Meet the Team Behind ARDHI

I have never believed that real change comes from the top it begins with the people who live through the challenges every day.
As a lawyer, land economist, and lecturer, I spent years teaching others how systems should work. But it took a tragedy to show me how deeply those systems fail when they do not serve the people they are meant to protect.
When the Kiteezi landfill collapsed in a devastating landslide, it was more than an environmental disaster it was a painful reminder of how fragile our systems are. The slide buried homes, destroyed livelihoods, and took lives. At first, it felt distant. Then I received a call: my own errand rider had lost his wife in that tragedy. Suddenly, policy failure wasn’t theoretical anymore it was personal.
That moment changed everything. It revealed how issues like poor waste management, unsafe settlements, weak land governance, and the absence of disaster preparedness are all connected and how those failures always fall hardest on the most vulnerable.

That is when I founded Ardhi Law and Policy Initiative to bridge the gap between policy and people, to move from the classroom to the community, and from theory to tangible action.
Today, Ardhi is driven by one mission: to build systems that protect, empower, and include everyone. We work to turn waste into opportunity, strengthen land rights, advance climate-smart agriculture, and expand access to clean water, healthcare, and resilience.
My purpose is to rebuild trust in the systems that should protect us and to ensure that justice lives not in documents, but in people’s daily lives.
We are not just shaping policy. We’re rewriting the story of resilience one life, one lesson, and one community at a time.

Counsel Nassir Mwanje Founder & Country Director