Passionate about clean water and advocating for the basic needs for women and girls on the continent, Lumbie Mlambo spoke to us at the 2025 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit about walking the talk when it comes to humanitarian work on the ground in Africa.
“We can talk all we want , but if you don’t put action behind it, nothing happens. I always tell people that when I talk, I’m talking because I’m actually doing something,” Lumbie Mlambo says to FORBES AFRICA.
Mlambo is the founder of J.B. Dondolo, a non-profit organization that works to remove barriers of access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene in underserved and impoverished communities.
This need to promote development and gender equity stems from the vision and values of her father, who was a humanitarian advocate and instilled the importance of this type of work in his children.
She believes that tragedies can teach you something, and it was tragedies in her own life–which included experiencing a stroke at a very young age and losing her father–that led her to found the organization, which she named after him.
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“Before he died, he wanted all his children to continue his humanitarian work because he was a humanitarian in the community he lived in,” she says.
“I took a leap of faith and decided [to] go check it out. While I was there, I found out that the community; the clinic wanted something totally different–they wanted water. I decided, ‘let me give them what they want’, but also finish my father’s work; refurbish the clinic. I did that, and I started learning about water, and I fell in love with it.”
The U.S.-educated Mlambo goes on to explain the work she is doing in several countries in southern Africa and East Africa.
“I’m here right now in South Africa because I’m starting an innovation for water. I’m working with companies here, creating jobs, enabling them to do something for themselves.
“I’m going to Zimbabwe [with] the same innovation, which is Climate H20 for water; we’ve started a factory there. They’re just going to pilot-test it for three to six months, fine tune it until it works, then mass produce it. So, there’s action.”
She also emphasizes the significance of providing basic services to women and girls who are adversely impacted by the lack of water.
Addressing this need allows them to be happy, go to school, start businesses and just experience an overall sense of good physical and mental health.
“I always say, ‘J.B. Dondolo has to strive’, because when I utter my father’s name, I’m always reminded that he was a strong man–he never gave up on the community,” Mlambo says with conviction.
She adds that “the 2030 SDGs are not going to be accomplished by just talking alone; we need to be piloting work on the ground and measuring it”.
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