Heritage and identity
The land, cattle, elders, songs and faith of the Banyamulenge, and what it means to begin as a place and a people.
Books · Coming soon
Awakening African Leadership
A Refugee's Journey and a Call to the Next Generation
by Fiston Mututsi. Fiston Mututsi is the pen name of Fiston Ndayishimiye.
Release date, formats and where to buy: coming soon.
About the book
Born into a war he did not choose.
"I was born into a war I did not choose."
Fiston Mututsi grew up in the High Plateaux of Minembwe, in eastern Congo, where some mornings began with gunshots at four o'clock. At thirteen he walked out of Congo with his younger brother, crossing rivers on foot, not knowing if his family was alive. He spent years in Nakivale in Uganda and Kakuma in Kenya. On November 19, 2016, he arrived in New Hampshire and began again, starting with the language.
Awakening African Leadership is his story and the story of his people, the Banyamulenge: their cattle, their elders, their word for what makes a person human. It is also a call to every young person who has been told they are lost.
"Survival is not the final destination. The question is what we do with it."
Inside
Six big ideas.
African history, told by Africans
Griots and keepers of memory, the kingdoms of Mali, Great Zimbabwe and Kongo, the slave trades, the Congo Free State and the independence generation.
Ubumuntu
The word for being fully human: humanity, compassion, dignity and responsibility, and why it is the first test of any leader.
The road of a refugee
War as a child lived it, the long walk, the camps of Nakivale and Kakuma, and the work of arriving and belonging.
True leadership
Leaders judged by what they did, the women who held communities together, and the young people who organize for change where they live.
Africa's tomorrow
Young builders across the continent and the diaspora, the systems that help talent grow, and how young organizations last.
Chapter by chapter
The journey, part by part.
Tap a part to open it.
A child wakes before dawn to the sound of gunfire. The book begins with the life behind every shot, and the questions no child should have to ask.
1. The High Plateaux of Minembwe. The land, the water, a house of teachers and the herd: a person begins as a place and a people.
2. The Griot's Task. The keepers of the word across Africa and the poets of the Great Lakes, and why whoever keeps the story keeps the people.
3. Kingdoms of Gold, Stone and Faith. The salt road to Mali, a city of schools, walls of granite and the Kingdom of Kongo. Africa built and governed long before others drew its maps.
4. People of the Great Lakes, People of Mulenge. Kingdoms of the drum, cattle across the lakes and the road up to the high plateaux.
5. The Cow Who Took Away Our Shame. A boy behind the herd, cows that join two families, and the cattle peoples of Africa.
6. Elders, Songs and Prayer. "One head does not hold council": elders, songs, faith and the shared music of Congo, carried by the young.
7. Ubumuntu. I am, because we are. Character is revealed in how we treat those with less power.
8. The Ships and the Caravans. The names that were lost to the slave trades across the ocean and the desert, and the reason for power.
9. Red Rubber and the Witnesses. The Congo Free State, those who refused and the witnesses who would not stay silent: courage without office.
10. The Independence Generation. Seventeen flags in 1960, a morning in June, Mwalimu Nyerere's school promise and the unfinished work.
11. The War as I Lived It. Four in the morning, hours among the trees, carrying water. Told only through a child's memory, with one message: your life is worth protecting.
12. The Long Walk and the Camps. Rivers and mountains with a younger brother at my side, Nakivale and Kakuma, and school as a thirst that would not go away.
13. Arriving and Becoming. Snow in Boston, learning everything again, Concord High, and the difference between safety and belonging.
14. What True Leadership Asks. Words that build, leaders judged by what they did, and the hardest and best parts of leading.
15. The Architects of Africa's Tomorrow. Young voices across borders, systems that help talent grow and what outlasts the founders.
From Chapter 7, Ubumuntu
Read the first test of every leader.
We have been told that a person is a person through other persons. The sentence has been printed on posters, spoken at graduations and repeated in speeches far from the villages where sayings like it first took shape. I heard its meaning long before I read it in a book. In my own language, Kinyamulenge, the word for it is ubumuntu.
Ubumuntu expresses humanity, compassion, dignity and the responsibility we have toward one another. That is the plainest way I can put it. Being human is more than existing. It is also about how we treat other people. A child born into a family on the High Plateaux of Minembwe is a human being from the first breath, and nobody doubts it. The word names something that has to be shown, again and again, across a whole life. It describes the way someone greets a visitor, shares a meal, speaks to the poor and stands beside a neighbor in trouble. It is a quality that others recognize, and it can also be lost.
For me, this principle has become central to how I understand leadership. A great deal of what the world calls leadership has to do with titles, degrees, money and influence. Those things are real, and some of them are worth working hard for. Yet a man can hold a degree, own land, command attention and earn respect in public, and still fail to show humanity to those around him. Education, wealth, power and reputation do not guarantee humanity of this kind. They can even hide its absence for a while, because people are slow to criticize those who have more than they do.
I believe our character is revealed most clearly in how we treat people who have less power than we do. That belief sits near the center of everything I hope to say about leadership. It is easy to be gracious to someone who can offer a reward later, or to someone whose good opinion helps a career. The harder test comes with the person who can offer nothing back: the child, the stranger, the widow, the refugee, the worker whose name the powerful never learn. That is where the word does its measuring.
Excerpt from Awakening African Leadership by Fiston Mututsi. © 2026 Fiston Ndayishimiye. All rights reserved.
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Giants on every page
“The development of a country is brought about by people, not by money.”Julius K. Nyerere · the Arusha Declaration, 1967
“Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.”Nelson Mandela · Johannesburg, July 16, 2003
“Our children must never lose their zeal for building a better world.”Mary McLeod Bethune · “My Last Will and Testament,” 1955
“Life's most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”Martin Luther King Jr. · Strength to Love, 1963
The book also draws on Patrice Lumumba, Wangari Maathai, Chinua Achebe, Desmond Tutu, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin and others.
Who it is for
Made for the next generation.
01
Young people
Students and young adults at home, in a camp or in the diaspora who want to make a difference and need to know where they come from.
02
Schools and educators
Classrooms studying African history, migration, identity, character and leadership. For educators →
03
Communities
Leaders, mentors, nonprofits and faith communities who work with young people and newcomers.