the pride of Africa's women entrepreneurs
Kemi Olawoye, ceo & co-founder, Babymigo (Nigeria)
Startup Story
Kemi Olawoye is the ceo & co-founder of Babymigo, Nigeria's largest pregnancy and parenting community. She is a veteran entrepreneur and an award-winning business leader. Kemi's business focuses of building an easily accessible online community for mums to gain information and bridge the communication gap on maternal health in Africa. She founded the business in 2018 and has over 150,000 members across Africa. The business employs 12 people.
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Aurora Matavel, founder and CEO, SCS, Lda (Mozambique)
Startup Story
Aurora Matavel is Founder and CEO of SCS, Lda (Mozambique). She is an experienced and award-winning entrepreneur. The business of SCS, Lda is focused on providing ecological cleaning services and integrated pest control that preserve the environment. She founded the business 2 years ago and now employs 5 people, many of them women from the Local Community. She has 5 years of experience in business and as customer service with one of the main banks in the country.
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Jessica Lairs, founder, D'Lairs Encantos E.I (Mozambique)
Startup Story
Jessica Lairs is the founder of D'Lairs Encantos E.I, an event planning and decoration company in Mozambique. She started her entrepreneurship journey in 2019 with a combination of passion and good leadership skills. Today she has six permanent employees and six employees for occasional events. Her team is composed of men and women aged from 21 to 57 years of age. She brings to her entrepreneurial journey 9 years of experience in the job market as a trader and manager and has always worked with women in different areas.
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Startup Story
Gracia Bampile is the founder of fashion brand, Haute Afrika based in South Africa. The company has built a reputation for creating clothes for every occasion and every kind of person, inspired by traditional fabrics that are authentically African.
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Startup Story
Lutea Magaia Alberto, an Environmental and Agribusiness professional, is the founder and manager of Mentes Sustentáveis (Sustainable Minds) in Mozambique. She has a degree in Agronomic Engineering, from Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique and more than 7 years of experience as an Environmentalist dedicating herself to areas such as Environmental Education, Waste Management and Ecosystem Recovery. She founded Mentes Sustentáveis in 2019 and has over the years been a pioneer in raising awareness of Mozambique’s environmental problems and bringing practical, ecological and sustainable solutions. Since then she has been dedicated to the development of eco-business models, development of eco-friendly products and carrying out environmental education activities, contributing to the green ecosystem in Mozambique.
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Startup Story
Rachel Kobo, founder of The Fro Avenue in South Africa, is a devoted natural hair care lover. With a background in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, her brand, The Fro Avenue, was born from her love for and interest in natural hair care. This led her to start up her business in 2020 which is aimed at natural hair care education and product manufacturing. She truly enjoys learning and sharing her knowledge base about natural hair with fellow naturalists and anyone starting out on their natural hair journey. Her aim is to promote a community that embraces their natural hair while learning to understand and love it for the beauty it is.
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Brigette Mashile, founder, Roka Roko (South Africa)
Startup Story
Many people dream of wearing clothes that are unique to them, designed to reflect their tastes and personalities. Brigette Mashile, founder of Roka Roko is a South African fashion design entrepreneur who understands how to take a client idea for an outfit and turn it into a wonderful reality.
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Pendo Galukande, Co-founder, Dis N Dat (Uganda)
Startup Story
Pendo Galukande is one of the original three co-founders of Dis N Dat (Uganda) Ltd and the current Managing Director. She has been featured several times on National Television and print media as a positive example of a social entrepreneur. Her social enterprise having started out creating hand crafted greeting cards, and now has expanded into providing the youth access to skills and employment through the provision of premium gift services. Dis N Dat was launched in 2007 and employs 2 full time people, 4 consultants, and provides about 25 placements for part-time positions for youth annually. Pendo has a track record in Health Management having been the first manager of the leading private hospital in Uganda. She also managed a pharmacy in a rural hospital and oversaw refugee programs in rural Uganda.
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Anna Karina de Sousa, founder, Executive Nails (Mozambique)
Startup Story
Anna Karina de Sousa is the founder of Executive Nails in Mozambique, a business she launched specializing in aesthetics and beauty in 2019. Her business is dedicated to the treatment of hands and feet, with a range of specialist treatments on offer to customers. Executive Nails is highly differentiated with Anna creating and bringing to the Mozambican market a premium space with investment in the refinement, dedication and implementation of unique details such as gourmet catering, excellent service, investment in staff training, and official distribution of the Andreia Professional brand in the country.
