Onkgopotse Khumalo, a South African entrepreneur democratizing access to mental healthcare

June 25, 2023 Melanie Hawken

Onkgopotse Khumalo, founder, The Pocket Couch (South Africa)

Onkgopotse Khumalo is a South African entrepreneur and the founder of The Pocket Couch, a health tech startup that aims to democratize access to mental healthcare. Her early professional journey saw her navigating financial services in the investment and portfolio management space, later transitioning to a management consultant role at McKinsey and Company. She then ventured into entrepreneurship after identifying that what she had initially thought was a problem unique to her own circumstance, was in fact more widespread across the globe. It was her personal journey trying to find avenues to better their mental wellbeing, that catapulted her journey into entrepreneurship, ultimately founding the startup with which she has a strong personal nexus. She prides herself first and foremost, however, as a dedicated mother to her 3 year old son whom she affectionately calls "boy genius".

Rachelle Best, a South African entrepreneur creating an app to help parents manage their children’s online safety

May 22, 2022 Melanie Hawken

Rachelle Best, founder, FYI play it safe (South Africa)

Rachelle Best founded FYI play it safe, a downloadable app that helps parents protect their children from online harm and potential physical danger. She wanted to create a solution she and other parents can use to navigate the harsh realities of managing children’s online safety. Being confronted by the dangers associated with social media platforms and the open world of the internet, led Rachelle to embark on a research study to get a clear view of the available solutions.

Marie Behrens, a serial entrepreneur in Mauritius building a pan-African marketplace for beauty and wellness professionals

May 1, 2022 Melanie Hawken

Marie Behrens, founder and CEO, Kipepeo (Mauritius)

Marie Behrens is the founder and CEO of Kipepeo in Mauritius. She is a serial entrepreneur with over 13 years experience developing beauty salons and spas internationally, and with that skillset and passion for the industry she is now building a pan African marketplace that provides beauty and wellness professionals with a management and booking solution to optimize their business. It is the first start up of its kind in Mauritius and has been operational for more than a year, creating a community and business support to over 100 professionals. Her vision is to create equal growth opportunities for these professionals across Africa by using an end-to-end digital solution.

Meghan McCormick, a fintech entrepreneur in Ghana equipping entrepreneurs to make data-driven decisions

February 6, 2022 Melanie Hawken

Meghan McCormick, co-founder & ceo of OZÉ (Ghana)

Currently, Meghan is the Co-founder & ceo of OZÉ, a fintech company in Ghana that equips African entrepreneurs to make data-driven decisions to both improve their business performance and access capital. Meghan McCormick started her work as a Community Economic Development Volunteer in the Peace Corps in Guinea. During her service, she founded Guinea’s first business accelerator, Dare to Innovate, and scaled it to be French-speaking Africa’s most active small business accelerator. Meghan previously worked as an Innovation Strategist at Monitor Deloitte. She has an MBA from MIT and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Lioness Launch / Addisson & Western (Pty) Ltd in Botswana launches new KYC (Know Your Customer) web and mobile app solution

August 29, 2021 Melanie Hawken

One Oreeng, founder, Addison & Western (Botswana)

In Botswana, Addison & Western (Pty) Ltd, founded by One Oreeng, is a company known for providing marketing and project management services to its clients, It’s sister company, Certus, which provides technology-driven service as a software solution to ease the traditional KYC onboarding process, is now offering a KYC (Know Your Customer) solution that digitizes the AML compliance process. Certus is 100% citizen owned and woman led.

Lioness Launch / New e-verification platform poised to revolutionize farm input certification in Tanzania

August 8, 2021 Melanie Hawken

Quincewood Group Limited is a technology company founded by entrepreneur Fatma Fernandes in Tanzania. The business is focused on the agricultural sector, developing innovations that aim to improve the livelihoods of farmers and even the playing field across the journey from farmer to table. The products developed are done with sustainability in mind. It’s latest innovation, eHakiki, is positively impacting thousands of lives in Tanzania's largest economic sector, agriculture. Its main aim is to ensure that smallholder farmer's incomes are protected.

