Africa shone in Washington this past week, as the US wooed African heads of state at the US-Africa Leaders Summit underlining the continent’s significance and committing to invest in its future with renewed vigor. What’s next? More in this exclusive FORBES AFRICA interview.



The United States demonstrated the big Africa push with commitments to support Africa’s inclusive growth at the US-Africa Leaders Summit held last week in Washington DC.



At the US-Africa Business Forum, President Joe Biden said the US is “all in on Africa’s future” and called it “another historic summit”. As many as 49 African heads of state attended and business deals worth a reported $15 billion were signed during the forum.



The last time this summit was held was eight years ago under the Obama-Biden administration.



The Biden-Harris administration now plans to invest at least $55 billion in Africa over the next three years, and is recasting traditional US policy priorities.



After signing a Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation for Trade and Investment between the US and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) with the Secretary General of the AfCFTA Secretariat, Wamkele Mene, during the US-Africa Business Forum, US Trade Representative, Ambassador Katherine Tai, said: “The future is Africa – for the United States and global economy. Africa’s significance is undeniable… The Biden-Harris administration recognizes that it is impossible to meet today’s challenges on trade without African contributions and leadership, and our support of the AfCFTA is part and parcel of this…



“But our work together will be an inclusive undertaking, requiring active participation from African Union member states, Regional Economic Communities, diaspora, SMEs, women-owned businesses, young entrepreneurs, workers and civil society groups.”



More from an interview during the December 13-15 summit with Constance Hamilton, the Assistant US Trade Representative for Africa, Office of the United States Trade Representative, who also oversees the administration’s implementation of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA):


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-full is-resized"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Constance-Hamilton-image-credit-Office-of-the-United-States-Trade-Representative-Executive-Office-of-the-President.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-57172" width="375" height="375" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Constance-Hamilton-image-credit-Office-of-the-United-States-Trade-Representative-Executive-Office-of-the-President.jpg 240w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Constance-Hamilton-image-credit-Office-of-the-United-States-Trade-Representative-Executive-Office-of-the-President-150x150.jpg 150w" sizes="(max-width: 375px) 100vw, 375px" /><figcaption>Constance Hamilton, image credit US Department of State</figcaption></figure></div>


Q. It’s Africa in the United States, with heads of state visiting from the continent. What is the sentiment you&#8217;re seeing right now about Africa?



A. There&#8217;s just a lot of optimism about the relationship, that we all have an interest in finding common ground so we can work better together [on] all the major issues facing not just Africa and the United States, but the world; everything from climate change to the war with Ukraine to all issues. I think that what this [summit] does is it brings together like-minded people to try to find solutions to some of the major problems in the world today. And so it&#8217;s a very good vibe right now. We had a big meeting to talk about the African Growth and Opportunity Act, they had an opportunity to engage with congressional members&#8230; both sides offered their views on what should happen, what&#8217;s worked, what didn&#8217;t work well in the program, and changes that they may want to think about going forward… it’s a lot of goodwill. I hope one of the things this meeting does is reinforce the importance of Africa to America. I think that&#8217;s a very good thing.



Q. It’s good to see the narrative shifting, because we always hear about Africa needing aid, but people not really talking about working together with Africa. Do you see big collaborations coming together?



A. Absolutely. I mean, even countries that are facing challenges, as Ambassador Tai has articulated many, many times is that we do believe in growth from the bottom up, so that [for] those who are marginalized, those who are not seeing any benefits and trade, that we come up with policies and plans to make sure that they do, that they are part of the success story. There are a lot of conversations about how we work together both as a group, and individually in each of the countries we talk to; how do we work together to do better.



Q. There are smaller countries that don&#8217;t receive the kind of attention from the world that the bigger economies perhaps receive, and they have their peace and security issues and are conflict-ridden. How you engaging specifically with some of the smaller emerging markets on the continent?



A. One thing I would say about that is the way my office is structured, every country, whether they&#8217;re big or small, is important to what we&#8217;re doing. So whether you&#8217;re a tiny island nation, whether you&#8217;re Nigeria or South Africa, we pay attention to you… we pay attention to all the criteria, we look at each country to make sure that they are meeting the criteria. And we get very specific. So when there are challenges, we reach out to find out where we can find the assistance to help them address some of their problems. We use USAID and some of the other agencies within the US government to make sure that we can identify resources that we can point in their direction. So it&#8217;s not just about providing aid, it&#8217;s also providing assistance for them to do what they want to do.



