Picture a young woman standing outside an examination hall in Belgium, holding a paper that says she has failed her second year of university. She is far from home. Her father is an ambassador in the Congo, a man accustomed to navigating diplomatic rooms, and she has just experienced a failure of her own.

For Judith Suminwa Tuluka, however, it was not the end of the story. It was the beginning of a journey that would eventually take her to the highest levels of government.

Born on 19 October 1967 in Kongo Central, Suminwa grew up in a family familiar with public service and diplomacy. Her father served as Congo’s ambassador to Chad during the Mobutu era, giving her an early view of diplomacy and government.

As a young girl, she dreamed of becoming a doctor and later considered joining the army. Eventually, she settled on a different ambition: working in banking. She chose economics and enrolled at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, where she encountered the academic setback that would force her to reconsider her path.

Rather than abandon her ambitions, she rebuilt her academic career. She earned an accounting qualification at a technical school in Brussels before returning to university at the Faculty of Economics in Mons. By 1996, she had obtained a degree and master’s in applied economics. In 1997, she earned a diploma in labour sciences from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, specialising in developing countries.

Her years in Belgium also brought her into contact with other Congolese students living far from home, including a young Félix Tshisekedi and his wife, Denise. The relationships formed during that period would later become significant in Congo’s political history.

Suminwa returned to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1997 and joined Citibank, pursuing the banking career she had imagined as a child. She later made another major career shift, taking an entry-level position as an administrative and financial assistant at the United Nations human rights office.

That modest beginning eventually led to more than two decades of work with the United Nations Development Programme. She coordinated peacebuilding initiatives in the conflict-affected provinces of eastern Congo, led the STEP community development project and later worked on public-finance reforms in the Comoros.

Her experience gradually brought her closer to national policymaking. Between 2012 and 2015, she advised the Minister of Budget before becoming deputy coordinator of the Presidential Strategic Watch Council.

In March 2023, Tshisekedi appointed her Minister of Planning. Months later, she was selected for Harvard University’s Ministerial Leadership Program, where she worked on strategies aimed at increasing government revenue without creating additional debt and directing resources towards health, education and security.

Then, on 1 April 2024, her political career reached a historic turning point.

Tshisekedi appointed Suminwa Prime Minister. In June, she was sworn in as the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country of nearly 100 million people.

She acknowledged the scale of the responsibility.

“I know the task is big and the challenge immense,” she said at her first press conference, “but together, with the head of state, support from the government and all institutions, and that of the Congolese population, we will make it.”

The challenges were immense indeed.

The conflict in eastern Congo intensified as M23 rebels, backed by Rwandan forces, advanced through North and South Kivu. Goma fell, thousands of people were killed and hundreds of thousands were displaced.

Suminwa became one of the government’s prominent voices on the conflict. At the African Union summit in February 2025, she called out Rwanda’s involvement, saying, “The hour is grave. We are here because a member state of our Union, Rwanda, has violated the fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter.”

Days later in Geneva, she called for the international community to move beyond condemnation and consider deterrent sanctions against Rwanda.

When rebels withdrew from Uvira in January 2026 after nearly two months of occupation, Suminwa oversaw the government’s emergency response to the humanitarian crisis involving 267,000 displaced people and 12,000 unaccompanied children. She stressed that a military withdrawal would mean little without the restoration of essential services, including schools, and the safe return of displaced families.

At the same time, Suminwa has sought to increase women’s representation in government. Her first cabinet included 18 women among 54 ministers, while by 2025 women held nearly a third of decision-making positions, compared with roughly a fifth several years earlier.

Her advocacy has also extended beyond government appointments. In New York in 2026, she told the United Nations that Congolese women continued to experience the consequences of conflict even as the international community celebrated progress on women’s rights. She called for greater investment in scholarships and entrepreneurship programmes to help girls remain in school and women participate more fully in the economy.

Recognition followed. Forbes named her Africa’s most powerful woman in 2024 and continued to feature her on its global power rankings in 2025 and 2026.

“Being named the 77th most powerful woman in the world goes beyond personal recognition,” she said. “It is a symbol of hope for every young girl and woman in the DRC.”

In August 2026, the University of Kinshasa awarded Suminwa an honorary Doctor Honoris Causa, making her the first woman in politics to receive the distinction from the institution.

Rather than treating the recognition as a personal achievement, she framed it as a responsibility.

“I receive far more than an honor,” she said. “I receive a noble mission.”

Years earlier, a failed university examination had threatened to derail her ambitions. Instead, Suminwa turned the setback into a reason to rebuild.

Her story is a reminder that failure does not always close a door. Sometimes, it forces you to find another one.

Umm E Habiba, Punjab, Pakistan.