Refusal to settle set off Nalubega’s career

When Joanita Nvannungi Nalubega left her previous chemist job at Decade Chemicals Ltd in 2014 to work with Solomon King (founder of Fundi Bots, a robotics company) at Nodesix Ltd, she had no idea she would find what she was looking for.
“I had never done anything for websites but when I found out that King needed someone to work with on data migration, I left my job and a day after, checked in at Nodesix Ltd,” she says. The next thing was to learn on the job.

“He taught me what he wanted me to do with the data migration and I worked with them for about two years; creating content for websites, hosting websites, and I learnt about web development. Around 2015, the IT industry was now really exciting. People were into social media, we did a lot of social media management for some companies, the brand had grown,” Nalubega relates.

She also ventured into social marketing and by 2015 she decided that IT was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
“I discovered technology and its power beyond just work. Its power to influencing opinions and in advocacy. It started to become clear that I could use it to do more,” she shares.
However, Nalubega had since been grappling with the idea of why in her chemistry class of many students at university, there were only twelve girls.

“Having been in a single sex school in high school, this had never occurred to me. I had never come face to face with the fact that some people were told that they could not do some subjects or things. So when I ventured into social media marketing, I thought this could be a good tool to use to correct this disparity. I started getting into those circles that advocated for girls in technology and science,” she says.
For the past two years she has been doing medical technology working with Clark University International to train all round software developers. “Personally, I work with smaller teams to design health technology especially those that increase access and affordability of health services. I have for example been directly involved with Drug Dash on a team that designed a drug supply chain and currently with a team at AfroGirl Technologies to design a low-cost alternative sickle cell diagnostic tool.

Becoming NEF ambassador
“I saw a call for application for NEF ambassadors early last year, and I saw that it would be an opportunity that would give me access to girls who would have dropped their scientific interest because society around them kept telling them otherwise, so, I applied,” Nalubega says.
Nalubega later got notification that she had been selected in November 2017 and in December she was confirmed and announced ambassador to Uganda and inaugurated at the NEF gathering on March in Rwanda. As an ambassador, this is an opportunity for her to promote Science Technology Engineering and Maths (STEM) in her country and champion the work of science and scientists.

“But one of the main roles is to lead the Africa Science Week in my country. This includes planning and holding a weeklong celebration of science and scientists for all age groups right from primary school; inspiring their creativity and interest in science careers and endeavours to senior scientists, highlighting and recognising their work,” Nalubega says.

In her tenure as ambassador, she organised Uganda’s maiden Science Week on October 24, aimed at bringing together stakeholders in the different aspects of STEM to take stock and lay a foundation for the future. This included a dialogue and an awarding ceremony for women in science, a dialogue on development of science in Uganda at the Rotaract Professional Leadership Development Fellowship, a leaders innovation camp for university students, among other events.
“I would want to see that what our children are studying in school can enable them do better by using science and technology because it is more experiential,” she says.

As for the gap of girls who do sciences in comparison to boys, Nalubega quotes Facebook’s chief operations officer, Sheryl Sandberg, “No industry or country can reach its full potential until women reach their full potential. This is especially true of science and technology, where women with a surplus of talent still face a deficit of opportunity Until that happens, we will not have the full potential of what STEM can do for us.”

About Joanita
Joanita Nvannungi Nalubega, 28 went to Naalinya Primary School Ndejje and to Gayaza High School for six years for both O and A-Levels. She later joined Makerere University and graduated in 2013 with a bachelors in Industrial Chemistry. She practiced chemistry for nine months working with Decade Chemicals Ltd sellers of chemicals for manufacturing plants. She left her job in search of an exciting new thing and joined Nodesix where she found her passion in ICT in 2015. In June 2015, she undertook a postgraduate Certificate in Applied ICT and Leadership at Clark University International where she was retained on the program as an associate instructor.