“Bila sisi wajue hawaezi enda mahali” (without us, they should know they can’t go anywhere).
These powerful words cut through the air in Kangemi social hall as one of the chama women reflected on the documentary they had just watched. Her confident assertion captured the emerging realization among the nearly 30 women gathered there—they hold significant, yet often unrecognized, political power.
Badili Africa brought together women from Kangemi and Kawangware—members of chamas, the community-based savings and social groups that form critical networks throughout Kenyan communities. Together, they watched “Women Kingmakers,” a docufilm highlighting how women mobilizers influence political outcomes despite facing marginalization within political structures.
Confronting Shared Challenges
As the discussion unfolded following the screening, participants began sharing their experiences as political mobilizers during Kenya’s 2022 general elections. A pattern quickly emerged—stories of disillusionment and broken promises.
The facilitator guided the conversation toward identifying root challenges. Two major issues surfaced repeatedly:
First, the exploitation of women mobilizers by candidates who court their support during campaigns but abandon them after elections. Second, the fragmentation among women mobilizers themselves, who often work in isolation rather than collectively. Risper, a chama woman from Kangemi, noted that the issue with mobilization is that the mobilizers want to reap the benefits alone; they do not work as a team.
“Some of us get small favors from politicians and think we’ve won,” observed another participant. “But we lose our power when we don’t stand together. They divide us easily this way.”
Movement Building
This was the third session in a program designed to guide the chama women on how to build a formidable movement that would ensure their voices are heard. In these sessions, the women learned how to harness the power they have to create change for their communities. Particularly, they learnt how to combine their ‘power within’ and ‘power with’.
The facilitator described these two types of power as the most crucial to understand when building a movement. She explained that power within refers to the power derived from knowing yourself – your strengths, weaknesses, and personal identity – while power with refers to the power that manifests from coming together to solve a particular problem. She emphasized that understanding how to combine these two types of power is where the strength of a movement lies.
To explain this further, she outlined 5 key steps the women would need to follow to do this:
- Building relationships: to create a movement, they would need numbers. Networking with other women in the community would therefore be necessary to bring them on board.
- Storytelling: to make the issue more relatable to members of the community and get them on board, they would need to find ways to tell their shared stories to as many people as they could.
- Using the resources at hand: They would need to bring together their collective resources and find ways to work with what they currently have to start the movement. If they continue waiting for more, they might never start.
- Strategizing: Develop concrete plans and structure for the movement. This would stave off any confusion.
- Taking action: Finally, they would need to gather the courage to act on the strategies they would have developed
Building Negotiating Power Through Unity
The session shifted from problem identification to practical solutions. The facilitator emphasized that the women’s significant mobilization abilities could translate into genuine influence—but only through coordinated action.
“When you approach a leader individually, you’re easily dismissed,” the facilitator explained. “But what happens when fifty chama women arrive together with a single agenda?”
The facilitator outlined concrete strategies:
- Strategic communication: How to articulate community needs effectively to both politicians and fellow community members
- Value-based mobilization: Establishing non-negotiable principles that guide political engagement
- Structural organization: Creating leadership structures among mobilizers to present a unified front
- Documentation: Developing community manifestos that clearly outline priorities and demands
From Education to Action
By session’s end, women who had arrived as individual representatives of separate chamas were exchanging contacts and making plans. The intentional mixing of participants from both Kangemi and Kawangware created natural networking opportunities across neighborhood lines.
While the session introduced many crucial ideas about power and political engagement, its most significant achievement was planting seeds of solidarity. As the women departed, their conversations continued outside the hall—evidence that connections were forming beyond the structured program.
The true measure of this education session’s impact will unfold in the months ahead as these chama women begin applying their collective influence toward securing meaningful change for their communities. For now, the first critical step has been taken: recognizing that their power lies not in individual relationships with politicians but in the strength of their unified voice.