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Michelle Geere, founder and CEO, Adbot (South Africa)
Startup Story
Michelle Geere is the founder and CEO of Adbot. Adbot empowers all small and medium size business in Africa to successfully advertise online. After 15 years of digital advertising experience working for award winning agencies, as well as managing multiple small businesses, Michelle decided to use her expertise to start Adbot. Her experience in digital advertising coupled with the understanding of small business owner's challenges gives her a unique insight to digital solutions for SMEs.
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Tatenda Rungisa, co-founder, Twin Connect Solutions (Zimbabwe)
Startup Story
Twin Connect Solutions, founded by entrepreneur Tatenda Rungisa and her sister Tafadzwa, is a catering and event management business in Zimbabwe, specializing in creating special celebration cakes and event memories for clients. They are also involved in charity work, motivational speaking, blogging and mentorship programs.
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Anja van Beek, founder, Anja van Beek Consulting & Coaching
Startup Story
Having an agile mindset in business and life is one of the keys to success, something that specialist business coach, Anja van Beek, founder of the Consulting & Coaching business that carries her name, knows all about. She has built a business that helps both individuals and companies to achieve their ambitions and fulfill their potential, helping them to lead fulfilled lives and make an impact.
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Sofia Maquile, founder & CEO, Smaqs (Mozambique)
Startup Story
Sofia Maquile is the founder and CEO of Smaqs in Mozambique. She is a young entrepreneur and Digital Influencer. Sofia's business is focused on making high quality digital pictures and videos for the international and pan-African market. She founded the business in 2017 and now employs and trains over 10 interns, 70% of them being from local communities. She has over 10 years of social media experience as a manager and influencer. Sofia strives for growth and motivates the young people to follow her path.
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Startup Story
Princess Adeyinka Tekenah is a Mom and Coffee Entrepreneur, and the founder of an indigenous Nigerian coffee brand and company, Happy Coffee. She is a pacesetter in the Nigerian Coffee Industry. She remains an integral member of the nation building process and enjoys travelling. She also believes that Human Relationships are crucial to the overall optimization of our human experience and existence.
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Meghan McCormick, co-founder & ceo of OZÉ (Ghana)
Startup Story
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.
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Claudia Folgore-McLellan, founder, Visual 8 Creative (South Africa)
Startup Story
Visual 8 Creative, founded by Claudia Folgore-McLellan, is a graphic design and digital media studio based in Johannesburg South Africa. The business helps companies, entrepreneurs, as well as established brands, to communicate effectively with their respective target audience. We offer a thorough understanding of branding, print media creative following through into digital media.
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Fátima Suliman, founder and CEO, Cookie World (Mozambique)
Startup Story
Fátima Suliman is the founder and CEO of the company Cookie World. The company is based in Maputo Mozambique. She is an aspiring pastry chef. Fátima's business is focused on decorated sugar cookies and macarons mostly for parties and events. She founded the company 3 years ago in 2018. Fátima believes in women empowerment and her employees are women. She is hoping to open a pastry shop soon.
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Daniela Samakosky, founder, Walk The Talk Africa (South Africa)
Startup Story
Daniela Samakosky is the founder of Walk The Talk Africa in Cape Town, South Africa. Following in the family footsteps of a long line of Italian shoemakers, the idea of upcycled fabric shoes, slides and slippers was born in 2016. A lifetime of reverence for nature coupled with sustainable living underpins the values that drive the vision of creating a brand that creatively transforms fabric books and remnants into beautiful ‘one of a kind’ slippers and shoes.
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Chikondi Michongwe, co-founder, Serene Vegan Co. (Tanzania)
Startup Story
Chikondi Michongwe is the co-founder of Serene Vegan Co. in Tanzania. She is a passionate plant-based lifestyle entrepreneur who believes in the wellness of both the mind and body. Chikondi's start-up aims to raise awareness of the goodness and benefits of a plant-based diet and to do away with the stereotype that a vegan diet is bland and unexciting. She has more than 15 years of entrepreneurial experience and has gotten her hand in many business ventures over the years.
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Sabina Ali, founder and executive partner, SAB Consulting (Mozambique)
Startup Story
Sabina Ali is the founder and executive partner of SAB Consulting in Mozambique, a company recognized for its strategic leadership, tailored business strategies and support in the areas of organization, implementation, monitoring and coaching. She is also the co-founder of Dr. Moz, a pioneering digital platform for the health and wellness industry, recognized as the first Mozambican platform to provide telemedicine services.
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