the pride of Africa's women entrepreneurs
by Melanie Hawken, founder and ceo, Lionesses of Africa
The important role of investment and the power of partnerships to address the gender finance gap for women entrepreneurs in growth mode in Africa was a key agenda topic at the Start-Up Night Africa event on 11 July 2023 in The Hague. The event aimed to showcase high-growth, women-owned businesses from Africa and connect them to investment and new market opportunities in The Netherlands.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
2,500 years ago-ish a chap called Plato (sound of a thousand University Professors spluttering into their morning coffee at the casual description of one of the world’s greatest philosophers, and as it happens, the ‘inventor’ of the University), wrote a set of books called The Republic, in which he took on the form of his teacher, the great Socrates (considered to be the founder of ‘Western’ Philosophy) to answer moral, ethical and philosophical questions. There are for us two major themes that run through these books, the first being the power of storytelling, or to be more exact, the importance of storytelling in building power.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
London, February 2020 and a few days before, Melanie had just given her closing speech at our ‘Start-Up Night Africa - London evening at the UK/Africa Summit (said to have been the best event at the summit by the well respected Chatham House - no surprise to us. As usual, Melanie had brought together an incredible group of inspirational Lionesses to showcase to the UK Government and their closest 400 friends from the business and finance world), and together as a team we had started to notice a strange lack of handshakes taking over our follow-up meetings. We had even been introduced to the by now familiar ‘elbow-bump’ in one international bank’s boardroom, but by then all knew of the shock, speed and horror with which Covid was racing across Italy and rushing fast to all international airports and capital cities.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
In our article last week on the power that is Momentum, we wrote that you must be prepared at all times to move fast when you see or even just feel any opportunity, especially when it comes to investors. Something quite obvious we felt you answer, but then we actually asked the question as to who among you even had a half decent Data Room ready just in case, to pull out of the hat when needed? That was a bit mean of us to put you on the spot like that, but hey, that’s why you pay the big bucks for membership [Still all for free and always will be - Ed!], - we ask the difficult questions.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
The cool, clear calm that follows such successful events as our ‘Start-Up Night Africa’ (see here) in Den Haag brilliantly supported by the Dutch Government and the FMO, is a mythical state of being, only felt in the dreams of one looking from the outside or of course within Hollywood films. There can never be any time off or calm before, during, but most especially after. Why? Surely following such a success one can pull off the heels and sink into a deep sofa for a well earned snooze?
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by Melanie Hawken, founder and ceo, Lionesses of Africa
Talk to the 1.7 million women entrepreneurs in our Lionesses of Africa community and they will tell you that reaching a new milestone on your business building journey ignites your entrepreneurial spirit and energizes you for the challenges ahead. So it was for Team Lioness on 11 July 2023 in The Hague when we launched Start-Up Night Africa, with support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Netherlands and the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank (FMO). Importantly, it also provided the platform for us to officially launch our new Lionesses of Africa Europe Office in The Hague! It marks another important milestone on our decade-long journey as social impact innovators, to realize our vision of empowering Africa’s women entrepreneurs to fulfill their potential.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Director
And so the 5th of our Global ‘Start-up Night Africa’ events came and went. Having been to London, Berlin and New York, here at last we had found a home in Den Haag, The Netherlands, to celebrate the opening of our new European Office and of course to showcase some of our incredible Lioness community members.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, and so when its boss Larry Fink speaks, the world listens, and who are we to argue with his comment above (see here). He has a point and especially in the United States where the discussion, as sadly with so much in many countries these days, has become polarized along political lines.