Q. With the AfCFTA aiming for a single market, how are you capitalizing on that opportunity?



A. One of the things that happened at this meeting, was Ambassador Tai and Secretary-General Mene from the AfCFTA Secretariat find a memorandum of understanding, laying out a plan for us to work with the African Union Secretariat, to help them implement and negotiate new protocols on the AfCFTA. We definitely want to be a partner in that, we see the importance of it; we&#8217;ve been supporting regional integration on the continent for decades. So we know the importance of this. We also understand the challenge. I mean, you think about 55 nations, we know that the borders are thick, you know that it&#8217;s difficult for goods to move, we know that there&#8217;s some transportation and trade facilitation issues. This is an opportunity to work with the Secretariat and with the members to figure out a path forward.



Q. Moving to Africa’s greater integration into the global economy, what does the world think of Africa&#8217;s investment climate at the moment? How are you mobilizing the power of the business community there to invest into Africa?



A. I think that where Africa and African nations can really benefit from this whole move towards globalization is by getting into value and supply chains, where they have strength to do that. I think that&#8217;s one of the things when we talk about the AfCFTA, when we talk about AGOA, when we talk to countries about improving their investment climate so that investors aren&#8217;t just interested and taking out raw materials, they&#8217;re interested in joint ventures or putting up manufacturing facilities&#8230; I do think that there is, especially with AGOA, that allows countries from other partners to produce manufactured goods. I think that there&#8217;s a way forward on that. One of the issues we&#8217;ll be looking at is how to bring African countries more into value and supply chain.



Q. What about catalyzing private sector partnerships?



A. It’s always a part of what we&#8217;re trying to do, part of the AGOA forum that we&#8217;ll have in South Africa in 2023. We hope to bring a large US private sector contingent so they can see what Africa offers. And they can also talk about joint ventures and other investment opportunities. That&#8217;s always part of our idea. The governments can’t do it, trade happens from private sectors. And so getting our companies, our SMEs, our women or youth-oriented enterprises to come to Africa, and see what they can do. That&#8217;s part of what we hope to encourage.



Q. This is a continent with countries that lack basic services such as power, health equity, food security, rule of law or democratic reforms. How are you going to accelerate progress in all of those areas?



A. It&#8217;s a big continent with a lot of countries, and each one has different issues. They don&#8217;t all have the same challenges. I think the key is to find out what are the challenges in a particular country and identify what we can do to assist. If they&#8217;re part of the AGOA family, that gives them a leg up, because there are things that we&#8217;re already doing to help them trade. If they&#8217;re not part of the AGOA family, we still care about their development, even when we take a country out of AGOA, part of the work is how do we get them back in? There are a lot of challenges on the continent, there are a lot of challenges in America, but these are all things I think that can be solved by working together.



Q. With the growing youth population on the continent, how are you engaging with these young minds, innovators and entrepreneurs in the startups ecosystem?



A. We know that a lot of the innovation in digital trade is coming from young people. But it&#8217;s not just the youth, it&#8217;s also women. When we had the African Women Entrepreneurship Program, which was a big part of AGOA, and I thought that this was one of the most exciting elements of what AGOA brought to the table because it allows these women to form their own chapters in the countries, and they help each other find employment opportunities or help their companies grow. And I think that the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) that started under President Barack Obama is also a way of identifying really bright, enterprising young people, and helping them get to where they want to go in terms of business. So I think there&#8217;s a lot that we&#8217;re doing already that supports not just women, but also youth. It&#8217;s hard for me to articulate all of the different initiatives that are out there, but I do think that there&#8217;s a lot that we&#8217;re doing to try to bring them into businesses so that they can follow their dreams.



It&#8217;s really important to have this kind of dialogue and meet face-to-face [at the summit]; it’s very important for relationships. I think that it&#8217;s a fantastic vibe. Next year, we hope to be in South Africa for an AGOA forum after [South Africa’s Minister of Trade and Industry] Ebrahim Patel said he&#8217;s looking forward to hosting everyone, and I&#8217;m looking forward to being there.

US-Africa Leaders Summit 2022, image credit Office of the United States Trade Representative, Executive Office of the President

$55 Billion And The Importance Of Africa To America

On December 6, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), a non-profit German organization with operations in South Africa, launched the Lindiwe Mabuza Space, a new conference facility, in the country.



