Wanted to be a deejay, became a journalist
As journalists jostle for position to get a good picture of Dr Akinwumi Adesina, president-elect of African Development Bank (AfBD), Joel Kibazo is pacing up and down the stage.
For a moment, he will brief Dr Adesina, bank governors and government ministers on what to expect, before he retreats from the scene via the staircase. He directs them to take the stage for a group photo. Publicity is important.
Kibazo is director, external relations and communications at AfBD. That is what his job partly calls for.
He started his career in this communications field as a journalist; he worked at Financial Times, an economics and business newspaper in UK, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio and television, and Sky News.
He was a member of the panel for CNN Africa Journalist of the Year awards and was chairman for nine years.
In 2007, Kibazo was chief government advisor for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in Kampala.
It must have been the sum of all this that informed the decision of AfBD’s board to appoint Kibazo as communications director.
The job entails ensuring that what the bank does as a development institution is known to the wider public.
To do this, he draws from his experience as a journalist and diplomat. On any day, he has to have his creative cap on as he deals with wide-ranging issues.
His recent big task, at his new station in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, was to oversee communication strategy of activities to mark 50 years of AfBD. During which, a new president for the bank was elected.
In a hotly contested race, Nigeria’s minister of agriculture and rural planning, Dr Adesina. Kibazo talks about the incoming and outgoing presidents. “I am ready to work with the new president.
He is a man of vision, who will take the bank to the next level. President Kaberuka has been a revolutionary leader. He has brought many achievements to AfDB, and taken the bank to new heights in terms of promoting the private sector and infrastructure.”
Possibilities and dreams
Getting hired for positions such as Kibazo’s is not that easy. You may be qualified but reputation plays an important role. “Let’s say that there were internal processes and the bank chose the person that they wanted. You may call it head-hunting,” he says.
He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences, two Master’s degrees in International Business and Economic Development, and in Business Administration.
But more than qualifications, it was his experience in an international setting, particularly having been at the Commonwealth secretariat. The plus was being familiar with the media works.
Above all, Kibazo is a man who was nurtured to see possibilities. His parents encouraged him to realise his dreams from when he was a boy. He believes children should to be raised to have self-confidence.
But with such an illustrious career, you would be surprised to learn that he wanted to be a deejay. Something about music fascinated him.
When he told his father, Godfrey Lule, a lawyer, who was a minister at the time, he only encouraged him to continue with school. But Kibazo, then a teenager, set some terms.
“I agreed to continue in school on the condition that they provided music and tickets to concerts. My father kept his end of the deal and that is how I continued in school. My plan was to start a music company and he told me we would do it together—he would be my lawyer. I did the first, second and third degree,” the seasoned journalist recollects.
With time, he asked for more. He wanted a sports car, which was a rare possession for a university student. His parents, living in Uganda, would fly and make sure they provided him with whatever he needed.
“That is why on the day I finished my third degree, he said ‘right, now you can do anything you want’. It had been a long journey,” the 53-year-old communication expert recalls.
Curious about the world
But even as a youth, Kibazo had a good appreciation of news. He became more inquisitive, building on his childhood passion to learn about the world.
His father fed this curiosity by taking magazines home and tuning in to BBC.
“I told myself that I would work for BCC and I ended up working for it. I never thought that anything was impossible for me. I always knew that I was greatly loved, and that gave me confidence,” he states.
“It was a very interesting period to be a journalist because of the many platforms,” Kibazo observes. “When I set out to be a journalist, some people wanted to do print, television or radio.
I wanted to do it all. I did it with the best television, newspaper and radio in the world. Then, I didn’t know this was the way the media would do; that a journalist could deliver a story on different platforms.”
His daily schedule dictated that he would be at Financial Times then head to BBC and to Sky News.
Journalism gave him a ring-side seat to the biggest events in the world. The news outlets he worked for, sent him out around the world to cover events.
There are some milestones. One was when he wanted to interview Nelson Mandela and he was told they were no interviews, so he told his crew of cameramen to leave.
But as he sat on grass outside the building, he heard the door open and Mandela emerged. He excitedly went to meet him. Security personnel tried to stop him but Mandela told them to let him through.
“This is the man I had dreamt of meeting. I had only seen him at a distance. When he let me meet him, I requested to take photographs of him. That was a great moment but then the worst because I forgot the questions I wanted to ask,” Kibazo recollects.
However, the good twist to the story came later. Kibazo’s wife wanted to meet Mandela and his friends arranged it as a surprise for their wedding anniversary. She could not believe it and has always been grateful for that. Well, that was one of the things that journalism has given him.
Another moment was hosting then finance minister, Mayanja Nkangi, on BBC. When the questions became hard for the minister, he assured him of how he knew his family and roots back home.
His other life
Then, there are sad memories. “The last time many saw Komla Dumor was at my party. He left in the evening and died in the morning,” he recalls. The passing of his friend, Rosemary Nankabirwa, was another.
But work does not define Kibazo. He is a family man too. He is a father to two teenage daughters, one 13 and the other 17. The elder daughter attends school in UK. He stays with his British wife and younger daughter in Abidjan. They have a home in UK but he says that he is working on setting up a home in Uganda as well.
“The girls are teenagers and all the troubles that come with it. I try to get as much time as I can over the weekend,” he adds.
But the job requires a lot of travel, and much as he sleeps in many hotels, he cannot compare that to his bed at home, as well as home-cooking. He cannot trade family time with anything else.
