By Patty Huston-Holm
When Linda Nanfuka got an offer to work in Uzbekistan, she had to Google it.
“I couldn’t pronounce it, didn’t know where it was,” she said of the Central Asian nation located 5,499 kilometers (3,411 miles) from Uganda. For nine months in 2021, Nanfuka lived and worked as an engineer for what is now Uzbekistan’s first large-scale solar power plant. Most of what she did was civil works (construction supervision, reporting) for METKA EGN, a company that focuses on green-energy networks.
A Uganda Christian University (UCU) alum, Nanfuka got recruited to live and work in Uzbekistan based on her leadership in helping to launch a solar station on land leased from the Busoga Kingdom in Uganda’s Mayuge District. The Mayuge-area plant, also called Bufulubi because of its location in a village by that name, increases the power supply for the eastern region. It generates 10 MegaWatts (MW) compared to Uzbekistan’s 131 MW capacity.
Nanfuka knows that each MW is one million watts, that individual homes require a lot less than that and factories need more. As a 2018 UCU graduate in Civil and Environmental Engineering, she learned much of the technical aspects of what she applies in her work.
She also knows that she is employed in a career path traditionally dominated by men and people older than her almost-28 years. She has encountered skepticism and bullying as well as respect.
“In the African culture, we need to respect elders, and I do,” she said. “If someone 20 years older than you is wrong, you don’t disrespect but correct.”
At the same time, Nanfuka credits older peers and professionals at UCU for mentoring, including during one “rough period” of her academic studies. She said Rodgers Tayebwa, head of department, engineering and environment, was especially helpful, “introducing me to students in the year ahead” and enabling her to have “balance and get back on track.”
For Nanfuka, the journey before and since graduating from UCU has required changing course and dispelling age and gender perceptions. The oldest of four children with a single mom living in Mukono, Nanfuka was expected to go into accounting to support herself and help her siblings. She was told that engineering was too difficult and meant for men.
“One person close to me kept saying ‘no’ to engineering,” she said. “Today, I thank God for those who doubted me, who dared me not to succeed, because I’m really happy with what I chose.”
As for solar energy, it chose her. While leading a Just in Time subcontracting team of 30-40 men who put a fence around what would be rows of solar panels in the Mayuge District, Nanfuka began spending her spare time in 2018 to mid-2019 learning about this growing, clean energy option. From mid-2019, she transitioned into operational maintenance that she was part of until 2021.
“I monitored the civil works – concrete pole installation and chain-link fencing,” Nanfuka said of the work in Mayuge. “I went to the main contractor, expressed an interest in the larger project and was permitted on the site to learn from other contractors after my other work for the day was done.”
In 2020, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics estimated that 38 percent of the population used solar energy in some form from some 300 solar companies. The Soroti solar power plant is Uganda’s first grid-connected solar plant and the largest in East Africa. According to the Uganda Electricity Regulatory Authority, the Mayuge plant has the capacity to produce enough power for 30,000 households.
When the fence around the Mayuge plant was in place, Nanfuka was made a junior civil engineer for METKA EGN.
“God blesses us with sun,” she said. “We should use it and protect the environment. I’m happy that our country is having more of these projects that not only respect the earth but expand employment.”
In addition to applying her engineering technical and management skills, Nanfuka found enrichment in being embedded into the Uzbekistan culture from May to December in 2021. The project called 131 MW Tutly Solar PV Plant had non-English-speaking workers that presented an added challenge in communications to complete tasks. She learned safety requirements, the latter of which is stricter than in Uganda. She learned that people from different races, religions and ethnicities can work together. Uzbekistan, which is near the better-known Afghanistan and Iran countries, is largely Muslim with few black-skinned people.
“Many had never seen a black woman before,” she said. “The kids especially wanted to touch my hair.”
Speaking from Mukono in late July, Nanfuka shared that her next two aspirations are growing her own business while working on a master’s degree in construction management.
“I’ve realized that what people really need here is help with planning and scheduling – project management,” she said. “I am grateful for people who took a chance on me, and had faith in me. I did my best not to disappoint.”
Nanfuka’s new business Web site is https://www.lindasvirtualhub.com.
