Katongo Chileshe: Rhodes Scholar standing up for women

By VICTOR KALALANDA

WHILE she sat through a gender studies class out of sheer curiosity in 2012, Katongo Chileshe underwent an intellectual epiphany, after which she no longer saw herself as a prospective lawyer cut out for the courts, but as an activist against gender-related challenges.

It all happened while she was listening to a University of Zambia (UNZA) professor relate the gory story of Christian martyr Perpetua, who was scourged, thrown into an arena with a wild bull and stabbed to death for her religious convictions.

“Initially I wanted to do law,” she says. “But when I attended one of the classes, the most impactful part for me was [the] lesson on Perpetua. She’s one of the first women who sort of spoke against inequality. She was talking about all the harassment and abuses she had endured as a woman and she spoke about her faith in Christ.”

Incensed by the manner in which this historical figure of the third century died, the then 18-year-old Katongo immediately conceived remarkable interest in gender studies, ultimately adopting it for a career.

“Perpetua refused to stop speaking. So at the time I was thinking this is so sad. It seemed like it’s so ancient but I thought about how women’s voices even today are stifled. Today the consequences for women speaking out are persecution, being silenced or losing out on families. So for me that just spoke to me,” she says.

It is such a platform upon which an academic and community service leader has since risen to work around the peace-building issues of sexual and gender-based violence, including the equality and success of both men and women.

Born in Lusaka and raised in a closely knit family which often changed cities, Katongo had early on in her life exuded exceptional flair for intellectual and leadership abilities.

In one remarkable instance, she served for three years as head girl at Ndola Girls Technical School, where she graduated with several academic honours, before her admission to UNZA.

It was at the university that what has since become her chosen lifework came into sharp perspective, not only after sympathising with St. Perpetua’s story, but also because gender studies seemed to be her eventual destiny after she missed a prerequisite exam for law school.

Excellence came so naturally to her in this four-year degree programme, whereupon she ascended to the top of the class and ultimately graduated as the best student, with her former lecturer, ‪Dr Thankian Kusanthan saying of her that “she is very hardworking and one of the most intelligent students in our department.”

Katongo graduates from UNZA

And about her gender studies at UNZA, Katongo herself says “normally we hear about problems in society, but quite often we don’t know how to solve them. But with gender studies I was getting the tools.”

Her own undergraduate thesis dealt with the gendered experiences of mothers of children with developmental disability.

Her first professional stop after leaving UNZA in 2016 was an internship at the Levy Mwanawasa Regional Centre (LMRC), made possible through a fellowship by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) together with the Ministry of Gender.

In this role, the fashion and art lover got exposed to nearly the whole gamut of gender issues, which now equipped her for postgraduate education at the widely coveted Oxford University, after being awarded the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.

By this time she had already partnered with her best friend, Noria Milukutu, to start the Kanori Initiatives, which has since grown to be a major organisation that addresses gender-related challenges faced by young people in Zambia through the medium of literacy development programmes.

As an institution pioneering in evidence-based research and interventions for addressing local gender-related challenges faced by young people in Zambia, Kanori Initiatives’ vision represents the very basic belief of Katongo.

Noria herself finds Katongo as an “assertive, warm and vibrant young lady,” adding that the “team at Kanori Initiatives has benefitted greatly from her intellect and focus. She is always willing to see others succeed. I love her passion and commitment towards work.”

While completing her master’s programme in evidence-based social intervention and policy evaluation at Oxford, Katongo has worked with Noria and many other Zambian interdisciplinary experts to carve out an incredible portfolio for Kanori through literacy advancement programmes, activism against gender-based violence, behaviour change, research and implementation of evidence-based interventions, to mention but a few.

With offices based in Lusaka, this organisation has been operating with little resources, without any major donor funding, but merely with a dedicated local staff that pools personal resources together and is passionate about community work.

For Katongo, she brings not only her world-class education but also her leadership abilities and influence as a Rhodes Scholar to bear on the goals of her organisation.

As a staff development fellow at UNZA and now pursuing her doctoral degree at Oxford, Katongo uses quantitative methods to generate evidence on gender-related issues, like poverty in Zambia, and works with her partners to offer tangible and sustainable solutions through the Kanori Initiatives.

Katongo at Oxford University

She reluctantly talks about her achievements and maintains a reticent disposition, but when she begins to speak one can clearly see that unlike merely excited and irascible feminists, Katongo is passionate about the cause of both men and women, especially now as it involves the barriers and facilitators to justice for survivors of sexual violence.

Through her education and community service projects, Katongo will continue to teach and create programmes meant to counter Zambia’s gender-related challenges as they manifest in their different dimensions.