Convened by Mmatshilo Motsei, this programme brings together seven scholar-practitioners across the African continent and diaspora to remember, reclaim, and re-root.
Mmatshilo Motsei · Convenor
The womb is not only a body part. It is a living archive — the first ecology every human being has ever known. To remember it is to remember ourselves.
Afrika Ikalafe Pluriversity is a centre for land-based healing, learning and living. Founded by Mmatshilo Motsei — nurse, midwife, author, and healing justice pioneer — it is the only African-led, African-origin, land-based womb healing Pluriversity with global reach.
Womb as Our First Ecology is a seven-gathering global programme. Each session is held by a different scholar, artist, or practitioner — women who carry this knowledge from the ground of their own lived and studied experience.
This is not a course. It is a circle.
Each gathering is led by a different presenter. Motsei opens the series and convenes the space throughout. Sessions are held online monthly, with replays available within 48 hours.
Womb as our first ecology: An Overview
Framing of women's bodies in Indigenous Maori Stories
Indigenous feminisms and women's leadership
Womb politics: Violent histories, sovereign futures
Extraction as a womb wound
Land, Nature and Social Reproduction
Closing conversation
Together, this team will guide participants through a powerful journey of remembering the womb as our first ecology.
Nurse, Midwife & Integrative Healer · PhD in Sociology · Indigenous Knowledge Scholar
South Africa
Founder of Afrika Ikalafe Pluriversity and pioneer of African healing justice, Mmatshilo holds a PhD in Sociology and brings together decades of practice as a nurse, midwife, and integrative healer with deep grounding in Indigenous knowledge systems. Author of six books, her three decades of transformative activism — from founding ADAPT in Alexandra Township to the UN Scroll of Honour and two Honorary Doctorates — have placed her at the forefront of womb-centred, community-rooted healing.
Gathering 1 · Convenor
Visiting Professor, Centre for Women and Gender Studies
Nelson Mandela University
South Africa
Professor Darlene Miller brings deep scholarship in gender studies and Indigenous knowledge systems to the programme. Her work centres the body as a site of political and ecological memory, tracing the connections between womb, land, and ancestral knowledge in Southern African contexts.
Gathering 2
African Feminist & Author
Author of Feminist Praxis: Cartographies of Liberatory Worldmaking
East Africa
Jessica Horn is an African feminist writer, strategist and practitioner whose work spans bodily autonomy, healing justice, and feminist movement building across the continent. Her book maps the cartographies of liberation through embodied practice — bringing rigour and lived wisdom to the question of what it means to remember the body.
Gathering 3
Associate Professor, Makerere Institute of Social Research
Makerere University
Uganda
Lyn Ossome is a feminist political economist whose scholarship examines land, labour, social reproduction, and the politics of belonging in East Africa. She brings rigorous theoretical grounding to questions of how wombs, bodies, and ecological systems are governed — and how they resist.
Gathering 4
Author, Decolonial Feminist Activist & Independent Curator
Senior Fellow Researcher, Sarah Parker Centre, UCL London
Réunion Islands / France
Françoise Vergès is one of the world's foremost decolonial feminist thinkers — an author, activist, and curator whose work interrogates the entanglements of colonialism, race, capitalism, and the body. She brings a sharp global lens to the question of what it has meant, historically and politically, to reclaim the womb.
Gathering 5
Interdisciplinary Artist
South Africa / Mexico
Rochelle Webster-Nembhard works at the intersection of ritual, spatial systems, and embodied performance. Her practice refuses the separation of art, body, and land — creating experiences that hold the womb as a site of re-matriation, myth, and Indigenous feminine technology. She brings the dimension of creative and somatic practice to the programme.
Gathering 6
Psychodynamic Psychotherapist
Aotearoa, New Zealand
Liz Hall is a psychodynamic psychotherapist with a specialist interest in women's roles and archetypes within Māori storytelling traditions. She brings the southern hemisphere's Indigenous feminine frameworks into conversation with African womb-centred healing — holding the community dimension of the programme with warmth and depth.
Gathering 7These are not feature bundles. They are levels of relationship with the work — and with Motsei. Select your region to see pricing in your currency.
Enter the Archive
Learn at your own pace. Return as often as you need.
For you if: Women who learn best independently, or whose timezone or schedule doesn't allow live attendance. A complete, powerful entry point.
Join the Circle
Come into the circle. Learn with others walking the same path.
For you if: Women who want the relational, embodied dimension of learning — to be witnessed and to witness others.
Walk with Mmatshilo
For those who are ready to go all the way in.
For you if: Women ready for deep personal transformation with Motsei's direct guidance.
Maximum 10–12 participants per intake
Ubuntu Pricing: A small number of scholarship places are available at the South African rate for participants from lower-income African countries. Write to us to enquire.
Participants connect through a private Telegram community between sessions — continuing the conversation, supporting one another, and staying rooted in the work.