Assumpta Nnaggenda-Musana

Assumpta Nnaggenda-Musana (née Assumpta Nnaggenda), also Assumpta Nnaggenda Musana, is a Ugandan architect, urban planner and academic, who serves as a lecturer in the Department of Architecture and Physical Planning, in the College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology, at Makerere University, the oldest and largest public university in Uganda. She was the first woman in Uganda to obtain a doctorate degree in architecture, and as of February 2019, the only one.

Quotes

• Several young people in Uganda both within the architecture course and outside have told me that they wish to be like me, which I think is a good thing because it sustainably intensifies aspirations for the architecture course, especially for the female gender
  • [1]
• Lecturing being a timetabled activity allows for ample flexibility. I carry out other activities like involvement in private practice and grants application in between lecture time. It is lots of fun interacting with young people (students), there is a lot to learn from them, and it makes one feel like a child again.
  • [2]
• Young women who wish to pursue a career in architecture and urban planning should know that the course is intense and that they need to manage their time well so that they do not lag behind and thus lose interest in the course. It is okay to mix work and play but it is important to stay on course.
  • [3]
• As an architect/urban planner, my areas of interest include researching human settlement, especially studying informal settlements and low-income housing in a bid to establish how the housing conditions can be improved for the wellbeing of low-income households.
  • [4]
• from one that is being dominated by western models of glass-clad buildings to one where we see diversity in styles. Perhaps in the next ten years, we shall see instruments of our national identity emerging in the form of different traditional motifs appearing often in the architecture around us.
  • [5]