The launch commemorated a year since the passing of Lindiwe Mabuza, the distinguished South African diplomat who died at the age of 83. An anti-apartheid activist, Mabuza went on to become a member of the first democratically-elected parliament of South Africa. She was also an academic, journalist and poet.



In attendance at the launch was Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa’s Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, also a former anti-apartheid activist.



As part of the program, group exercises were held where people posed answers to important problems of the day.



“We must be the change we want to see,” added Dlamini-Zuma to the discussion. When the group spoke of greater youth participation, she emphasized that women should be included.



Sebastian Sperling, resident director of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Johannesburg, spoke to FORBES AFRICA about how the new facility would be used.



“It’s a space for progressives to meet, develop ideas, engage on ideas, experiment, and talk to each other again – as we have felt today. And lastly, build alliances, overcome our divisions, especially in the progressive camps,” says Sperling.



The organization is a global network, and while they are working with South African partners, a big element of their work is creating links internationally, “because we need to organize across borders,” he says.



FES is advancing socio-political and economic development in the spirit of social democracy, through civic education, research, and international cooperation.

SAMSUNG CSC

Commemorating A South African Struggle Icon

<h2 id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



French soccer referee Stéphanie Frappart will make history Thursday when she leads the first all-female refereeing trio in a men’s World Cup match—the latest in a series of records and tournament firsts happening in Qatar.



<h2>KEY FACTS</h2>



Frappart will be joined by assistants Neuza Back from Brazil and Karen Diaz from Mexico to officiate the match between Costa Rica and Germany on Thursday,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/FIFAcom/status/1597670007735218176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1597670007735218176%7Ctwgr%5E4299cada349615949e65f39d6a25e1e07141ad5d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsports.yahoo.com%2Fworld-cup-2022-germany-vs-costa-rica-to-feature-historic-all-female-refereeing-crew-175316042.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">FIFA</a>&nbsp;announced this week.



During a match against Qatar last week, England’s 19-year-old&nbsp;<a href="https://news.sky.com/story/england-make-winning-start-to-world-cup-campaign-in-qatar-thrashing-iran-12752494" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jude Bellingham</a>&nbsp;became the first player born in the 21st century to score a goal in a World Cup match.



The Qatar tournament also features the first set of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fifa.com/fifaplus/en/articles/fifa-world-cup-2022-qatar-inaki-williams-nico-williams-spain-ghana" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">full siblings</a>&nbsp;to compete for different teams, with Iñaki Williams representing Ghana and his younger brother, Nico Williams, making his World Cup debut for Spain. (The Williams brothers were born in Spain to a Ghanaian father and Liberian mother, and Iñaki previously played for Spain.)



Canadian coach John Herdman is the first manager in World Cup history to have led both a men&#8217;s and a women&#8217;s team at the tournaments, having previously coached the New Zealand women’s team in the 2007 and 2011 women’s World Cups.



When Qatar lost to Ecuador last week, it was the first time in World Cup history that a host team lost their opening match.



<h2>KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The Qatar World Cup is the first ever held in the Middle East, and the most expensive in the tournament’s history, with Qatar spending an estimated&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcraig/2022/11/19/the-money-behind-the-most-expensive-world-cup-in-history-qatar-2022-by-the-numbers/?sh=7f2bbfddbff5">$220 billion</a>&nbsp;over the past decade to prepare, including constructing seven new stadiums in which to hold matches. Because of the hot Qatari climate, the tournament is also the first to be held in winter instead of the usual summer schedule, which has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sportingnews.com/uk/soccer/news/leagues-world-cup-2022-schedule-premier-league-la-liga-serie-a-ligue-1/dryqyalwdjryz31jhpx7n494" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">disrupted club lineups</a>&nbsp;in other countries. FIFA’s decision to hold the World Cup in Qatar has drawn controversy due to the country’s human rights record, and after&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/29/football/qatar-world-cup-migrant-worker-deaths-spt-intl/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">scores of migrant workers</a>&nbsp;died while working on World Cup-related construction projects. Qatar and FIFA officials have also been accused of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137204271/qatar-world-cup-controversies" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">bribery and corruption</a>&nbsp;in voting to hold the tournament in the country.



