Why MCL came up with The Citizen Rising Woman Zanzibar edition

Unguja. Addressing the audience at Madinat Al Bahir Hotel in Zanzibar on March 25, Mwananchi Communications Limited (MCL) managing director Bakari Machumu explained how and why the company decided to stage a Zanzibar edition of The Citizen Rising Woman Initiative, which is now in its fourth year.

"Last year, we asked ourselves: If we want to empower the nation, as the company slogan says, then how is our coverage outside of Dar es Salaam? How is our coverage in other regions and beyond Tanzania Mainland? We realized that there was a gap. So in doing self-reflection, we made a commitment to improve content coverage concerning Zanzibar. We did that by adding Zanzibar zonal pages to the Mwananchi newspaper and also organizing forums in the isles," he said.

He further expounded that last year, MCL hosted a Thought Leadership Forum on President Hussein Mwinyi's third anniversary as President of Zanzibar at the Golden Tulip in November.

"After that, we also participated in the marking of the 50th anniversary of the Zanzibar Revolution in January this year."

But that wasn't the end of MCL's expansion of coverage in Zanzibar; "our intention was now to bring this initiative that supports and promotes women in leadership positions and those with an entrepreneurial spirit, 'The Citizen Rising Woman', to Zanzibar," he shared.

The Citizen Rising Woman is a campaign that was launched in February 2021 with the aim of telling the success stories of women who have made it to top leadership positions and those who have undertaken initiatives that have a positive impact on society.

"Through storytelling, our aim is to inspire other women. If one reads a story about a woman who has made it in corporate leadership or government, they will also be inspired to achieve greatness and know that they too have the ability to make it to the top," Machumu said.

He added that the second aim was to encourage good gender policies in the workplace. "To inform companies in the private and public sectors on the importance of having gender-inclusive leadership policies."

In achieving this objective, MCL came up with two awards: one for institutions with gender policies and processes that support and promote women's participation in leadership positions.

The second one, called Rising Woman Award, is given to companies that have already established policies that support women's inclusion in leadership positions and have a good gender ratio in leadership.