Marie-Rose Bashwira is from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In 2017, she graduated with her PhD from Wageningen University in a program funded by WOTRO-NOW (Netherlands Science Foundation).  She focused on gender and mining reforms in the DRC. She then spent three years (2017-2020) in a postdoctoral fellowship at Erasmus University at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).

Bashwira is an associate professor at the Université Catholique de Bukavu (UCB) and the Institut Supérieur de Développement Rural (ISDR-Bukavu). She teaches classes on entrepreneurship, management, microfinance, environment, gender, natural resources management, and rural development. She is also the General Director of Institut Supérieur d’Informatique et de Gestion (ISIG-Goma).

She is the coordinator of the Center of Research and Expertise on Gender and Development (CREGED) (https://creged.org/fr) and is also a researcher at CEGEMI-UCB (Centre d’Expertise en Gestion Minière). In the two centers, Marie-Rose Bashwira serves as a consultant for many regions (urban and rural) of the DRC (Tshopo, South Kivu, North Kivu, Tanganyika, and Lualaba).