<h2>FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcraig/2022/11/19/the-money-behind-the-most-expensive-world-cup-in-history-qatar-2022-by-the-numbers/?sh=7f2bbfddbff5">The Money Behind The Most Expensive World Cup In History: Qatar 2022 By The Numbers</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/11/30/heres-how-much-us-soccer-players-will-make-from-the-world-cup-based-on-stage-of-elimination/?sh=41ebbe0157b1">Here’s How Much U.S. Soccer Players Will Make From The World Cup Based On How Far They Go</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/11/29/us-beats-iran-advances-to-world-cup-round-of-16/?sh=740f18cd7e54">U.S. Beats Iran—Advances To World Cup Round Of 16</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



By Carlie Porterfield, Forbes Staff

Mexico v Poland: Group C – FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022

First All-Female Referee Team Planned For World Cup—Here Are The Other Records Set In Qatar

It is often said that women’s football will not develop and grow until teams are given more international fixtures to play, and Zambia’s Copper Queens are the shining example of this. One of their current stars is goal-scoring midfielder Ireen Lungu.



ZAMBIAN WOMEN’S FOOTBALL HAS SEEN A meteoric rise in the last 12 months, culminating in the country’s first-ever qualification for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup that will be staged in Australia and New Zealand.



The side is reaping the reward of their own hard work, but also the exposure they gained to the international stage when they managed to qualify for the Olympic Games held in Tokyo last year. It is often said that women’s football will not develop and grow until teams are given more international fixtures to play, and Zambia’s Copper Queens are the shining example of this. One of their current stars is goal-scoring midfielder Ireen



Lungu, who played every minute at the Olympics and followed that up by playing all six games as Zambia took the bronze medal at the 2022 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) and in doing so qualified for the World Cup.



She paints a picture of a side who were fearful to play on the international stage, but have gained confidence with every outing they have had.



“The Olympics was where it started, that experience we had, and we carried that into the WAFCON and gained even more from that tournament,” Lungu tells FORBES AFRICA.



“We came up against some great players and that took our confidence to another level again.



“But the Olympics’ experience was tough. Many of us had never played against white people before, but after the first game, where we lost 10-3 to Netherlands, that actually boosted our confidence. It sounds strange, but it did.



“We could see the level and felt that we could go higher ourselves. In every game after that we improved and that 



removed the fear we had from every player. It turned into a great tournament in terms of helping us to grow and improve.



“If I look at how we have progressed from before then, we sometimes struggled to display our best football but now we have a lot of players who have competed at the highest level.



“Everyone [back home] now wants to compete and be part of the national team, which makes for greater competition among players.”



That was not the only highlight for Zambian football. Lungu’s club Green Buffaloes recently qualified for the CAF Women’s Champions League in Morocco later this year, and in doing so beat current African champions Mamelodi Sundowns, who had a star-studded line-up.



It is yet more continental exposure for Zambian football.



“We were so happy to beat Mamelodi Sundowns, they are a good team with quality players compared to what our clubs have back in Zambia,” Lungu says. “That’s because in South Africa there are many sponsors [for women’s football] compared to what we have at home.



“That is starting to change, there is sponsorship coming in and now it is up to everyone to show that improvement and why corporates should invest in women’s football.”



Lungu says the changing face of the game in Zambia is pleasing, as is the multitude of opportunities offered to young girls compared to when she started out and was forced to play in boys’ teams.



Though she credits that for her rapid development.



“I started playing in 2007 when I was still in Primary School. I used to play with the boys there. There was no girls’ teams where I was staying back then so I was very used to playing with and against boys. That was my only choice,” she says.



“When there was the chance to play with girls, I actually found it very hard to do so because all I had known to that point was playing with boys. It was a big adjustment. I tried to find a better team with girls who knew how to play football. I found the standard too low.”



She also admits to the fact that, certainly 15 years ago, attitudes towards women playing the sport were not as they are today.



“It was quite tough because where we come from the parents don’t want to allow you to go and play [if you are a girl], so it was very hard for me. But I had to stand up for myself and say, ‘this is what I want and nothing will stop me from playing’.



“I am where I am today because of determination and discipline. I am also a very hard-working player.”



She will hope a positive showing at the World Cup puts her in line for a contract abroad, and with it the chance to go fully professional as a footballer.



“That’s the thing now I am pushing for now. I don’t want to be in my country anymore, I want to go and play in new leagues. That is a big ambition of mine and something I have to work extra hard towards,” she says.



