Maria Kiwanuka shares her story and wisdom nuggets in rare interview

MARIA KIWANUKA is the proprietor and General Manager of the popular Radio One and Akaboozi Ku Bbiri.

Last Friday, during their inaugural conference at Protea Hotel, female journalists that have gone through the WAN-IFRA/Women in News Leadership Accelerator program hosted Kiwanuka in a fireside chat where she inspired, taught and shared. Carolyne Nakazibwe was there and brings you an edited version of the Media Lounge.

Sheila Kawamara Mishambi: She is confident, she is professional, she is inspirational, she is tough. But she is articulate and well informed. This is how I define you, Maria. How do you define yourself?

Thank you so much Sheila, and ladies I am delighted to be here today, and even more delighted that you chose me to be your chief speaker to so many ladies who are embarking on their media journeys.

I am an African woman, born in Uganda in the second part of the last century. I transited through Uganda to the UK, to the USA for work. I have worked a lot in East Asia, where I learnt a lot of life-defining principles, of which I will share with you today; I can be summed up as having been many times at the right place at the right time.

Everyone in this room must never be afraid or hesitant to seize the moment. Everyone is allocated 15 seconds behind the mic… never hesitate to grab the microphone of life, wherever you are. I am a very private person, but with a very public persona; go figure that out.

Sheila: Who inspired you to be this person?

My father had five daughters and one son and he always told us that any girl could be the equal of any boy. I remember getting a slap on my wrist once, when he asked me, “Why did you [perform poorly] in math” and I said, “Math is too hard for us girls.”

And he said, “Don’t you ever dare say that again; and just for that, you go and read sciences.”

My mother, who believed and believes, proved him right. She was left a widow, with six children all under the age of 15, and she brought us up. We all went to university. [She was] a primary school teacher, who left teaching to join the hustle.

Thirdly, to my three sons who call me maama, I would make sure I had time to go out and be everything I could be.

Sheila: Most of us know you as someone who was in the finance sector; World Bank, highflyer…did you ever imagine that one day you would be owning a media house and when did this transition come?

Growing up, I thought the peak of life was to be in Uganda and have some trips to London and be a writer. But somehow,
I ended up doing commerce and I joined Bank of Uganda. A relative gave me a trip to London for getting into Bank of Uganda.

I saw this business school [in London] and made an application and they gave me a place. In my final year the World Bank came to recruit people and recruited two of us. Be in the right place at the right time, but you have to make sure you’re ready to take the opportunity by being yourself. I am Maria Kiwanuka. I am a media practitioner, with experience in finance, experience in arts and a big zest for life.

Sheila: In all this work, share with us some of the barriers and how you managed to build resilience.

Never ever give up. I will share one instance when I was with the World Bank. I was on a mission to Australia and our mission leader slipped and broke his leg. He could not carry on with the mission and had to be airlifted back to the USA.

Overnight I became the mission leader, because I was the only World Bank staff on the trip. My boss told me over the phone, “Well then, you have to be the mission leader then.” I said, “I can’t; I can’t go talk to prime ministers and presidents…”

He said, “Well, if you can’t, cancel the mission and come back home” – I could hear in his voice “and to the end of your career!”

I called a good friend in Uganda, who gave me a pep talk, and I went out and did it. And by that big challenge I experienced, I became a mission leader at 28. I happened to be in a place where the mission leader slipped on a pebble and broke his leg and had a pacemaker [so he couldn’t be treated in Australia].

When we started Radio One, all around the other stations, people said, ‘A woman? Give her six months. That radio will fail. They won’t have revenues.’ I was really intimidated. But I woke up one day and said, but what am I going to pay people with if I’m going to be intimidated?

So, I bought a plane ticket and went to Nairobi. That time, a lot of advertising in Uganda was determined in Nairobi…Colgate, Beechams, breweries, Coca Cola…they were all headquartered in Nairobi and a couple in South Africa.

By 8am I was in Nairobi, sitting in a waiting room of Proctor & Gamble with the cleaners. When the boss came and asked, “Can I help you?” I said, “Yes; I’m Maria Kiwanuka, I’m the owner of the newest radio station in Uganda. We need your business and you need our business.”

He didn’t give us business that first trip; he gave it to us on the second. And I went to South Africa, Nigeria…I know Nairobi’s industrial area like the back of my hand. I told them, Radio One is not music; Radio One is memories. I still remember the song that played on the car radio that took me from school to tell me my father had died in an accident.

