Leading as an African woman in multilateral spaces has, for me, always been both a professional responsibility and a deeply personal calling.
It is a journey shaped not only by the institutions I have served, but by the countries and contexts in which I have had to work and lead—whether navigating political transition, supporting fragile recovery, engaging governments on sensitive reform initiatives, or sustaining teams and partnerships through periods of uncertainty.
In each of these settings, I have learned that leadership demands technical competence, political judgment, and strategic discipline—but also something more fundamental: the courage to remain anchored in who you are, even within systems that were not originally designed with your voice, your history, or your lived experience at the centre.
Multilateral institutions are complex spaces, shaped not only by formal mandates, but by informal codes, political sensitivities, power hierarchies, and competing interests. To lead effectively in such spaces, one must pair excellence with strategic navigation, whether engaging on politically sensitive processes, aligning diverse stakeholders behind common priorities, or speaking with coherence in environments where every word and every signal carries consequence.
Strategic leadership in these settings means knowing how to build coalitions, where influence sits, when to intervene, and how to move a process forward without losing the substance of what matters. It means understanding that leadership is not only about speaking with conviction, but about listening with discipline, reading context with precision, and knowing when to challenge the system and when to move it from within.
Over the years, I have come to understand that presence is not the same as influence. Many of us have worked hard to enter rooms where the most consequential decisions are shaped—on governance, peacebuilding, crisis response, development financing, and institutional reforms. But being present in those rooms is only the beginning. The more important test is whether one can help shape the agenda, reframe the debate, and keep institutions focused on outcomes that matter in the lives of people.
Engagement on critical issues such as constitutional reforms and/or electoral processes requires far more than technical input. It requires trust, patient political engagement, and the ability to convene across ‘differences’ while remaining credible, principled, and constructive. In such moments, I realised that for African women leaders, representation must be measured not simply by visibility, but by voice and impact.
I also realised that authenticity is not a vulnerability to be concealed but is rather a source of leadership strength when exercised with confidence and clarity. Too often, women, especially African women—feel pressure to adapt themselves to inherited models of authority to be seen as credible. Yet some of the most effective leadership I have tried to practice has come from being grounded in values, cultural intelligence, and a clear sense of purpose.
During my work in Somalia, for example, where the political and humanitarian context demanded both urgency and sensitivity, I saw how essential it was to lead with steadiness, humility, and respect for context. In such environments, leadership cannot be performative. It must be credible, relational, and anchored in listening. Our lived experiences sharpen our understanding of fragility, exclusion, inequality, and resilience. They help us read complexity with nuance, and they remind us that policy is never abstract—it is always about people, power, and dignity.
For me, one of the greatest contributions African women bring to multilateral leadership is the ability to hold strategy and humanity together. I have seen this in work that required engagement with governments at the highest level while also keeping sight of the communities affected by economic vulnerability, exclusion, climate stress, or humanitarian distress. I remember one moment, standing with women whose lives had been upended by uncertainty and crisis, listening as they spoke not in the language of policy, but in the language of survival, dignity, and hope. What stayed with me was not only the hardship they described, but the clarity with which they understood what leadership should deliver. Whether in governance support, early recovery, or broader development context, the credibility of our leadership depends on our ability to connect institutional processes to lived realities. At a time marked by intersecting crises, geopolitical fragmentation, and growing demands for multilateralism to prove its relevance, we need leadership that is principled, empathetic, and results-oriented, leadership capable of managing complexity without losing sight of people.
One reflection that has stayed with me throughout my career is that resilience, while indispensable, should never be romanticised. There have been moments when leadership required holding teams together during uncertainty, sustaining delivery/implementation under pressure, and helping others remain focused when the surrounding environment was fragile or unpredictable. During the Covid-19 period, for example, leadership was not only about continuity of operations; it was about protecting morale, sustaining trust, and ensuring that people still felt seen and supported while navigating extraordinary demands. African women leaders are often expected to carry such weight with composure, prove competence, and absorb institutional pressure without visible strain. But resilience should not become an alibi for institutions to avoid confronting structural inequities.
I also believe very strongly that our task is no longer only to celebrate individual breakthroughs. It is to convert those breakthroughs into institutional change. Across my career, I have seen how much difference it makes when someone opens a door, extends trust, or creates space for others to grow into leadership. I have also seen the opposite—how much talent institutions risk losing when leadership pathways remain narrow, opaque, or shaped by assumptions about who naturally belongs.
That is why I believe so deeply in mentorship, sponsorship, solidarity, and intergenerational investment. It is not enough for a few exceptional women to succeed despite the odds. We must create pathways for more women to lead without being treated as exceptions. Real progress is not when one woman enters the room; it is when the room itself begins to change—its assumptions, its culture, and its understanding of who has the authority to lead.
The task before us is not merely to make room for African women within multilateral institutions as they are. It is to recognise, with clarity and conviction, that the future of multilateral leadership will be stronger, wiser, and more legitimate when African women help shape it at every level.
Because when African women lead fully, institutions do not simply become more representative; they become more credible, more courageous, and more capable of meeting the demands of our time.
Jacqueline Saline Olweya, Ph.D., Currently serving as UNDP Resident Representative in the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a senior international development practitioner with more than 25 years of experience in governance, crisis response, policy analysis, strategic foresight and multilateral cooperation across Africa. The article is written to commemorate African Women’s Month (August), during when we celebrate women’s achievements and honours the anniversary of August 9th 1956 when over 20,000 women protested against the apartheid pass laws.