“I would like to go to any country as long as there is competition, but Spain looks like a good option. I want to compete with great players so that I can improve my own level.”

Zambia v Netherlands – Tokyo 2020 Olympic Football Tournament

Now Time For Zambian Football And Its Top Female Players 

<h2>Topline</h2>



World-leading AIDS researcher, South African Quarraisha Abdool Karim, has been elected to serve as the seventh President of The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (UNESCO-TWAS).



<h2 id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



A Professor in Clinical Epidemiology at Columbia University, USA, and pro-Vice Chancellor for African Health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, Abdool Karim will serve as president from 2023 until 2026. The South African professor succeeds Sudanese mathematician Professor Mohamed Hassan.



“It is a real honor and privilege to be elected as President of TWAS,” said Abdool Karim in a statement released by TWAS. “And to have the opportunity to build on the strong foundations established over four decades by my predecessors in realizing the aspirational vision of the founder, Nobel laureate Abdus Salam, on the use of science to improve the lives of the most vulnerable in the developing world.”



Abdool Karim was included in the Women In Science list released by FORBES AFRICA in 2021.



According to TWAS, this is the first time that the 16-member council will comprise of exactly eight men and eight women. Abdool Karim will also be the first woman to serve in the role of TWAS President. Furthermore, this is the first time the council will include a Vice-President and council member from the Global North.



The TWAS Council, elected by members every four years, is responsible for supervising all academy affairs. TWAS treasurer Korean physicist Young Hee Lee, Director of the Center for Integrated Nanostructure Physics of the Institute for Basic Science and Professor at Sungkyunkwan University in the Republic of Korea, said that Abdool Karim is an accomplished scholar, scientist and health policy leader.



“&#8230;With deep knowledge of what it takes to training developing world scientists and make a powerful real-world impact with her research&#8230; I am confident that under their guidance the Academy will not only continue to build scientific capacity through research, education, policy and diplomacy — but also expand its activities and programmes, taking TWAS to new heights,” he added.



In her statement Abdool Karim emphasized that while much progress has been made in collaboration with the global network of science academies and strategic partnerships, much more remains to be done during these socially, politically and economically challenging times.



“This is also an opportunity for scientific excellence in developing countries to flourish as we continue to find solutions to the ongoing and new challenges that face the most vulnerable in our communities,” she added. “And ensure that we can all realize our full potential as one people in a safe planet that ensures a sustainable future for all who inhabit it.”

fwis2016_quarraisha_abdool_karim_0

South African To Be First Woman To Head The World Academy Of Sciences

The 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand next year will see Zambia and South Africa participate with big hopes hinged on their performance.



BY NICK SAID



If there is one thing the coaches of South Africa and Zambia are in agreement on, it is that the hard work starts now as they prepare for the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand next year.



The draw for the 32-team finals competition was held a few weeks ago, and has not been particularly kind to the two southern African nations.



Debutants Zambia have been paired with Spain, Japan and Costa Rica in Group C, no easy task, but coach Bruce Mwape knows that however they do, the symbolism of seeing the Copper Queens on the global stage is perhaps the important thing.



“There are no easy teams in women’s football at the moment,” Mwape says. “For us, it’s just important to be there, especially as this is our first time.



“The whole country is behind us, supporting the team, and our achievements recently show that there has been a lot of improvement in Zambian football.”



He is correct. The Zambian national side won their first COSAFA senior title in 2022, while the country’s top club Green Buffaloes won the COSAFA Women’s Champions League as well.



These are all big steps forward for the game in Zambia and a major reason why they find themselves at the World Cup too.



Mwape has certainly improved their performance drastically, as has forward Barbra Banda, who was a star of the Olympic Games in Tokyo last year and could have a huge impact at the World Cup.



For South Africa, this competition will be second time round after they had their maiden World Cup qualification in France in 2019.



The core of that group remains in place and as recently-crowned African champions, there will be much expectation that they get out of their pool.



But the draw has not been kind, they face top sides Sweden, Italy and Argentina, with certainly the first two formidable foes. Coach Des Ellis is putting on a brave face.



“I think it’s a reasonable draw,” she said. “We’ve played Sweden before but we haven’t met Italy and Argentina. My feeling is that it could have been tougher.



“Now the planning and preparation starts, making sure the players have as much information as they can.”