These are things that no TV or newspaper will replicate. The ear is the soundtrack of your life. That is why someone was mentioning dwindling revenues for media. I don’t think they should dwindle; you just need to get in bed with the opposition; go digital, online, websites, name it.

As media, you are a microcosm of life. You must be a mirror to reflect society. Meet your audiences’ expectations within the framework of the regulator. I think of media as an entry level job for most people. There are not very many at the top.
Radio One was 25 in September, Radio 2 was 21 in November, but in Radio One we still have four of our original personnel; we still got RS Elvis, our traffic operator, our messenger and one of our salespeople.

The others went on to work with the NGOs. At least four got into the BBC, one got into CNN and two got into VOA. But they always come back to the stations for the annual birthday parties. So, we should not say this job doesn’t pay me enough; that is the job. Maybe you have outgrown it. You are going to need to move. The shoe no longer fits!

Once you look at your career like that, you will be more pleasant to be with. We at the radio, we don’t mind people moving on, or even getting gigs, as long as it is not another FM radio station.

Miriam Watsemba (documentary photojournalist): You have defined the soul of Radio One. Was that part of your sales pitch? Is defining one’s soul a major part of a sales pitch?

It is definitely part of my sales pitch. You have to be ready to make a sales pitch at any time. That’s why we don’t have a PR person at the station. Everyone at the stations is in PR… It helps to have a financial/economic background if you are in the media, because you need to know what your advertisers are going through; the problems they have, the successes they have…

Zurah Nakabugo (The Observer Correspondent): what are some of the challenges in your career and how did you overcome them? And how do you balance home and work?

Work-life balance depends on the kind of home you have, the kind of person you are and the kind of work you do. Make sure you give time to your children. There is nobody who ever lay on their deathbed and said, “Oh, what a wasted life; I wish I had spent more time at the office.”

Harriet Ayebare (Daily Monitor): Does it bother you that media houses are losing talent because of poor payment?

Look at your average newsroom; how many people are there? You can’t have everybody as a senior. That is why people move on. Nancy Kacungira started in a radio station, then she went to NTV, now she is at the BBC. If you have a certain number of workers, you have a certain amount of money to pay them.

People are talking about dwinding revenues, what do you do? The job has not grown, but you have grown; so, you need to find a job that can use the skills you have acquired. You can move on. That is what you will find in any dynamic environment.

Josephine Karungi (journalist): What has informed your choices – what media do you consume, why? What do you live by? What words get you up each morning reminding you about purpose and integrity?

What gets me up in the morning is what informs you to make a career decision at various points in your life. I call it the small, still voice. When I was working at the World Bank, having a good time, I realized my children were not seeing enough of me.

One day, my little boy fell over and when I went to pick him up, he ran past me to the maid and I said, “Eh!” There is a still, small voice in each of us; but you’ve got to listen.

What informs my news consumption? Everything. I am a media practitioner, and they are all competition in one way or another. I read, I look, I listen, I click. [But] I am not on Instagram, I don’t have a Twitter account, I don’t have a Facebook account…

Lominda Afedraru (Science journalist): You have excelled. But to become a mission leader, your boss – a man – had to get an accident. But now you must be interacting with men even as a media owner. How do you navigate power?

Isn’t it such a pity that we are still on that thing, how many years from when women empowerment started? We are still struggling. We are quite fortunate having been born and brought up in Uganda. Here, gender discrimination is not as institutionalized as it is in some countries in the West.

So, ignore it; go straight ahead. Nobody will tell you, you can’t come into the elevator because you are a woman. But if you stand back and let a man go first, that is your shauri (problem).

You got to where you are by being yourself; continue. Don’t get into this reverse entitlement of ‘just because I’m a woman’, ‘Just because I’m black’. Keep on, but make sure you bring other women up.

Amelia Martha Nakitimbo (journalist): Have you thought of any other media revenue source outside advertising?

Well, I see crowdfunding, sponsored activations, market promotions… I should be asking you the new revenue sources.

Barbara Nyamwiza (teacher and journalist): what are the three keywords you would tell your 28-year-old self today? And, what keeps you sane?

What keeps me sane? Never abuse your position, especially in the media. Never take your private struggles on air, online or in print. What would I tell the 28-year-old?

What the 28-year-old told herself then. She looked in the mirror and said the buck stops here…if your boss said you can do it, then damn, you can do it! So get yourself ready…you got this far, you can go farther.

carol@gmail.com