For Antoinette Ngoma, Country Director of Plan International Zambia, human rights have always been at the core of her beliefs. Growing up in a small sugar-cane farming town in the South Eastern of Zimbabwe, she witnessed many children, especially girls, held back by structural barriers, societal norms, and household poverty. Having been one of the few to overcome these challenges and reach a global stage, she experienced first-hand the injustice that drives her work today.
Fueled by a deep commitment to human rights, a belief in human dignity, and a drive for results, Antoinette pursued a career in the nonprofit sector. Supported by her family, especially her father, who never constrained her or dictated what girls could or couldn’t do, she confidently explored interests that defied traditional gender norms, from football, cricket to Formula One. These influences made her comfortable in spaces where many women hesitate and shaped the leader she is today.
From Activist Roots to Country Director
Antoinette’s journey in development leadership was inspired by her activist roots, starting with a local women’s rights organization in Zimbabwe, the Women’s Action Group, which shaped her leadership style. “I do this work because it has meaning to me and transforms lives, and I don’t believe development work is charity. It is real, transformative work that shifts community norms, changes policies and legislation, and has a voice at local and global levels to ensure people live with dignity and fully enjoy their rights,” she affirms.
Whether it was Zimbabwe passing the Domestic Violence Act in 2006, girls attending school thanks to availability of sanitary wear, or a driven community leader rescuing girls from early and forced marriage, Antoinette was inspired by seeing lives change. Even as she scaled the heights of her career over 20 years, she prefers sitting with a group of women or girls talking about issues that matter to them. She is also an expert moderator and facilitator, never one to shy away from the trenches, because she says this where she was fashioned. It is not unusual to find her moderating a panel discussion technical experts at a conference or one of policy makers, having to contend with parliamentarians with strong voices. She can command the different audiences, a real testament to her mastery of communication skills and her emotional intelligence.
However, Antoinette soon realized that passion alone was not going to take her far. So she worked for several mainstream development organizations, honing her skills in fundraising, program design, partnerships, donor engagement, business development, resource mobilization, strategic thinking, and technical writing. “I joined Plan International in 2016 as a Business Development Coordinator, became Business Development Manager in 2018, Director of Programs in 2021, and Country Director for Zambia in 2024,” she recollects.
Antoinette’s past leadership roles in grassroots activism gave her a strong understanding of field realities. CARE International gave her experience in large-scale, multi-million-dollar programming and federation-level complexities. As a Director of Programs in Zimbabwe, she was prepared for a Country Director role in Plan’s talent pipeline. “I can now support my team with confidence in negotiations, donor relations, and complex programming,” she states.
While Antoinette had no experience as Country Director, she applied and was shortlisted. “When you have nothing to lose, you can fight. It was either I go big or I go home,” she recalls. In her final interview, she challenged the panel to hire her if they wanted to test new talent. “Sometimes a maverick is what you need, and I got the job,” she remarks, crediting her feminist roots, business development acumen, and the organisation’s willingness to bet on young female talent.
Driving Results That Transform Girls’ Lives
While many see the NGO sector as a charity sector, Antoinette knows that it delivers transformative change. For her, success means getting results at the point of impact, creating transformative change in the lives of young women and girls. In Zambia, the most critical issues that girls and young men face include child marriage, teen pregnancies, and girls’ inability to complete school.
Antoinette measures success by the extent to which she can transform those indicators and see results on the ground, whether through fundraising, strengthening internal systems to ensure integrity and confidence, or building strong teams. “As a leader in my sector, my results should be on the ground for girls and adolescents,” she insists.
As a solution-oriented leader, strategic thinking and agility are critical. Antoinette admits that in strategic analyses, she often moves quickly, ahead of her team, who need more time to process and align. Her grassroots experience enlightened her about issues at different levels, and she believes that “the worst team you can have is one that is frustrated and only navigating bottlenecks.”
