Powerful women vice chancellors killing it!

When Vice chancellor Mary Walingo was just elected vice chancellor of Maasai Mara University faced a scenario that most women in leadership face in a day today life. Elderly men from the Maasai community where the university is located came to her office and requested to see the VC. When she told them she was the one, the men thought she was lying.

They could not believe the vice-chancellor was a woman. They kept insisting that they wanted to see the VC, who to them, was supposed to be a man.

After that encounter, she knew it was going to take hard work to win the trust of the Maasai community. “I knew I had to win their confidence that a woman could lead a university. And the only way I was to do that was to let my hard work do the talking,” Prof Walingo, who was appointed Maasai Mara University VC in 2014, says.

Unlike their male counterparts, many women vice-chancellors still find it hard to be accepted as university chief executives, forcing them to work even harder to prove their leadership ability.

That is one of the main issues that came out last week during a leadership and networking workshop for women vice-chancellors in Africa. It was at the workshop that Prof Walingo shared her experience.

Dubbed Forum for African Women Vice Chancellors (FAWoVC), the workshop brings together women vice-chancellors from universities in Africa to learn skills to help them manage their universities.

Former Kenyatta University vice Chancellor Prof Olive Mugenda had her story to tell in that she began her 10-year term as Kenyatta University (KU) vice-chancellor by doing small things like planting flowers.

The surrounding community was angry and wanted to know why they had been given a vice-chancellor who was only interested in planting flowers. But she  knew the importance of students studying in a clean environment.

Back then, KU looked like a high school. By the time she was leaving,she had overseen a number of projects, including the building of new hostels, a business centre, an amphitheatre, a central administration block, a library, a hospital and a mall. She even left behind a funeral home for the community. Student enrolment rose from 15,000 to more than 70,000.

The conference now has close to 50 women vice-chancellors from universities in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Malawi, South Sudan, Sudan, Ghana, Algeria, Nigeria, Liberia and South Africa. FAWoVC chairperson Prof Mabel Imbuga said societal and cultural factors predispose women to difficulties when they take up leadership positions at universities.

“No one prepares a woman to take the vice-chancellor position at a university. This, plus their family responsibilities, a judgmental society and the notion that these positions are a preserve of men, make a woman’s term in office an arduous ask,” said Prof Imbuga, a former vice-chancellor at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

There are many more stories of women in power but once factor remains is that we till need to give women the chance to hold top position and through that we are moving our continent and society forward.

Just like the newly elected president in Ethiopia it is high time Africa arises from it slumber and empowers its women into leaders that they were born to be It started in 2016 with 20 vice-chancellors.

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