It was like a dream! Says ICT CS nominee Margaret Ndung'u

CS nominee for ICT Margaret Ndung’u has opened up about the series of events leading up to the breaking of the news for ministerial assignment.

In an interview posted online, the third born in a family of six children born to retired teacher parents said she was at home working when she received a call from an MP asking her to send an updated CV for consideration for a position.

“So I updated fast and I sent to her and I forgot about it. Then she calls me again and she told me the governor will be calling me. I think it’s at this point I called my mum and I told her this is what is happening,” she said.

Ndung’u was among the second batch of 10 CS nominees President William Ruto unveiled on Wednesday, July 24, with her proposed to head the Ministry of Information, Communication and Digital Innovation.

Her mother, Rosemary Wambui, said she was shaken on receiving the news about the impending nomination of her daughter but wished her all the best nonetheless.

“After shaking I told her if you are given work to do, do it, I know you can do it.”

Ndung’u said for some reason, she couldn’t raise her father, Peter Ndung’u, on his cellular to break the good news but on her mother’s advice, she called the local priest.

“He was like okay; it’s a good thing to serve the nation just take it.” Shortly after, she said, the governor called informing her the President wanted to speak to her.

“You see all through you are thinking this is a big joke but now when you see it you are thinking ‘oh my goodness it has happened’, and everybody was calling to congratulate me asking ‘are you the one?”

Ndung’u, an Information Science graduate from Moi University, studied at a local primary school in her home area in Molo before she proceeded to Olenguruone Secondary School.

With both parents as teachers, her first love was to pursue teaching as a career but this would later change to wanting to be a doctor prompted by the poor access to medical facilities in her village.

“Being in a rural setup, you only see a doctor where everyone will be queuing every day, there would always be a queue at the dispensary but then that was short-lived because it only happened on very few occasions, mainly my focus was on being a teacher.”

Ndung’u said the hustle it took to get to school is memorable especially whenever it rained as it meant total shutdown of transport.

“There was no public transport so we used to use tractors and I remember we would all assemble in Molo town and there would be a tractor to take us to school. The tractor would get to a point it would not be able to get to the school,” she narrated.

She said the school head teacher would then offer to ferry the students in his small Suzuki car from the drop-off point.

Ndung’u said her parents faced challenges paying school fees for all six of them and this pushed her to study really hard to change the situation at home.

“I excelled very well, I was the best in my year and I joined Moi University to do Information Science.”

Over the working career, Ndung’u said she her mostly been very active in capacity building the youth on matters ICT.

“For the last like 20 years I have been doing ICT and development and specifically I have done a lot of work Health,” she said.

Ndung’u revealed that she has worked with Amref where she helped set up the first telemedicine project; African Union where she handled capacity building in internet governance across all 55 member states; and she was also in charge of training the youth during the 2022 Global Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Ethiopia.

She was also part of the organizing team of the IGF held in Japan in 2023.

 “So, in my CV I guess they saw the capacity building I have done. They saw also my passion for ICT in a manner that I have supported the development of our ICT strategy. 2014-2018, I was the secretary to the taskforce,” she said.