Nabatanzi earned her doctorate at 28

Dr Alice Nabatanzi during the interview in Kampala. PHOTO BY GODFREY LUGAAJU

What you need to know:

  • A BEAUTIFUL MIND. Before she starts talking phytochemistry, nutraceuticals, ethnobotany, Alice Nora Nabatanzi is just that beautiful young woman, writes Abdul-Nasser Ssemugabi.
  • Ethnobotany is the study of a region's plants and their practical uses through the traditional knowledge of a local culture and people.
  • Nutraceuticals is a general term used to describe any product derived from food sources with extra health benefits in addition to the basic nutritional value found in foods.
  • Phytochemistry is the study of phytochemicals, which are chemicals derived from plants.

Before she starts talking phytochemistry, nutraceuticals, ethnobotany, Alice Nora Nabatanzi is just that beautiful young woman.

She accentuates her light skin with red lipstick, her neatly knit braids with a colourful puff holder, as her blue jeggings and black patterned top hug her curvaceous body. Her earrings, watch and black and white pumps are trendy.
As we emerged from the interview into the parking lot of Java House, on Acacia Avenue in Kololo, she put on her mirrored specs to shield her eyes from the afternoon sun. But Dr Alice Nabatanzi is not just a pretty face. Last year, the lecturer at Makerere University’s College of Natural Sciences earned her PhD aged only 28.
Dr Nabatanzi proudly tells an enviable tale without the usual abyss-to-bliss challenges synonymous with most success stories in Africa.
“I don’t have those emotional stories. I didn’t face challenges as such,” she said with reasonable content. “God planned my story well.”
While most of us return to the lecture room under the pressure to consolidate our job positions or win promotions, Nabatanzi’s rise was different and swift.

After her Bachelor’s in Ethnobotany in 2011, she immediately enrolled for her Master’s in Natural Products Technology and Value Chains. She had no sooner finished her Master’s in 2014 than she started her doctorate in Natural Products, [Phytochemistry and Nutraceuticals] which she accomplished in 2017.

Nabatanzi chose science because “in science you are dealing with facts. You prove them or dispute them…not the complicated stories of wars that happened before we were born.”
But even sciences like anthropology, genetics delve into history of humans and their environments, I reminded her. She insisted: science is easier.
Nabatanzi was introduced to university science while working at the Makapads project at the College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology in her Senior Six vacation. Still wondering how this young lady fell for such rare, complex sciences?

My father's dream
Nabatanzi was born in 1988 and raised in a well off family in Kazo, Kawempe Division. Her father Fred Ssempala was an independent auditor and her mother “enjoyed her privileges as a stay-home wife.”
“We went to boarding school from Primary One, throughout,” the old girl of Gayaza Junior and Gayaza High School recalls. As a little girl she sometimes cried when she missed home but that is not to say she felt unloved.

The second born of five children [two girls and three boys] says she was her father’s darling. “Dad loved us too much but he loved me specially,” she recalls with a nostalgic smile. “He gave me everything I wished for, he even named me Alice Nabatanzi, his mother’s name. I was that special to him.”

Dr Alice Nabatanzi at her PhD graduation at Makerere University in 2017. COURTESY PHOTO

Excelling academically was the only way she could reciprocate that love.
“From P1 dad bought us pamphlets with instructions to do 100 mathematical numbers every holiday. That’s how we got used to mathematics.” No wonder, all her brothers pursued sciences: one is doing his Master’s in engineering technology, in India, another graduated in commerce and their last born, in his A’ Level is offering a science combination.
Everything was meant to inspire them to excel. “Since P1 dad always gave me a success card before I did end-of-term exams,” she recalls. During holidays their father would hire teachers to coach them from home.
At school Nabatanzi was always among the best. Even at university, she said, her CGPA never went below 4.3. She was also into leadership: timekeeper, counsellor, deputy head girl, church usher.

She only spoke English, avoided vernacular conversations to the extent of translating some Ganda names into English. “It was crazy but it won me an award for best student who speaks the smart option,” she recalls.
In secondary school, she would read ahead of others. “When we were in Senior Two I would know stuff of Senior Three.” For that some students disliked her but others acknowledged her effort. “One student named me professor when I didn’t even know what it meant,” she recalls.

Besides the love, Nabatanzi’s father was also a strict disciplinarian. A loyal Muganda and staunch Anglican, Mr Ssempala instilled cultural and religious etiquette, emphasising things like kneeling while greeting elders. And sitting on the front row in the earliest church service every Sunday.
A member of the organising committee of the royal wedding of Kabaka Ronald Mutebi II and Silvia Nagginda in 1999, he also entertained guests like Archbishop Livingstone Nkoyoyo, the Rt. Rev. Samuel Sekadde, at his home.

“Even the schools [Gayaza for girls and Buddo for the boys] he chose for us were strict on culture and religion.” Dr Nabatanzi says she still embodies some of these values.
Unfortunately, in 2003 she lost her father to hypertension (one of the reasons she studied nutrition and natural products) when Nabatanzi was in Senior Three. “It took me long to cope. I would weep whenever I missed him.”

His death did not necessarily overturn the family’s fortune but things did not remain exactly the same. Nabatanzi left Gayaza High to join Ndejje SS, where she finished high school. Her grandmother, who teaches there, comforted her during the trying times. Having scored distinctions in all her science subjects and French at O’ Level she pursued Physics, Chemistry, Biology/Food & Nutrition at A’ Level.