An Inclusive, Transparent, and Empowering Style
Antoinette balances serving with leading, preferring to serve, but stepping forward firmly when needed. In meetings, she gives others space to speak first, often speaking last after considering diverse views. She embraces a sensitive, empathetic, feminist, and non-hierarchical approach to leadership, valuing transparency and openness with not too much protocol. “People think leading with empathy is weak, but I believe it makes your people skills sharper, helps you understand the person before the role and what makes them thrive,” she observes.
Antoinette’s casual, informal personal style and open-door policy help avoid unnecessary formality.” Her leadership style is approachable, empowering, and participatory. “Anyone should be able to talk to me and also give me feedback, both positive and negative. It’s about integration, understanding, respecting diversity, and treating teams with dignity – shifting the concept of leadership from the individual to recognizing that the team is powerful. The strongest teams are empowered with information so they can contribute and carry ownership,” she explains.
Antoinette’s values and beliefs are integral to her leadership. She cannot champion gender justice without embodying it herself. Even when right-wing politics pushed back against gender and inclusion, she stood firm at Plan International Zambia, remaining on the right side of history so girls remember who stood with them. “I’m unapologetically pro-choice, advocating for girls’ access to reproductive health information and services, even when others shy away. This passion also extends into my personal life as a mother of two daughters, one of whom leads her school’s Human Rights Club,” she shares.
Navigating Barriers in Leadership and the Humanitarian Sector
One of the challenges Antoinette faced as a young African woman was limited diversity at the leadership level in the human rights non-profit sector. At 40, she was the youngest black African woman to hold her current role in her region, although many men had occupied the position before. “The higher you rise, the more you encounter power play, reliance on social capital, and louder voices. I’ve had to intentionally build my networks, strengthen my confidence, and draw credibility from those who value the integrity and quality of my work,” she explains.
Over time, this helped Antoinette build recognition as a strong voice with expertise on the ground, such as when Plan International picked her as an expert for the editorial committee for the 2025 the State of the World’s Girls Report, which focuses on child marriage. “Breaking through these barriers has been challenging, but rewarding,” she remarks. Over time, I am now gaining ground in various spaces that align with my areas of interest in the organization and outside. With the SADC Parliamentary Forum, I have become one of their civil society convenors, to enable the voices of our sector at regional parliamentary platforms.
“As a woman leader, I’ve learned to harness my feminist power and confidence while navigating politics. Leadership is not about always being the loudest voice, but building the right alliances and knowing how to use power effectively. My feminist grounding helped me understand patriarchy, power dynamics, and politics, which accelerated my growth,” Antoinette explains.
Driving a Girls’ Rights Agenda Through Strategy, Advocacy, & Visibility
As the Country Director of Plan International, Antoinette’s key responsibilities are to be its main representative in Zambia, as well as the custodian of its strategy, policies, and programming, providing leadership on business development, resource acquisition, and program development at national and sub-regional levels; strategy development, execution, and review, including adaptive shifts as the context indicates; leading and defining advocacy; influencing, communicating, and directing key in-country advocacy positions.
As part of the global federation within the Middle East, Eastern and Southern Africa region, Plan International Zambia’s work focuses strongly on girls’ rights, aligned with the global focus. It works to advance children’s rights and equality for all, defining gender transformative programming as its key strength in the child rights sector. “The agenda is to be the leading girls’ rights organization globally,” says Antoinette. “Hence, my responsibilities as CD are to ensure our country strategy, programming, and influencing work advance this agenda.”
The critical issues informingchallenges for girls include climate change, child marriage, school dropouts, food insecurity, and harmful practices. Girls eat least and last, walk furthest for water and firewood, and are married off early when families face resource scarcity. Antoinette led the intersectional pivot to reframe climate change as a generational and gender justice issue directly affecting child marriage and girls’ futures, opening new solutions linked to their rights. She also pushed for the Zambia office to be visible and effective in advocacy work.
As an activist Country Director, Antoinette tapped into her women’s rights background and became visible as a voice for girls on the most pertinent issues – child, early, and forced marriage, climate change, girls’ rights, and adolescent and young women’s sexual and reproductive health rights. Although these are unpopular topics with right-wing thinking gaining ground globally, she’s driven by the power of her conviction and her unwavering commitment to women and girls’ rights. She often says “the personal is political” and in view of the contestations that are in the field of gender equality today, that feminist statement can not be truer.
