Francis Baliza Goes From Cleaner to IT Administrator with Help from the Cisco Networking Academy

March 17, 2008

By Jason Deign, News@Cisco

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Jane Francis Baliza leads a double life. To many at Makerere University, in Kampala, Uganda, she is just another member of the cleaning staff that sweeps the halls before the beginning of lectures.

But thanks to Makerere's Cisco® Networking Academy®, she is also one of the select few in Uganda skilled enough to take the demanding three-year Batchelor in Information Technology (BIT) degree, on her way to achieving a dream of becoming a systems administrator at the University.

Mother-of-two Baliza is a classic example of how the Networking Academy is changing lives across the world.

While at school, her passion for learning helped her complete her ordinary level studies and she went on to get a job in an administration post at Makerere. But after a while she became aware that her professional development options would be limited.

"I asked my boss whether I would be able to take courses at the university and I was told that there was nothing available in the department. I would have to build relationships with other departments, and the only way to do that was to take a demotion and become a cleaner," she says.

Undeterred, she joined the cleaning staff in 1982 and the following decade, fascinated by the computer technology that was by then being installed at the university, started forgoing her lunch breaks to take a computer applications course off campus, learning to work with PC packages.

She finished the course with flying colors, but wanted to know more. "I asked my teachers why we could not look at the workings inside the computers, but I was told that to do that I would have to sign up for a correspondence course from abroad," she remembers.

Back at Makerere, her new-found skills were soon in demand from secretaries, administration staff and even friends and acquaintances as the university completed the transition from typewriters to word processors.

Baliza would often work into the night, typing up documents on behalf of other people, and her eyesight deteriorated as a result. Her dreams of becoming a computer technician may well have stalled at that point, had it not been for the Networking Academy.

In 2002, Makerere University opened a Local Academy under the auspices of the Department of Women and Gender Studies. Unusually, university's cleaning staff were given the option of applying for entry, a move no doubt inspired by Baliza's recognized ability with computers.

Baliza completed the entrance application and passed an entry test which, along with her existing qualifications, enabled her to get on the course.

Since then she has completed IT Essentials and gained a CCNA® network associate certification, which validates the ability to install, configure, operate and troubleshoot medium-size routed and switched networks, including implementation of connections to remote sites in a WAN.

This in turn has enabled her to embark on the Makerere University Faculty of Computing and Information Technology's BIT degree.

At the same time, she has been able to get a second job as an intern in the departmental computer lab, giving her additional money with which to support herself and her family.

Internship opportunities are offered to third year university students taking information technology or a related field for six month renewable period, and getting the extra income has been invaluable to Baliza.

A single mother, the money has to cover the school fees for her teenage son and daughter and also pay for her university accommodation, which lacks electricity.

Having a BIT degree would make her eligible for a systems administrator job, a prestigious, relatively well-paid post within the university.

Getting there is still not going to be easy, she says: "At times I find myself so tired during the day that I am unable to do my preps at night, and yet it is the only time I get to read my books."

In the meantime, though, she has already been recognized as a Networking Academy Student of the Year and in December 2007 was a guest at the Cisco Public Services Summit in Stockholm and Oslo, attending the gala ceremony celebrating the Nobel Peace Prize Award.

The once-in-a-lifetime experience was also Baliza's first trip outside of Africa, giving her a brief experience of life in one of the most highly networked regions in the world, along with her first glimpses of sea, snow and fir forests.

Back at Mekerere, her own journey of professional development continues, but there is little doubt that the Networking Academy has already helped Baliza go much further than she might have imagined when she first got interested in computing.

"Jobs in Uganda are scarce and any kind of qualification is a great help," she says. "I am close to achieving what I have always wanted, and I am grateful to the Networking Academy for helping it happen."

Jason Deign is a freelance journalist located in Barcelona, Spain.