Written by The WWLA Founders
Edited by Michelle Mocumbi
We Will Lead Africa: Volume Two: Women is the exemplar of what happens when members of society who are marginalised decide to take up space and lead, despite the societal hurdles in their way. It is a power-packed volume of African women leaders, standing up without apology. It is serendipitous that we are doing this reflection during Women’s Month 2026, and that the volume itself emerged at the end of the African Union’s 2010–2020 Women’s Decade.
As we revisit Volume Two, we find ourselves returning not just to a book, but to a moment of profound becoming. This volume is, at its core, a love letter to African women, honouring those who came before us, reminding us to lift up our heads, and expressing our dreams for the generations coming after us. This framing was captured in the volume’s beautiful introduction: a letter to a future daughter, written by co-founder and lead editor Sarah Owusu. The letter was a response to a creative prescription that emerged from a coaching conversation within our co-founders’ team as we brainstormed for the volume.
My Dear Child,
I write and live and breathe and work to make alchemy with the pain that we – women – have all carried, are all carrying. As I write this, I write with that knowing ache deep in my bones and my texture … and also with an optimism and hopefulness for what is emerging from the cracks of a system that seems finally to be gasping its last breaths.
You will know suffering, and pain, and sadness and anger – because it is hard to be human – but it will not be because you are a woman, nor because you are African. I do not want to protect or shelter you from the full and fraught experience of being alive, but I want you to grow in a place that makes room for you and for all that it means to be an African woman.
The wounds that we – humanity – carry, in all their varying shapes, colours and densities have guided us a long time. Undermining, undervaluing and undoing the contributions that women make has been the norm, and has harmed us all for too long … our struggles have been different, and have been defined by the variety of expressions we embody, have depended on what intersections we lived in and with, and on the specific context and challenges through which we moved.
And despite this, we were leaders, scientists, mothers, activists, soldiers, artists, doctors, home-makers, academics, carers, farmers, politicians.
I hope my stories show you that when our contribution – our full contribution – is valued then the world comes to life. Potential bubbles over and possibilities open up. I hope they show you the story of everyday women, across African countries, leading for the prosperity of their communities and contributing extraordinarily to the future Africa.
In wisdom, power and hope.
An everyday African woman, leading and loving every day.
Originally, we had conceptualised two separate volumes – governance and women. What ensued during the call for submissions told a different story: the leaders who showed up for the governance volume submissions were all women. And so the volume became what it needed to be, a unified volume showcasing African women, leading from communities to boardrooms to cities.
When we merged the volumes, we were faced with unique challenges and decisions. The conceived governance volume was intended to follow a more structured framework, with sections aligned with the Ibrahim Index of African Governance. However, we quickly adapted, adopting an emergent approach with deep trust in the process to determine how to frame the combined volume. Leaning into our background as organisation development professionals, we adopted a Theory U posture – letting go of structure to let the volume take its own shape. What emerged was truly lovely … a volume infused with the feminine: from the invitation to write ‘My Dear Child’, to the invocation of the earth in the prologue, to the opening poem and the closing science fiction short story that each uplifted the necessity and possibility of women’s leadership.
One of our struggles was the impossibility of categorising the stories. These women leaders lived lives that spilled across traditional boundaries. They were mothers, leaders, creatives, activists, entrepreneurs, healers, fighters. Their stories demanded more than organisational neatness into industry sectors; they required archetypes that honoured their complexity, so we tried doing just that. The final sections of the book represented both sectors and the essence of their work in the categories of Influencers, Health Innovators, Entrepreneurs & Business Women, Educators, Bridge Builders, and (De)Constructors.
This volume was not only a documentation of leadership; it was liberation and joy. For one of us, it was validation of the power and strength of the powerful matriarchs and sisterhood circle whose example of bold and unapologetic leadership she emulates consciously and unconsciously. For another, it was a time to reflect on and unlearn Eurocentric scripts of women’s roles. For all of us – founders and invited co-editors (Chengetai Maruziva and Moyra Keane) – it became a site of healing, an antidote to erasure, exhaustion, and the quiet ways patriarchy teaches women to bow their heads. When we read the volume now, it calls us and insists, again and again, that we ‘unbow our heads’.