About Plan International
At Plan International, we stand with girls to tear down barriers, save lives and build a world where equality for girls leads to progress for all. The world is failing girls — but we won’t. Across the globe, girls face more risks and fewer choices, but they aren’t backing down. We are built for this moment, standing fiercely beside them. When girls lead, communities rise — and a future where we are all equal becomes possible.
Pivotal Moments That Shaped an Advocacy-Driven Leadership
Antoinette points out that driving systemic change for vulnerable communities is challenging because it involves norms, practices developed over generations. Listing some of the pivotal moments that shaped her approach to advocacy and program implementation, she recalls a special moment exerting quiet pressure in their numbers in Zimbabwe’s parliament gallery in 2006, during the final debate of the Domestic Violence Bill. “I learnt that advocacy isn’t always press statements, papers, or marches – sometimes a silent presence is enough. The Bill passed, and the rest was history,” she reflects.
In August 2024, as Country Director of Zambia, Antoinette and other civil society leders co-hosted a meeting of civil society, government, and the SADC parliamentary forum to reflect on the implementation of the SADC model law on Ending Child Marriage provisions by countries in Southern Africa. Instead of settling for resolutions and communiques, Plan International suggested a monitoring framework for the Model Law.
For Antoinette, this was pivotal because she followed through, providing leadership, political support, and rallying expertise across Plan International to lead the process of ensuring that their work on ending child, early, and forced marriage became a state responsibility that was reported on. The monitoring framework and dashboard is now at validation stage after which it will be launched with Plan International as an expert partner for the Southern African region. “It was an opportunity to demonstrate the type of leader I am – one who allows those with technical expertise to shine, while I focus on getting the social capital to enable this process,” she reflects.
Antoinette insists that youth voices and perspectives are central to shaping governance, programming, and advocacy, with youth advisory panels that sit in leadership meetings, ask tough questions, and even place leaders in the “hot seat” to hold them accountable, while youth-led research ensures advocacy is rooted in young people’s realities. She also collaborates with other Country Directors in Southern Africa to influence above-country processes, ensuring that Plan International’s impact goes beyond national borders, strengthening its reputation regionally.
Sustaining Leadership Through Support, Passion, and Purpose
Antoinette eschews the idea of achieving balance, but advocates having a strong support system. Married with two daughters, her partner is a hands-on, excellent father, and she has help. Travel, road trips, music, and quality time keep the family together. She enjoys reading biographical political thrillers for relaxation and leadership lessons, and watching documentaries, international cricket especially the IPL, and football. Her driven, confident, older daughter is interested in the human rights, national, and global affairs arena, while the younger one is a gymnast – driven, laser-focused, and almost obsessed with perfection.
“What motivates me and my team is the tangible changes in girls’ lives – whether rescuing 10 girls from child marriage, seeing one girl return to school, or launching a regional monitoring framework. Both small and large wins inspire us daily,” Antoinette affirms. “I want us to be recognized globally as leaders in advocacy, while also building a high-performing, values-driven, efficient, and cohesive team.”
Looking ahead, her vision is to position Plan International Zambia as a powerhouse for advocacy, leveraging its strong relationships with the government and a conducive policy environment. For the younger generation, Antoinette’s advice is: “Start with passion, as it will get you into the spaces you want – but passion alone won’t sustain you. You need skills, resilience, credibility, and capability to remain and thrive in leadership. Stretch yourself, seek opportunities, and develop the muscle needed for long-term leadership.”
Conclusion
As a leader, activist, and advocate for the rights of girls and young people, Antoinette Ngoma hopes to leave a legacy that empowers a generation of women who step forward with confidence, knowing they’re ready to lead. “Too often, women wait for permission or validation, but the truth is, they’ve been ready all along. I want to inspire them to step forward boldly,” she concludes.
