An Internationally Operating Consulting Firm
Mweni Consulting is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with roots in Zambia. The firm is founded and led by Dr. Racheal Kalaba — the scholar who coined Ubuntu Womanism — and offers a full-range strategic and intellectual portfolio to clients across government, international development, academia, health, civil society, and the private sector.
The firm operates across disciplines and sectors because the challenges it addresses do not respect disciplinary boundaries. Gender injustice shows up in health systems and education policy and community governance and corporate culture simultaneously. Ubuntu Womanism offers a framework that can work across all of these — because it begins not from a sector but from a set of values: relational, collective, grounded, intergenerational, and accountable.
Mweni Consulting is built for the world as it is — complex, cross-contextual, and in need of frameworks that hold across difference. It is also built for the world as it should be: one in which the knowledge of women and girls, of Indigenous communities, of the Global South, shapes the policies and programs that claim to serve them.
In the Bemba language of Zambia, mweni speaks to the one who arrives, who is present, who comes with purpose. It carries within it the idea of the guest who brings something essential — not to impose, but to contribute. It is a name for a firm that enters every relationship as a respectful presence, bringing rigour, care, and the light of community-grounded knowledge.
Ubuntu Womanism: The Intellectual Core
Ubuntu Womanism was coined by Dr. Racheal Kalaba. It is her original theoretical contribution — developed over more than a decade of scholarship, fieldwork, and community practice.
Ubuntu Womanism extends the Southern African philosophy of collective humanity through African feminist and womanist epistemologies, centring the knowledge, leadership, and agency of women and girls as the foundation for transformative and sustainable change. Ubuntu Womanism in Practice
Relational Leadership
Leadership is not individual performance. It is the quality of relationships a leader builds, sustains, and is held accountable to.
Collective Responsibility
Durable change is change that a community owns, governs, and passes forward. Our work builds collective capacity, not dependence.
Spiritual Grounding
Women's knowing is cosmologically situated — connected to ancestors, to land, to the future. This dimension is constitutive, not decorative.
Intergenerational Wisdom
Knowledge moves between generations in both directions. Our programs are designed to honour and sustain that flow.
Ethical Governance
This firm does not extract, prescribe, or parachute. It earns the right to be in relationship with every community it works alongside.
Leadership Accountable at Every Scale
Dr. Kalaba's governance roles span national health policy, youth development, international finance, and her own institutions — at every level, she has been accountable not only to boards but to the communities those boards are meant to serve.
Vice Board Chairperson
A national governance role carrying direct accountability for health policy direction, institutional oversight, and the strategic interests of the Zambian people.
Board Member & Gender/Disability Committee Lead
Leading the Gender and Disability Committee at the intersection of national youth policy, gender equity, and disability rights — governance work that directly informs her approach to inclusive, community-accountable leadership.
Founder & Board Member
Founder and governing board member of the Zambia Women Institute of Leadership and Learning, overseeing strategic direction, curriculum integrity, partnership development, and Ubuntu Womanism-centred governance of the organisation's programs across Zambia.
World Treasurer (Elected)
Elected World Treasurer of MIJARC, a global social movement spanning multiple continents. A voluntary international governance role carrying financial stewardship responsibilities for a worldwide organisation, and demonstrating the trust placed in her by a global constituency.
Begin a Conversation
We listen before we respond. Tell us about the change you are working towards.
Contact Us