Moyra reflects this sentiment:
I find resonance and truth in Ben Okri’s claim that ‘Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.’
As someone who has mostly worked in educational institutions, I am immensely inspired by the authenticity of the WWLA team across Africa – boundaryless and brave. As part of the Editorial Team for the Women Volume, we started – as all writers do – from exactly where we found ourselves. Alongside the contributors, we were all determined, caring, collegial, and creative in our shared goal to ‘make alchemy of the pain’ that women carry. The very writing throughout this volume breathes hope in the face of frank acknowledgements that ‘you will know suffering and pain, and sadness and anger – because it’s hard to be human’ (as Sarah writes in the introduction to the book).
The prologue, Oni Aningo’s poem ‘Steel Magnolia’, sets the tone of unbending fierceness and sharpness which will take down insulting, condescending praises of a ‘pretty’ woman, as well as annihilate the most brutal of attack.
All the diverse stories of this volume inspire and fend off the desperate despondency that sometimes seeps up through global disinformation, violence, rampant greed, and stupidity. I am again immensely inspired, not only at the significance, leadership, and impact of each contributor, but the power that stories have to impart wisdom and hope. Stories make the invisible visible and sink into our legacy, our history, like ephemeral DNA. Obenga reminds us: ‘…history is the salt and leaven of human life. History is the repository whence we fetch our reason for living.’ I believe that these leaders, these women whose stories we uplift in our volume, are making history.
Similarly, Chengetai shares:
Being part of Volume Two: Women was a deeply grounding experience for me. What stays with me most was encountering women doing powerful, transformative work quietly and consistently, often without recognition, but with real impact. There was something incredibly humbling about witnessing that kind of everyday, lived leadership – the kind that happens while life is still happening.
The process of putting the book together and collaborating with the other women in the volume amplified this for me. Learning from one another and experiencing the different ways we each showed up – across sectors, across countries, across the many roles we hold as women – felt like a reflection of what the book itself stands for. It was a reminder that leadership doesn’t sit in one identity; it moves with us through all the spaces we occupy, whether as mothers, daughters, partners, or simply as ourselves.
Reflecting now, especially in a world that often feels in turmoil, what this book represents comes back to me in a very real way. It’s in the daily choices – choosing to show up, even when it’s inconvenient; choosing to lead with a sense of what could be, not just what is; choosing to hold onto a vision of who we can be, both individually and collectively. For me, that looks like showing up fully, bringing all parts of myself – bold, loud, reflective, even a little whimsical – into the spaces I’m in, and creating room for others to do the same.
Ultimately, it reminds me that change doesn’t only happen in grand moments. It happens in how we choose to live every day, how we show up for one another, and how we hold space for those who are still finding their voice.And that, in itself, is a powerful kind of leadership.
This volume invites us to stand up straight inside ourselves, to step forward with all the stubborn joy and perseverance of our foremothers.
In that way, it is not merely a collection of stories – it is a healing remedy and always an invitation to joyful practice.
We still marvel at the women who grace these pages:
- A mayor shaping the future of her city
- A princess preserving the soul of her community
- Queer African women navigating identity and belonging
- Violence against women survivors transforming pain into purpose
- Visionaries building companies, movements, and new ways of being
- Creatives and innovators reminding the world that African women’s contributions make a unique difference to our shared challenges.
Some of these contributors have since become our business partners and collaborators. Others have risen into continental leadership roles. Their trajectories remind us that Volume Two captured not just who they were, but who they were becoming.
[Photo of the cover]
The cover itself – Elizabeth Mwambulukutu’s luminous photography and Romy Gad el Rab’s striking cover design – remain iconic. Both women have continued to grow as creative forces, and revisiting their work only reinforces how perfectly they channeled the spirit of this volume.
As we reread and reflect, we find ourselves asking the question this volume stirs in us every time: Who are we not to rise, when these women do?
Their stories ignite something – a clarity, a fire, and a call that we share with you now:
- What must we now say to our daughters?
- What must we offer them as the world shifts, as old battles persist, and as new forms of courage are demanded?
Perhaps one answer is already in these pages: Read Volume Two. See yourselves reflected. Unbow your heads. And lead.
Here are some inspirational quotes from Volume Two:
