About ZAMWILL

Our Story

The Zambian Women's Institute for Learning and Leadership (ZAMWILL) is a Women-led transformative initiative deeply rooted in the philosophy of Ubuntu, which emphasizes human kindness, interconnectedness, and communal responsibility. We aim to empower girls and young women across Zambia, fostering leadership, innovation, and community impact with a distinctive Ubuntu lens permeating all our programs and operations. 

The concept of Ubuntu is value driven. Ubuntu leadership is value-driven leadership, and the role of leaders in communities is to bring meaning and hope to situations. The purpose-making of leaders in the Ubuntu leadership contends that Indigenous African traditions define leaders as the medium of hope and channel for purpose.

Ubuntu emphasizes the importance of collective solidarity of communities, and the need to have the Ubuntu principles be transmitted in management practices. Ubuntu explores collective solidarity and is centred on the values/principles of leading.

Ubuntu in Our Context

In Africa, the idea of Ubuntu is widely used among various Bantu-speaking people and cultures of Southern Africa. 'Ubuntu' is pronounced differently, though meaning the same thing as 'humanness.' In the Chewa speaking regions of Zambia, Ubuntu is Umnthu, which holds the same profound meaning across Lunda and Bemba heritage.

We base our work on the importance of these values for leaders working in the African context, exploring new paths for education in Africa by theoretically and practically interrogating and re-visioning education in African culture and contexts. Our framework explores epistemological approaches to incorporating Ubuntu values and leadership principles and how this is relevant in an African setup for supporting leadership development.