SHE QUIT A GOVERNMENT JOB AS SENIOR ENERGY ECONOMIST IN 1989 TO SELL VEGETABLES AT NORTHMEAD MARKET 🙌🏾🙌🏾💪🏾
Did you know: That Edith Nawakwi in 1989 left Government employment as a senior energy economist, in frustration, to go and trade in vegetables on stand number 27 at Lusaka’s Northmead Market?
Amos Malupenga:
Did you continue in your job after coming back from England?
Edith Nawakwi:
That’s a very interesting question. When I came back in 1989, that is when our first president Dr. Kenneth Kaunda was talking about diesel from grass and I went back to the Department of Energy. There were quite a number of us who were educated in the field of energy.
I recall going to my then permanent secretary Mr Essau Nebwe asking him why we were not being consulted because the whole department of energy had a lot of qualified people in bio-mass technology but here was our head of state talking about diesel from grass.
We felt very frustrated. I said to myself, ‘I have been to the university and I know that there is this particular kind of technology and the story they are talking about is not feasible for a small country like ours’. I was so frustrated that I could not apply my skills. I had been interviewed in London to go on the Young
Professionals Program with the World Bank. I had sent papers back to Lusaka for endorsement by my director but he told me on the phone that my skills were needed back home.
I came home ready to work but we were not being consulted. So I decided to put in one year unpaid leave. That is how I went to work at the market. It was much more fun to work at the market than to sit in an office and your skills are not being used. If it was just about earning a living, I was better off at the market because what I needed much more than anything else was job satisfaction, which I couldn’t get in my office.
There were these civil service bottlenecks. You try to work on the file but most files those days were labeled “secret“ even if the contents were rubbish and the files were locked up. When I was on that unpaid leave that was the time we started talking about multiparty democracy.
Amos Malupenga:
So which market did you go to for your trading business?
Edith Nawakwi:
Northmead market [in Lusaka]. By the way, I had been a marketeer before.
My first salary was K200 but as you have seen in my house, I look after a lot of people. We like to take children to school and pay for their fees. When we see a child who has potential, we support them. With K200 as a salary, I couldn’t make ends meet. So I went to sell at Northmead market, stand number 27. I like that market because that is where I also traded before I graduated out of UNZA. …
(An excerpt from the Conversation with Edith Nawakwi)
Credit: Smart Eagles