For Rosalynn Mndolwa-Mworia, visibility plays key role in women’s empowerment

Dar es Salaam. Long before corporate titles and boardrooms, the Managing Director of Mwananchi Communications Limited (MCL), Rosalynn Mndolwa-Mworia, recalls being raised by women who managed households, raised children and ran small enterprises with dignity, but without visibility.

These women, she says, absorbed pressure quietly. They contributed economically, socially and emotionally, yet their labour was rarely framed as leadership or nation-building.

“What really stood out for me,” she reflects, “was how visibility was never part of their equation.”

Ms Rosalynn was speaking at a high-level podcast dialogue convened following the partnership between MCL and Absa Bank Tanzania for the sixth edition of The Citizen Rising Woman Initiative (RWI 2026). The session, moderated by Prudence Zoe Glorious and featuring Absa Tanzania’s Managing Director, Mr Obedi Laiser, was framed as a reflection on the evolution of Rising Woman.

Ms Rosalynn noted that platforms like The Citizen Rising Woman Initiative, which began six years ago, remain significant.

For her, the initiative is not a corporate social responsibility exercise. It is an economic intervention.

Beyond the ‘flower’ narrative

Women in leadership, she says, still walk into room carrying invisible burdens. They are often perceived first as aesthetic presence rather than intellectual authority.

“I am definitely more than a flower,” she says plainly. “I am a mind. I am an educated woman with experience.”

In many boardrooms, she argues, competence must be proven twice. Bias becomes part of the job description. But visibility, when structured intentionally, disrupts that bias. It allows society to peel back the rose petals and engage the core.

Growing up, she did not see women widely framed as drivers of GDP, capital allocators or policy shapers. They existed, but behind curtains. Their economic contributions were real, yet undocumented, unamplified and unarchived.

“That story was not front and centre,” she says. “It existed, but it wasn’t made visible structurally.”

Today, she is deliberate about changing that. When asked what the Rising Woman platform has become, she resists simple labels.

“It is an ecosystem,” she says. “It identifies voices, amplifies them, documents them, and serves as evidence.” Over six years, more than 300 women have been profiled. More than 55 institutions have been showcased for reforms advancing inclusion. Hundreds of stories have been told, not just in March but throughout the year.

The initiative now tracks what Ms Rosalynn calls a Female Inclusion Index, currently at about 25 percent female readership, with a target of at least 35 percent by next year. For her, that metric is not cosmetic. It is strategic.

“You cannot speak about inclusion if the segment you are speaking to is not following the narrative,” she says. “Women need to see more of themselves.”

Narratives, in her view, are not soft instruments. They influence capital flows, investor confidence and institutional behaviour.

When women are consistently portrayed as small-scale operators, perception caps their potential. When they are showcased as board chairs, innovators and empire builders, ceilings crack. “Narratives matter,” she says.

“A girl cannot become what she does not see.”

The compounding effect of power

In the platform’s first year, Ms Rosalynn made a statement that has since become central to its philosophy: when you give power to women, you do not lose power — you multiply it.

She explains it in economic terms.

“Power is not a fixed asset like land,” she says. “When you divide land, it becomes smaller. Empowerment is the opposite.” When a woman gains access to boardrooms, finance or leadership spaces, the effect compounds. Household income rises. Educational choices improve. Investment decisions diversify.

Her children inherit a different belief system about gender and possibility. The multiplier extends into corporate performance. Inclusion expands talent pools. Diverse leadership improves risk assessment. Institutions scale faster when they absorb all available capability.

“Exclusion gets in the way of accelerated growth,” she says. “It doesn’t make economic sense.”

Her argument is mathematical as much as moral. If 50 percent or more of a population remains structurally sidelined, the economy operates at half capacity. “One plus one is two,” she says. “One plus one is not zero.”

Empowerment is not domination

Ms Rosalynn  is careful to clarify what empowerment is not. “Women are not looking for power so that they can dominate,” she says. “We simply want to contribute.”

That distinction matters in a world increasingly defined by geopolitical tensions and institutional power plays. Some organisations, she notes, still operate from scarcity thinking, assuming that sharing influence reduces authority.

Those institutions, she argues, misunderstand growth dynamics.

“If you are not inclusive at an institutional level, you are getting in the way of your own scaling,” she says. Her own household offers proof of the compounding effect she describes. As a mother of two boys, she sees empowerment shaping generational mindsets. Her sons witness leadership through their mother’s lens, not as anomaly, but as normalcy.

“They carry that truth into the spaces they will occupy,” she says.

The Rising Woman Initiative has shifted from celebration to measurable outcomes. Beyond storytelling, Ms Rosalynn is pushing mentorship from goodwill into structure.

“If I did not have mentors, I would not be here,” she says.

This year, the platform plans to formalise mentorship pairings, build partnerships with like-minded institutions and create tangible programmes whose results can be presented in 2027 as evidence of impact.

For her mentorship, is not praise. It is disruption of comfort zones. It is course correction. It is capacity acceleration.

The long-term goal is parity, not symbolic, but functional.

Visibility is responsibility

Critics sometimes dismiss visibility as vanity. Ms Rosalynn rejects that outright.

“Visibility is not vanity,” she says. “It is responsibility and accountability.” When women are profiled, funded or awarded, they become accountable to audiences. Institutions that publicly commit to inclusion become accountable to measurable reforms. Media, she adds, acts as a mirror, reflecting emerging themes until policy follows.

Storytelling alone cannot dismantle systemic barriers. But it can destabilise complacency. It can humanise risk profiles that financial institutions may otherwise treat abstractly. It can create competitive pressure among institutions to innovate.

“We hold the mirror,” she says. “Policy follows perception.”

An economic imperative

Can Tanzania reach its full economic potential without fully empowering women?

“Absolutely not,” she says without hesitation.

An empowered female population translates into higher productivity, stronger household economics, broader innovation and more resilient macroeconomic outcomes. It improves microeconomics at the grassroots and macroeconomics at the national level.

“If The Citizen Rising Woman disappeared tomorrow,” she says, “Tanzania would lose an ecosystem that convenes voices on this social and economic agenda.”

It would lose documented evidence. It would lose de-risked profiles of women leaders. It would lose a talent pipeline. It would lose archived inspiration for the next generation.

And evidence, she says, is what she intends to keep producing.

“We will continue to produce that evidence,” she says. “So that girls can become what they can see.” In Ms Rosalynn’s framing, empowerment is neither a slogan nor a seasonal celebration. It is a growth model. A capital allocation strategy. A competitiveness lever.

And if her vision holds, the quiet women who once carried households without applause will no longer exist behind curtains.

They will be visible. And visibility, in her ledger, is value.