Lioness Launch / Female-founded African startup and legal technology company, life.file launches to help people handle the legal parts of life and death

July 25, 2021 Melanie Hawken

life.file is a female-founded African startup and legal technology company launched by Claire Keet and Sinal Govender. They are on a simple mission to reimagine the way that people experience the legal parts of life and death. The law is a guest at life’s best and worst moments - like starting a business, beginning or ending a marriage, or burying loved ones. These experiences are universal. Claire and Sinal believe in using intuitive, people focused design and normal-people-speak to create a user experience of the law that is simple, educational and friendly. Their team works where law, design and technology meet and they have picked the best bits of all three to create life.file.

Emray May, a South African entrepreneur building a digital marketplace for the event and wedding industry

May 2, 2021 Melanie Hawken

Emray May is the founder of The Partee App in South Africa, a digital marketplace for businesses in the event, party and wedding industry. The marketplace was created to assist small and informal business owners who struggle with marketing, networking and growing their businesses. Emray was inspired to start the business when she found herself in this position through her own party decorations company three years ago. She was unable to find the solution to her problem so she became the solution. The vision is to be the global go-to platform for everyone in this industry to allow all small- and informal businesses to save with marketing.

Michèle Mianza, an entrepreneur connecting patients to healthcare professionals in the Democratic Republic of Congo

December 13, 2020 Melanie Hawken

Michèle Mianza, founder of 2mk Healthcare (Democratic Republic of Congo)

Technology has become a real gamechanger in the world of healthcare, providing those in need with access to medical advice and healthcare professionals via apps and digital platforms. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, entrepreneur Michèle Mianza, founder of 2mk Healthcare empowers people to manage their health journeys using technology.

Lioness Launch / Pathway in Angola launches new digital delivery app

October 18, 2020 Melanie Hawken

Luisa Senda, founder of Pathway in Angola, has just announced the launch of a new digital delivery app aimed at helping people and companies to sell and advertise their products to customers. Pathway is a virtual store selling smartphones and computers and extra digital services, including providing software development for customers.

Grace Gichanga, a South African legal techpreneur transforming lives through the law

September 13, 2020 Melanie Hawken

Speak to Grace Gichanga, founder of Luma Law (South Africa), and she will tell you that she loves, loves, loves the law, because of its power to transform lives. As an attorney with over 10 years of experience, not surprisingly Grace has built a business which allows her to share her love of the law and how it works with the people of South Africa. The business was founded 2 years ago and LUMA the legal literacy chatbot officially went live on Facebook Messenger at the beginning of April 2020. Grace is committed to the vision of an empowered Africa through technology, innovation and the principles of social justice.

Lioness Launch / Angola’s NatHCare launches new app connecting natural haircare specialists with customers

June 13, 2020 Melanie Hawken

Elsa Tchicanha, founder of NatHCare (Angola)

For all those women who celebrate their natural hair and want to easily find great local service providers who are specialists in this field of haircare, help is now at hand in Angola. Entrepreneur Elsa Tchicanha, founder of NatHCare, has developed and launched a new app that connects customers with trusted, quality service providers, taking all the stress and hassle out of finding the perfect natural haircare specialists locally.

Tatiana Da Encarnação Casaca, an Angolan entrepreneur helping people find their dream property

April 5, 2020 Melanie Hawken

Tatiana Da Encarnação Casaca, co-founder of IMO NExT (Angola)

Identifying a collective need in Angola’s property market to make finding the perfect house or apartment as hassle free as possible, was the inspiration for Tatiana Da Encarnação Casaca and her co-founders to create IMO NExT. The company has developed the country’s first app to help streamline the property finding process.

LIONESS LAUNCH: New Pregnancy App and Mobile Solution launched for African women

August 18, 2019 Melanie Hawken

Jacqueline Rogers, founder of My Pregnancy Journey (South Africa)

This month sees successful South African serial entrepreneur, Jacqueline Rogers, launching a new educational pregnancy app and mobile solution, My Pregnancy Journey, for Africa’s women.

Essential App: IDoneThis – celebrate and share what you're getting done

July 21, 2014 Melanie Hawken

IDoneThis – makes our Essential App List for staying on track with your work or projects. It's really simple to use giving you a daily prompt to celebrate or share what you've actually managed to get done that day. A positive alternative to all those 'To-Do-List' apps that somehow manage to fatigue and demotivate us all. We use it at LoA and have grown to love it!

Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletters for Africa's women entrepreneurs.