PROJECT SUCCESS: An ‘average girl’ headed for a PhD

With her PhD and masters programme having run back-to-back, Ms Kiwanuka says her children have paid some of the price for her academic pursuits – in spite of her best efforts to strike a balance between the two equally demanding aspects of her life.

In Part XIV of Project Success, we track down Monica Kiwanuka, Uganda’s fifth best in the 1993 UACE Arts exam, who is now pursuing a PhD at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. She tells her story.

Early yesterday morning, Monica Kiwanuka returned her daughter to school in Kampala. She had requested the school administration to allow her spend the weekend with her daughter, having returned home from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa where she is pursuing a PHD.

Because of her busy schedule, Ms Kiwanuka offered less than one hour for an interview that took place at Kabira Country Club in Kampala before she travelled to western Uganda for her other engagements.

By tomorrow, she hopes to be back to Kampala and off again to South Africa later in the week.

With her PhD and masters programme having run back-to-back, Ms Kiwanuka says her children have paid some of the price for her academic pursuits – in spite of her best efforts to strike a balance between the two equally demanding aspects of her life.

“I am always a mother on the phone. I take time talking about what’s going on. Of course it would be nice to be home but you weigh what is more important,” Ms Kiwanuka said.

“I need to finish this PhD. I am sure I will be more beneficial to myself and to my country when I finish this and I can manage to take care of my children even when I am away.”

Relentless determination
That kind of dogged determination has come to define the life of a lady who emerged Uganda’s fifth best UACE arts student in 1993 from Trinity College, Nabbingo.

Ms Kiwanuka says she had not even qualified to join Nabbingo after their O-Level results came out, having scored 28 points in her best eight subjects. However, she went to the office of the headmistress at the time and pleaded with her for a place in the school.

“I went to Nabbingo to ask for a place myself. I had not passed very well. I was far away from what they wanted, but I told the headmistress, ‘Look, I will make a promise to you. I will be one of the students who will make you very proud in the end. Just give me the place,’” she said.

“I suggested, ‘Can I sign here and hang it up there and we wait for the time when we finish exams?.”
For some reason, the headmistress was convinced and offered Ms Kiwanuka – who studied her O-Level at Kihembo Hill Memorial College in Fort Portal – a place at Nabbingo.

“I knew my marks were bad but I decided to go to one of the good schools with the strategy that it would help me to pass. I really wanted to be at Nabbingo not because of how famous it was but because of the way the school was performing,” explained Ms Kiwanuka.

When the A-Level results were released, Ms Kiwanuka had come good on her promise with 23 points, having scored A in Luganda, A in Economics, A in Divinity and C in Literature in English.

But Ms Kiwanuka says that performance shocked even herself.

“I have never been among the best students but I was always among the best,” she explained. “My performance was average but my teachers always saw the potential in me to do better and everywhere they would say, ‘You can always do better. We have faith in you’.”