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Dr. Barbara Namaubo Munyati is 35-years-old, married with no children. She completed her bachelors degree in Mathematics at the University of Zambia (UNZA) in 1987. Due to her good grades, she was admitted to the staff development program in the UNZA Department of Mathematics. In 1988, Barbara was sponsored to do a Masters Degree in Computer Science at Manchester University in the UK. There she obtained her degree two years later and returned back to UNZA to start lecturing in Computer Programming and Mathematics. In 1992, she was again sponsored by her university to do a PhD in Information Systems at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) in the UK. She obtained the doctorate degree in 1997, and returned back to UNZA in November of that same year to resume her teaching profession.
The Department of Computer Studies was established in 1998 and Barbara became the first head of the department, a position that she still holds. The establishment of the department was made possible by financial aid from the Belgian government, which is still funding the program up to 2003.
She has been actively involved in organizations whose objectives are to assist the country and schools, girls in particular, to obtain Information Technology skills and general knowledge in the field. Barbara has been interested and keen to volunteer her time to do such work, being involved in organizations such as SchoolNet, Female Education in Mathematics Science in Africa and the Leland Initiative Working group in Zambia. She is also a member of Zambian Women in Science and Technology.
She was invited to be a member of the Leland Initiative Working Group here in Zambia last year, and it was during this interaction with Leland that an invitation through USAID came from Cisco for Zambia to join the Academy program. It was unanimously agreed by the group that the University of Zambia, led by Barbara, should accept the invitation. "You can imagine how excited I was when I was invited to attend the training in Ghana to learn networking skills," Barbara says, "a field I have always admired but knew very little about."
For her, the Cisco Networking Academy Program is the answer she has searched for a very long time. Zambia is one of the many countries in Africa who greatly lack IT skills. "The handful of IT professionals, whom all obtained their qualifications abroad, left for greener pastures in other countries," she declares. A program that embarks on imparting these skills to schoolchildren is hence the answer to the problem, as the IT industry is still quite young but growing fast. At present there are only three Internet Service Providers in the country. The IT industry complains how the students they receive from the Zambian universities still have to undergo IT training from scratch. At times their training can be too academic where they lack real skills. The Academy program can solve this.
When asked what her biggest achievement is, Barbara answered that it would have to be the opportunity to spearhead the establishment of the Computer Studies Department in 1998. She is the first head of the department and has been running the department almost single handedly (with only three in her staff, including herself, the Belgian expatriate who is also a coordinator for the project, and a Zambian male lecturer). After consultations with other European Universities, she developed the entire three-year BSc curriculum for Computer Studies. She wrote the proposal to the Belgian government that ensured the approval of over a quarter of a million dollars for the new department. Building work is commencing next month. Aside from proposing to design the LAN for the network at the moment, Barbara is also in charge of the day-to-day running of the department as well as the maintenance of the mail and web servers and the LAN in the department. 
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