Project: RUVIMBO – Building a Sustainable and Inclusive Youth Movement in Zimbabwe
Organized by: Danske Studerendes Fællesråd (DSF) in partnership with Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU)
Nairobi, Kenya – May 2025
From April 12th to 20th, 2025, a joint delegation of youth leaders from Zimbabwe and Denmark embarked on a critical learning visit to Nairobi, Kenya, as part of the RUVIMBO project. Meaning “hope” in Shona, Ruvimbo represents a vision for a democratic and inclusive future in Zimbabwe — one grounded in youth agency, feminist leadership, and climate justice. The week-long visit aimed to strengthen this vision through exposure to Kenya’s vibrant civil society, youth-led activism, and dynamic grassroots movements.
Kenya was selected as a comparative context due to its recent history of bold youth organizing — particularly the 2023 Gen Z protests against the Finance Bill — as well as its shared experience with Zimbabwe in navigating systemic corruption, political repression, and socio-economic inequality. Through a series of site visits, workshops, and community exchanges, the delegation sought to extract both strategic lessons and cautionary tales from Kenyan actors working across the sectors of governance, feminist leadership, climate action, and movement safety.
Grounding in Community: Objectives and Approach
The overarching goal of the trip was not merely observation but active engagement: to co-learn with Kenyan actors, interrogate shared challenges, and build sustainable solidarities across borders. By centering the experience within a Participatory Action Research (PAR) framework, the delegation grounded its methodology in the lived experiences of communities rather than elite narratives or institutional theory. The visit underscored a critical ethos: knowledge for justice must be produced with, by, and for the people.
This philosophy guided engagements with key stakeholders including anthropologist Jakob Rasmussen, youth civic educators like Arnold Gekonge, feminist organizations such as Polycom Girls, and a range of social justice hubs embedded within informal settlements. Each actor contributed to a multi-layered understanding of how transformative organizing happens in practice — often far from the formal corridors of power.
Core Insights from the Field
- Knowledge as Collective Power: The Role of PAR
Introduced by Professor Jakob Rasmussen, Participatory Action Research emerged as a foundational tool for both inquiry and action. PAR challenges traditional, extractive research models by redistributing power to community participants and repositioning them as co-researchers. The delegation was struck by the transformative potential of this model — especially in politically sensitive contexts like Zimbabwe, where mistrust and surveillance often stifle dialogue.
In adopting PAR, the RUVIMBO partnership intends to foreground the lived knowledge of students, youth, and marginalized groups in Zimbabwe. This involves not just collecting stories but constructing platforms where those stories can drive strategy, advocacy, and organizational design.
- Structures that Decentralize, Strategies that Empower
A recurring theme across site visits was the importance of decentralized leadership. Organizations that thrived — such as Polycom Girls or the Social Justice Centres Working Group — did so because they invested in internal education, clarified roles, and shared decision-making authority widely. For RUVIMBO, this insight translates into an urgent imperative: to prevent knowledge from being hoarded at the top, and instead foster horizontal accountability and mutual empowerment.
- Safety, Inclusion, and Feminist Praxis
Safety was not treated as a logistical afterthought, but a political commitment. Particularly in repressive environments, youth movements must build not only safe physical spaces but cultures of care and inclusion. Feminist organizers in Nairobi challenged us to think beyond tokenistic representation, advocating instead for leadership models rooted in intersectionality, mutual respect, and radical listening.
The delegation was especially inspired by Polycom Girls’ deliberate communication approach — using simple language, visual tools, and local metaphors to bridge divides in education and geography. For rural youth in Zimbabwe, this insight is invaluable: communication must be strategic, inclusive, and always grounded in trust.
- Grassroots as the Ground of Resistance
The visit to Mukuru Kwa Njenga, one of Nairobi’s largest informal settlements, marked a turning point in the delegation’s understanding of grassroots power. Led by Geoffrey Mboya, youth from the Social Justice Centres illustrated how hyperlocal organizing can scale into city-wide resistance networks — offering safety nets, political education, and platforms for legal redress.
Here, the team saw that effective organizing is not birthed in lecture halls or policy briefs, but in the rhythms of daily survival. These justice centres function as hybrid spaces: simultaneously sites of resistance, community kitchens, legal clinics, and emotional refuge.
Internal Reflections and Forward-Looking Adjustments
While the trip yielded substantial learning, it also surfaced critical gaps within the RUVIMBO partnership itself. Key among these were: Limited documentation capacity, leading to fragmented knowledge transfer and challenges in measuring impact. Unclear role distribution, particularly regarding the involvement of ZINASU in trip planning and post-visit coordination.
Financial and logistical inconsistencies, suggesting a need for clearer pre-trip alignment on budget responsibilities and contingency planning.
In response, the partnership has resolved to adopt more rigorous planning protocols, including regular virtual check-ins, clearer delegation of roles, and robust internal learning systems. The intent is not merely to fix logistical issues but to model the very principles of accountability and inclusion that the movement seeks to embody externally.
Translating Lessons into Action
The Kenya visit generated a constellation of actionable recommendations for the RUVIMBO project moving forward:
Organize from the ground up, prioritizing the needs and aspirations of local communities over donor expectations or elite validation.
Demystify advocacy, ensuring that language — whether on constitutional rights or climate policy — is accessible, engaging, and oriented toward mobilization.
Prioritize safety, not just in reaction to threats but as a precondition for sustainable engagement. Build data ecosystems, combining storytelling, statistics, and field evidence to enhance credibility and strategic leverage.
Invest in regional solidarity, recognizing the value of inter-movement learning across the continent through bodies like AASU, SADC Youth Forum, and the African Union Youth Division.
Ruvimbo as Praxis
This learning visit to Kenya was not an end in itself, but a beginning — a catalyst for rethinking how youth movements in Zimbabwe are structured, supported, and sustained. In every conversation, from downtown Nairobi to the dusty paths of Mukuru, one truth emerged clearly: movements succeed when they are deeply rooted, broadly connected, and courageously led.
RUVIMBO means hope. But more than that, it now signifies an evolving praxis: one that blends academic rigor with street-level insight, feminist principles with operational clarity, and global vision with local urgency.
Actors Engaged During Visit:
Jakob Rasmussen – Associate Professor of Anthropology
Arnold Gekonge – Champions for SDGs
Noelle Museshi – Civic Educator
Polycom Girls – Feminist Organization
Geoffrey Mboya – Social Justice Organizer
Esther Muthoga – Community Organizer
Wairimu Manyara – Gender Advocate
Prepared by:
Danske Studerendes Fællesråd (DSF) & Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU)
May 2025