Mentorship
Nabatanzi describes her mother as “a very strong woman with a big heart to help others,” a mentor of sorts. When Mr Ssempala died in 2003, their last born was in baby class. Annet Florence Ssempala, a typical housewife, quit her comfort zone and took on the mantle as the sole family head. Granted, she did not begin from scratch because Mr Ssempala had invested in a big school and other property like land. But her choice not to remarry and her ability to manage her husband’s estate, run her own business and oversee the academic advancement of their five children is why Nabatanzi has great admiration for her.

Besides her mother Nabatanzi attributes her success to great academics like Professor Maud Kamatenesi-Mugisha, Chancellor, Bishop Stuart University, Prof. John David Kabasa, Principal, College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources & Bio-Security and director of Rise-Afnnet who also supervised her PhD research.

Significance
Medicine was her first choice but after 10 years at university, Nabatanzi believes that “finding scientific solutions to key problems affecting society like maternal and infant mortality; malnutrition among mothers, children, and people living with HIV is the most beneficial research one can ever do.”

Although a March 2017 report by The Uganda Bureau of Statistics showed a significant decline in maternal mortality rate: from 438 deaths per 100,000 live births (registered in 2011) to 336 deaths per 100,000 live births, the rate is still a bother.
To drive her point home, she drew me into her PhD research about nutrition for pregnant mothers in rural areas. The study [a copy of the abstract I read online] “justifies the nutraceutical significance of Wild Edible Plants and their ability to meet the maternal pregnancy nutrient requirements.”

She mentioned goose berries , pomegranate, star fruit, raspberries, wild tomatoes, wild mushrooms, yams, etc. as foods rich in vitamins, iron, proteins, folic acid, carbohydrates, vital to the mother’s and foetal health.
She recommends these foods as “the best option to improve the dietary quality and quantity of marginalized rural pregnant women because of their availability, accessibility, affordability and sustainability.”

Indigenous knowledge about such foods is passed on from generation to generation and the role of scientists like Dr Nabatanzi is to subject it to test to either validate it or dismiss it—and disseminate the findings to the respondent communities.
She is cynical of the ‘wannabe nutritionists’ and herbalists who enjoy vast media space yet their knowledge is based on mere assumptions.
To ascertain the impact of her research needs another research but at least some of the women in Nakisunga, Namayuba in Mukono and Buikwe where she did her survey, picked the idea.

Alice Nabatanzi (R) and a friend at Gayaza Junior School. COURTESY PHOTO

Dr Nabatanzi admits that the prevalent Westernisation of African societies is greatly eroding this valuable knowledge and promoting bad nutritional habits “but we can preserve the remaining knowledge by documenting it.”
To practice her gospel she writes articles for the 8M Construction Digest, a bimonthly magazine on construction. In the May-June issue she tackled the good and bad of eucalyptus while in the July-August issue she deciphered asbestos.

Recognition
Dr Nabatanzi has been lucky that her postgraduate education was fully funded by the Carnegie Co-operation of New York through the Science Initiative Group under the Regional Initiative in Science and Education for African Natural Products Network (Rise-Afnnet). Even then, is she reaping from her efforts? Does anyone recognise her value?
“Yes.”

Last month she attended the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) in Toulouse, France. This [according to the ESOF website] is the largest interdisciplinary science meeting in Europe dedicated to scientific research and innovation.
Since 2004 the biennial forum brings together over 4000 researchers, educators, business actors, policy makers and journalists from all over the world to discuss breakthroughs in science.
Dr Nabatanzi said she was the only Ugandan among the 28 African participants [by virtue of having a PhD before 35]. Mixing with delegates from over 80 countries, visiting the Aerospace Valley, etc. “was a whole new exposure,” she said. “Such opportunities show recognition of my value.”

Back home, Dr Nabatanzi frets about how Uganda does not appreciate its professionals—the ‘slim’ wages given to doctors, and others. “It frustrates,” she said with a sigh. Then when I asked her if that won’t tempt her into settling where she is “appreciated” as many of our scientists have chosen, she said: “But I love Uganda,” with a light laugh in a not-so-assuring tone.

If she is to stay, isn’t she worried dying poor like most Ugandan academicians?
“No,” she said. She has seen the struggling, “mentally colonised” professors. “Maybe they did not get enough time to look at things differently; but we are a different generation; we believe life is both serious and fun.

Her formula: “If it’s time for work or study, be serious, be the best. Then go out, dance, have fun—enjoy life to the fullest.” Hence, Dr Nabatanzi regularly goes to movies, swimming, gym dancing and adventure. She is on Facebook and WhatsApp.
She thinks outside the academic box. She has big investment plans like establishing a plant that manufactures organic nutritional supplements or drugs in Uganda to reduce on our reliance on the few expensive organic imports and synthetic supplements.

Working with people who are way older than her poses some challenges. Some act weird toward her but has learnt to ignore.
When I asked her that one wish she is asking from God, she quickly said: “I want to have a family.” But in a land of stereotypes, Dr Nabatanzi is aware many potential suitors her age might ‘fear’ her stellar academic status. But she knows what she wants: “not necessarily a Doctor but someone educated and learned.”
I begged to know whether there’s anyone under study or that someone is still hypothetical, she laughed out loud. “I hear hypothetical,” Then she said: Let God’s will be done.