The World Cup will be staged from July 20 to August 20, with South Africa canvassing hard to be the hosts of the 2027 tournament. The women’s competition has never been held on the African continent before.

FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup Qualifier: South Africa v Ethiopia

Big Steps Forward For Women’s Football In These Southern African Nations

The lure of judo is odd as it is an incredibly painful sport but South African Judoka Michaela Whitebooi has found gold medal success, and is looking forward to the Paris Olympic Games in 2024.



By Nick Said



MICHAELA WHITEBOOI’S GOLD MEDAL AT the 2022 Commonwealth Games was a reward for years of pain and toil on the judo mat, but she is already thinking of her next goal at the Paris Olympic Games in 2024.



Whitebooi won gold in the 48-kilogram category, but despite



her diminutive size, is a born fighter who had to make up for the disappointment of a first round exit at the Tokyo Olympics last year.



Raised in Booysen Park in Gqeberha, South Africa, she started judo at the age of 10 after a friend invited her to training, and won a place at the TuksSport High School in Pretoria, the country’s capital.



“I was 14 years old and my mom traveled with me, but then had to leave a few days before the school opened,” Whitebooi tells FORBES AFRICA from her training base in Budapest.



“That was devastating for me, I was crying the whole time. I honestly can’t tell you how I survived, though the next year two or three of my friends came, including one boy from my judo club [in Gqeberha].



“So that made it easier, I had people that were familiar to me and I could hang around them. The first year I was so alone.”



Whitebooi says the lure of judo is odd as it is an incredibly painful sport.



“I don’t know what it really is. It is really painful falling and you know when you go to training you are going to feel that pain. But the judo mat also makes you feel you are in a happy place.”



She is trained by Bulgarian Nikola Filipov, who has helped to shape her career, even if first impressions were not promising.



“He was my coach at the TuksSport High School, so I have been with him since 2010,” she explains. “I met him the first day there. It was quite scary, he is a rough guy with a hard face. And he was looking at me like, ‘are you really a judo player, you are so tiny?’



“When he was told that I was there at the school for judo, he started laughing at me! But from that time we grew a strong relationship. It’s a powerful team.”



Whitebooi found gold medal success at the All-Africa Games, but had a stroke of bad luck when she was drawn against the reigning Olympic champion Paula Pareto in the first round in Tokyo and lost.



“I had Covid-19 in March 2021 and didn’t think I would go to the Olympics because I missed out on qualifying competitions. I was not scared to fight her and I learned a lot in those few minutes I was on the mat.”



Whitebooi took that experience into the Commonwealth Games and beat Shushila Likmabam in the final.



“I was very confident about the Commonwealth Games and thought Ihadagoodchancetobeonthe podium. I pushed myself as much as I could, there was a big shift in my mind and I really believed in myself.”



She says Paris 2024 will likely be her last major competition and, having thought about quitting after Tokyo, is putting all her efforts into going out on a high.



“I’ve put a lot of years into judo and after Tokyo I had to really think about whether I wanted to come back for another four years, rather than a life I could have outside [the sport] and make more money and build a family,” she says.



“Paris 2024 will probably be where I end my competitive judo. I will always want to give back to the sport and help the younger generation. But there is also a point where your body tells you that you must give up because I’m crying every single day!”



As for life after the sport, she is well set and says she is “very much looking forward” to building a career.



“Since a young age I was very invested in my schoolwork. I made sure my grades were good. My first degree was financial science and then I did my honours in internal auditing. I then did a post- graduate [degree] in entrepreneurship. I can’t wait to see what is possible for me out there.”

2022 Commonwealth Games, Day 4: Judo (Gallo Images)

The Good Fight By An African Judoka 

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Survivors and Thrivers: The Women Fronting Some Of South Africa’s Coolest Startups

The 12th annual Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture took place in Cape Town, on October 7, the Archbishop’s birthday. Amina J Mohammed, the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), spoke at the in-person event, themed ‘A Vision for Hope and Healing’. Key in establishing the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), she has worked as Special Advisor to the former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and was formerly Nigeria’s Minister of Environment. She elaborated that while more people are in poverty, denied basic rights, with the climate crisis crossing all borders, social cohesion fraying, inequalities, increasing xenophobia, nationalism and hate speech, it doesn’t have to be this way. The planet has irreplaceable resources and renewable energy, she said, and we’ve never been so connected by technology, living as long, or with as many women in positions of power. More in this interview with FORBES AFRICA:



Q: You spoke a bit about the fourth industrial revolution at the lecture, and you also spoke about decolonizing hundreds of years of education meant for other people. What do you imagine that to look like?