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Event Report / Lioness Business Agility Series
June marks Youth Month in South Africa, and so as part of the country’s commemoration activities, Lionesses of Africa, in partnership with Absa, hosted a special edition of the Lioness Business Agility Webinars for 2023. The theme of the event focused on “Celebrating inspirational women and youth entrepreneurs,” aimed at inspiring the next generation of young women business builders who are going to play their part in driving economic growth through entrepreneurship in the country. The webinar attracted an audience of 135 women entrepreneurs keen to learn more about how to grow their businesses, fulfill their purpose through entrepreneurship, and make an impact in their sectors and communities.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
In a direct and hard hitting article recently by Howard French (here) in the well respected Foreign Policy magazine, entitled: “U.S. Apathy Paved the Way for China in Africa…Despite a strong foothold during the Cold War, Washington has since fumbled on the continent.”, he points out that “…if the West wants to have a future in terms of its relations with the world’s fastest growing population center—Africa—it’s going to have to reinvent the way it engages around true competition and tangible deliverables, meaning things that Africans need and want.”
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
“….the difference we have made to the lives of others…”, to which Madiba could have added “…and to those that are yet to come.”
What a mess so many of us and the generations before have made of this world. This mess was, of course, born of the great industrial revolutions of the 18th centuries in the UK and Europe and continued and indeed increased as we moved into the ‘must have’ and ‘in excess’ eras of the current day, but the impact of all this is now felt most in the ‘Global South’, places such as Africa, which for so long have been ‘at one’ with the land and Mother Nature.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
“People think my life has been tough, but I think it has been a wonderful journey. The older you get, the more you realize it’s not what happens, but how you deal with it.” – Tina Turner, RIP.
According to McKinsey (here): “Women leaders are switching jobs at the highest rates we’ve ever seen—and at higher rates than men in leadership…The reasons [include that] they face headwinds that signal it will be harder to advance.” All of this means they have to work harder and often longer hours than men if only to prove their commitment and worth. Indeed one young woman we know was told by her boss, that given she was working full days and deep into the nights, that she should make sure that she takes an hour off for supper before returning to work (nothing about solving this excess work issue). She has now left that company - who can blame her!
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
“Investing in women’s entrepreneurship is good for business, and essential for economic growth.” These are the opening lines of a paper by the World Bank’s IFC entitled “Women owned SMEs: A business opportunity for Financial Institutions” (here) from 2014.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
We saw the other day a fabulous post on LinkedIn highlighting a recent Lioness Lean In event (here), by one of our extraordinary Lionesses. A total inspiration to us all, Sarah Collins of Wonderbag, has built a global company now on every investors’ wish list, yet the bottom of her post we saw the hashtag, #bootstrap.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
“We’ve placed over time so much emphasis on notions of assertiveness and strength that we have assumed it means you can’t have those other qualities of kindness and empathy.” – Jacinda Ardern.
Having run New Zealand as Prime Minister for many years, Jacinda Ardern knows a thing or two about assertiveness and strength. She also led from the front in kindness and empathy during some very tough times. Indeed many believe that her ability to marry these two seemingly diverse (for some) groups, made her the global leader that she absolutely was and is still to this day.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
Groucho Marx once said that one should learn from the mistakes of others, adding: “You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.” As usual, there is so much truth in humour.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
Many of us who have visited the UK will laugh at the shock felt by Mark Twain in his description of Spring in the States when this happens almost everyday in the UK, let alone in Spring (why else would the English be so obsessed with discussing the weather all year?). But it feels to us as if for the past 3 years this type of crazy volatility has also covered our business lives.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
Melinda French Gates writing in the FT recently and ahead of the IMF/World Bank spring meeting was quite clear (here): “There are two interlocking stories to be told right now about the forces shaping the economic outlook in the world’s poorest places. One is of billions of people on the cusp of crisis — reeling from climate change, pandemic fallout, skyrocketing food prices and crushingly heavy national debt burdens. The other is about the enormous unrealised economic potential of the women who live within these communities…”.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
Loyalty programs are all about one thing - keeping and increasing your top value customer base whilst avoiding the race to the bottom through cheaper pricing (which as we know, has no winners, although Walmart would probably beg to differ). If through skillful marketing you are also able to persuade customers that they are ‘saving up’ for the free cup of coffee or flight or… in the age of inflation and high interest rates, then that’s a serious home run!
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
If proof that the world was changing for the worse, proof that Climate Change is real, and proof that it was accelerating away from us was ever needed, we got a loadful this week.
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