG of the EAC due to any individual brilliance on his part, or competence, or even as recognition for the deftness with which he led the team that negotiated Rwanda’s accession to the EAC. That was in the early 2000s and the negotiations – the ‘Sezibera Team’ was composed of about a dozen high-ranking members of Rwandan institutions among them the RRA, the Ministry of Commerce, the Private Sector Federation and others – were “often difficult and exhausting”. The team represented a country that was culturally different from the ‘traditional three EAC countries’ in so many ways, and one where the region’s lingua franca, English had only recently been introduced. Convincing the ‘traditional three’ would take all the negotiating skills and soft persuasive powers of a consummate diplomat, and Sezibera was just the man. (In fact Burundi would do well to send him and his team a thank you note – if it hasn’t done so – because it was the ground work they did that principally made it possible for the relative ease with which Rwanda’s twin to the south too acceded to the EAC).

Sezibera prefers instead to give much of the credit for his success to his boss (at least until very recently), President Paul Kagame. “I am grateful to H.E. the President for the many opportunities he has given me to serve my country, and it is no different even with the chance to serve as SG of the EAC,” he says.

He, it is easy to see, is only being modest and properly differential to the President. There are other Rwandans who would be in a position to do the jobs Sezibera has been entrusted with down the years. But one thing you can be sure of is that they are not many at all.

In 1990, the year the RPF launched the war of liberation, the young Sezibera – only 26 at the time – was made one of a very few field medical officers for the struggle that lasted four years. He was barely over a year out of medical school at Kampala’s Makerere University after doing his entire six years of secondary school education at Kisubi. He joined the struggle when he promptly abandoning his duties at Mbale Hospital in the east of Uganda and by the time the war and the Genocide were over the young man was entrusted with the duties of physician cum personal assistant to the new president, Pasteur Bizimungu.

“Those were absolutely challenging times,” Sezibera says. “You can’t imagine what it was like; the ministers did not have chairs to sit on! There was only one working phone line in the entire country and communication was mostly by military walkie talkies! There was no currency at all.” He pauses pensively then adds, “It is nothing short of miraculous to see what Rwanda has achieved only seventeen years on.”

He certainly has done his part in helping make those achievements possible, in the process going through almost the entire repertoire of duties possible to entrust one in a scarce field of competent, educated people. He was member of parliament from 95 to 99, after a short stint serving in Bizimungu’s office; he was ambassador of Rwanda to Washington DC from 99 to 2003; he was special envoy of President Kagame to the Great Lakes Region immediately afterwards, until his appointment in 2008 as health minister.

What does Sezibera envision for himself after his five-year term is up at the EAC? “I don’t like to think further ahead than what I have to do to properly do my job of the present!” says this family man who is father to four children.

“I focus on my job and don’t let other thoughts distract me. I hope to give it my best at the EAC and hope to do the same for anything I may get after that,” he says as we part and he exits the boardroom in which I have been interviewing him, through an adjoining door back to his office.

NAMUTAMBA DEMONSTRATION SCHOOL WEBSITE

Namutamba Demonstration School made 75 years of existence this year. We as the fruits of the school thank God for His blessings. We trust that He will guide our school through all the tides that will be faced after. The school website can be accessed from the link below.

The link:
http://www.namutambademschool.webs.com/