“I become through our collective being.”

Mbuntu shares its root with ubuntu, the Southern African ethos often rendered as “I am because we are.” Across Bantu languages, -ntu means person, and each language shapes it with its own prefix: ubuntu in Zulu and Xhosa, obuntu in Luganda, and mbuntu among the communities where our story begins.

In Rakai District, Uganda, where this work began in 1992, community elders used mbuntu as the essence of development done differently, with community at the centre of how programs are designed and carried out. From that grew the Mbuntu Foundation, a formalized methodology, and a film and media studio, each carrying that ethos into its own work.