SHAMBA LA AMANI | From Survival To Governance

Bahati Mubuya Gladys, community development actor and coordinator of the Shamba la Amani program, addresses a group of women war returnees seated in a lush field in Mudja, Nyiragongo Territory, North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, on April 6, 2026.

Surrounded by green hills rolling toward the horizon under a wide, clouded sky, Gladys speaks at the center of a circle of women from formerly warring ethnic communities now united around a shared plot of land, a shared harvest, and a shared stake in the peace.

The scene a woman leader holding court not in an office but in the middle of a field, among the people she serves captures the essence of Gladys' approach: that women's empowerment and conflict transformation are not programs delivered from above but relationships built from the ground up, in the soil itself.