The Girls That Are Not Waiting and the Bank That is Backing Them Up

Jeannette Ilunga, Southern Sun Ridgeway Hotel, LUSAKA | Wednesday 1 October, 2025 – Women make up half of Zambia's population and nearly half of all primary school teachers, but only one in five head teachers are women. In Parliament, just 15% of seats belong to women. Against such systematic exclusion from leadership, 100 girls gathered to hear a message that challenged everything they had been told about when their moment would arrive.

Mr. Mwindwa Siakalima, Chief Executive Officer of Stanbic Bank, delivered that message at the inaugural Girls Lead Camp with calculated precision. "You are not just the leaders of tomorrow. You are leaders of today." His words dismantled familiar rhetoric asking young people to wait their turn, replacing patience with immediacy.

Powered by Anakazi Banking, the gathering represented deliberate intervention rather than standard educational programming. It is a platform for transformation, a space where potential is nurtured, voices are found, and leadership is born.

Calculated Returns on Strategic Investment

Why does a major financial institution commit resources to adolescent girls?

Mr. Siakalima answered without hesitation: "At Stanbic Bank we believe that real progress begins when we invest in people, and there is no more strategic investment than in education, empowerment and leadership of girls."

His reasoning follows straightforward logic, which is when girls rise, communities rise, and when girls lead, nations grow stronger. Individual empowerment cannot separate from collective prosperity. Personal achievement directly correlates with national development.

Stanbic's partnership with Junior Achievement Zambia serves what Mr. Siakalima calls the bank's core purpose as Zambia is their home and their goal is to drive her growth. However, growth alone proves insufficient. It must be both equitable and sustainable. “This means that there must be more participation in driving this growth by those that have historically been left behind." Mr. Siakalima said.

Girls and young women remain among those historically marginalised groups. Excluding them from economic and leadership opportunities represents moral failing and significant miscalculation. Mr. Siakalima positioned the camp as corrective action, expanding access to tools, networks, and confidence essential for leadership.

Building Impact Through Sequential Design

Inspiration without application achieves little. Mr. Siakalima outlined three objectives for the camp: To inform, to inspire, and to create lasting impact.

Information establishes foundation through knowledge about career pathways, financial literacy, and professional expectations. Inspiration provides emotional momentum, demonstrating that women who look like participants already occupy positions they seek. Impact requires learning to generate changed behaviour, altered pathways, and measurable outcomes.

Mr. Siakalima emphasised continuation outside the initial gathering. "It is not a one-off event. It is a journey," he stated, committing to sustained engagement with young women.

Practical Wisdom Over Empty Encouragement

Turning to personal advice, Mr. Siakalima abandoned the cliche typically offered to young people. Experience shaped his counsel.

"There is no better thing to do as a young person starting a career than to work hard,” he said, in a tone similar to that of a parent offering timeless advice, “Because nothing comes for free." Effort forms a non-negotiable foundation for success and character traits like integrity, diligence and hard work are align with a path that leads to success.

Mr. Siakalima also encouraged the girls to be agile and make things work in any situation that they find themselves in. Agility matters because circumstances shift. Opportunities appear and disappear. Rigid plans often fail where adaptation succeeds. In these situations, flexibility becomes both a survival mechanism and competitive edge.

His most notable guidance to the girls addressed tension between humility and self-advocacy. Mr. Siakalima asked them to make sure that they work hard, remain focused and stay humble. He quickly emphasised, “But humble does not mean you do not stand up for yourself."

Professional environments demand especially difficult navigation from young women. Cultural norms encourage female submission while punishing those who fail to assert themselves. Mr. Siakalima acknowledged such contradiction, offering permission to chart a different course—remaining grounded without disappearing, practicing humility without surrendering voice.

Leadership Claimed in Present Tense

Mr. Siakalima's opening declaration gains meaning through understanding what leadership actually requires. Calling participants "leaders of today" neither flatters nor prematurely elevates. It recognises that leadership begins when someone commits to developing skills, character, and vision necessary for guiding others.

One hundred young girls arrived as pupils between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, but armed with this information, inspired by example, and challenged to generate measurable impact in schools, families, and communities, they departed as leaders under construction. Stanbic Bank made calculated investment rather than charitable gesture—the kind of long-term thinking acknowledging that national strength builds one empowered girl at a time.

Mr. Siakalima grasps what happens when girls claim power. Communities rise alongside them, elevating neighbours, siblings, and future generations. Girls who lead do more than occupy authority positions. Leadership itself transforms under their influence.

Countries stop postponing progress when they recognise leaders already present, sitting in classrooms, articulating visions, seizing opportunities. Mr. Siakalima identified such leaders clearly that day. Young women who have not finished claiming their power already possess everything required to reshape Zambia.

Stanbic Bank refuses to wait because waiting costs too much. Every year spent telling girls to prepare for tomorrow rather than lead today represents lost innovation, silenced solutions, and unrealised potential. Every postponed investment in female leadership compounds inequality rather than corrects it.

The bank places its bet where data and moral clarity converge—on girls who will not wait for permission to lead and who understand that tomorrow arrives through action taken today. Mr. Siakalima's message distills to essential truth: leadership does not require age or title or someone else's approval. It requires decision, effort, humility, and voice.

One hundred girls left that room as proof that waiting was never necessary. Stanbic simply stopped pretending otherwise and started backing them up instead.