Outside his office in Juba, about a kilometre from South Sudan's Ministry of Interior headquarters, Deputy Mayor Hon. Stephen Lomude surveys a line of garbage trucks preparing for another day on the road. Some are being cleaned; others are undergoing repairs before deployment across the city.
For the man charged with keeping South Sudan's capital clean, it is just another day on the job. But few people know that Lomude's journey to City Hall began behind the counters of an Equity Bank.
When he joined Equity South Sudan in 2011, Lomude was a fresh graduate with no professional experience. Like many young recruits, he arrived with academic qualifications but little understanding of management, leadership or the realities of the workplace.
What followed, he says, laid the foundation for the career that would eventually take him into public service.
“To be the person I am today, and how I think and do things, I always trace it back to Equity. When we joined, our minds were fresh from school. What I knew were books. But how to deal with people, leadership, management and daily business operations, I learned through Equity. Looking back now, I realise the training, the discipline and even the pressure we sometimes felt were all preparing us for tomorrow,” Lomude said.
Over the next five years, Lomude rose through several roles within the bank, eventually serving as cash manager while also taking on responsibilities as acting operations manager and acting compliance manager. He attended training programmes in Kenya and gained exposure that expanded both his professional skills and worldview.
A visit to Karatina in Nyeri County left a lasting impression. There, he witnessed first-hand how access to finance was transforming the lives of farmers and women entrepreneurs.
Back home in South Sudan, he saw similar impact through lending programmes that supported families, businesses and communities.
“Equity never focused only on experience. It gave young people opportunities and then invested in developing them. I'm one of the products of that philosophy. The bank built me from zero to the person I am today, and I know there are many others whose stories are similar,” he said.
After leaving the bank in 2016, Lomude moved into healthcare administration before transitioning into public service. Today, as Deputy Mayor in charge of Environment and Waste Management, he leads efforts to address one of Juba's most pressing challenges: waste collection and disposal.
His department is pursuing a digital revenue collection system and exploring partnerships that could attract investors into the recycling sector. He believes financial institutions such as Equity have an important role to play in empowering cities to modernise services and unlock green investment opportunities.
Despite the different path his career has taken, Lomude says the lessons learned at Equity continue to guide him.
More than a decade after joining the bank as a fresh graduate, his journey from banking to public service offers a glimpse of how professional opportunities, training and exposure can shape careers that extend far beyond the workplace.
