In honour of International Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day (8 March), UWC is celebrating stories of courage, equality and unity from around the movement. We’re highlighting the inspiring stories of scholars from the Global Fund for Women-UWC partnership, an initiative designed to expand leadership and education pathways for talented adolescent girls from Sub-Saharan Africa. One student, Emihle Dlamini, a passionate and driven GFW scholar at Waterford Kamhlaba UWCSA, has embraced this mission wholeheartedly, advocating for gender equality and literacy among women in her home country of Eswatini. 

What began as her mother’s childhood dream of attending Waterford Kamhlaba UWCSA became Emihle’s reality when she arrived at the school to start Form One. Seeing the opportunity as a “once in a lifetime,” Emihle seized it wholeheartedly: “I fell in love with the UWC movement because I think being open-minded is the best thing ever. Being close-minded limits you so much as a person—you don’t grow. I wouldn’t be who I am today if I hadn’t come to WK,” she grins. 

Becoming a confident change-maker

That Emihle was ever insecure and shy is difficult to imagine given her disarming candour, easy confidence and admirable list of achievements. Emihle credits her teachers, peers and UWC’s philanthropic legacy for fuelling her growth into the self-assured young woman she is today.

Although still a scholar at Waterford Kamhlaba UWCSA, funded by the Global Fund for Women, Emihle Dlamini is already making the world a better place through her commitment to gender equity, literacy and mentoring. Her Community, Action and Service (CAS) activities at UWCSA read like a roadmap of how to prepare for a career in human rights, particularly her leadership roles in advocating for women and girls.

"When I advocate for women,” Emihle explains, "I try to address the mindset of our young girls so that they know they can go much further than anyone in their family has gone before.”

Leading the Young Women's Empowerment Consortium

As part of her advocacy work, Emihle is the Young Women's Empowerment Consortium (YWEC) operations executive. The group held its first event this year, bringing together young women from all over Eswatini to learn from inspiring and successful women representing various fields. It included a panel that Emihle was asked to moderate called Steps to Success. “It featured professional women who took different paths to their success. It’s important to show young women that there's no prescribed formula.”

In addition to working with YWEC, Emihle is president of the Student Representative Council, an executive for the school’s community-wide Africa Week celebrations and a member of the girls’ leadership development program Girl Up. She is also a literacy volunteer at a preschool each week, an experience that inspired her to found Literacy for Life, an organisation that helps improve English literacy rates among girls and women in Eswatini. In previous years, she has been the head of Girl Up, a member of the school’s alumni relations CAS, a soccer player, captain of the rugby team and the head of Race Talks.  

Addressing race and gender in society

“Race Talks is really important because we need to have hard conversations at UWC, to address real issues within our communities. It was especially important for me to talk about the treatment of women of different races and how that shapes our lives—to look at the intersection of race and gender. You can’t remove the fact that you are this race and this gender from this place. All the different components of who you are is what shapes you.”

For Emhlie, education is just the first step in addressing inequality—she believes that meaningful, lasting change must come from institutional reform and policymaking. As she looks toward university and beyond, it’s clear that Emihle’s impact will be felt far beyond the walls of Waterford. Her plans include studying political science or economics—ideally at Dartmouth. “I think anyone in making policy needs to understand economics. You can’t make very good decisions if you don't know how money works.”  

Seeing policy and economics as interlinked, she hopes her work in gender equity can help end poverty in Eswatini: “It’s such a UWC thing to think that gender, mindset and poverty are interlinked. Poverty is generational in my country and it comes with the mindset that there are no opportunities to better yourself. That’s something I want to help change.” 

Written by Samantha Gayfer, Director of Strategic Development at the Discovery Group.