A: I think it starts first of all for from where we create access to education, and the curriculum that we put in place for it. And we talk about the scientific basis that we find we must have in early childcare. I think early childcare is not in a classroom, but very much in Africa today, it needs to start with adult literacy and mothers because as African women, and in our cultures – our children are with us until they’re three, attached at the hip, if you would.



So I think that we need to find creative ways of bringing education into the home, and not taking kids to institutions at that early age. So early childhood education, for me, is one transformation that happens together with a mother [for] that bonding in the community, where we say that Africa is brought up by a village and not by a couple of people. So, really bringing that community learning into early child care.



Then, building on that, the primary and secondary education that we need. One that really looks at that intrinsic value of education to a person, a person&#8217;s identity from their cultures, their religion, the good practices – so we don&#8217;t throw the baby out with the bathwater – we&#8217;re always referring to harmful cultural practices, and we never look at it from the positive side. And that we move on from things that we did not know were so harmful because they were so cultural, or so male-vested. And we need to move on. But there are some good things there.



And then really, to begin to build the foundational skills of literacy and numeracy, by putting the digital in front so that we&#8217;re not waiting until ‘oh, Africa is ready, or Africa has the resources right at the beginning’. Our ambition is for each child, as a global citizen, and not just an African citizen, but to bring that whole technology and learning into an environment. What I&#8217;m trying to say is that as we learn to have pride and independence of one&#8217;s being, how that contributes from the inside out. So you&#8217;re not just looking at capacities and skills to connect to the outside world without understanding anything about who you are, and the part that you play in your own ecosystem.



I do this because I was part of an education system that did this, although I have to say that we had a broader education. But as years have gone on, that curriculum has become loaded. It has lost its core. And I think people are struggling with who they are, and who they are is such a contradiction to people who want us to join this global family. And I think that we are richer for it if we identify with what we really are. The question of diversity for me is far deeper than the narrow, silo approach that we are seeing on diversity now.



The diversity piece has lost its meaning, because we&#8217;ve sort of pigeonholed different parts of our society that are different, and will choose to live differently. And what we need to see is healthy respect, and that these are the threads of our human fabric. And as such, each thread matters, each thread makes the fabric stronger, not weaker. So the less threads we have, that we leave behind, the weaker that fabric. And I think if you say that to people, then they see themselves in the fabric. It&#8217;s not you against us. And that&#8217;s what really draws me to the Arch [Desmond Tutu]. Because I think he really taught us how to respect what&#8217;s behind our skin. It&#8217;s us, it&#8217;s human beings. And as you&#8217;re born, you&#8217;re incredibly free of everything, and depending where you land, is what shapes you.



Q: You spoke about this at the lecture with your vision for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in light of all of the global and local conflicts. You termed it the ‘world in crisis’, how do you think Africa can move forward?



A: I think essentially, we&#8217;ve got to have a few conversations with ourselves. And there has to be a huge amount of courage that what you&#8217;re doing is shaping the future. I mean, concretely, shaping that future for your people with what you know is the right thing. And this is our leaders, and I&#8217;m saying leaders at different levels, because the leaders that we point to and look to as inspirations and heroes, they&#8217;re all gone now. And I don&#8217;t know who we point to, to replace them. Because today, we&#8217;re so critical of the person, we&#8217;re so judgmental of the person, and we miss the message that that person carries.



I think people like the Arch and Madiba [Nelson Mandela] always recognized their failings. And so people didn&#8217;t have a chance to throw any stones at them. What came out was ‘okay, I&#8217;m not perfect, I&#8217;m not God, but these are the things that I believe in, these are the things that I will fight for’. So as human beings, what we look to is what they stood for. And I&#8217;m not sure today that we give so much grace to leaders. And I think that we have to think and listen to what the leader is saying and doing, rather than judge what&#8217;s in the closet. Everybody&#8217;s got a closet, and some worse than others. But if that person takes a good message that does no harm, that brings people together, that forwards Africa, we need to find that community.



We have a responsibility as followers to get behind them to do the right thing. So conversation, really serious conversation. Whether it happens in the African Union [AU], and I have to tell you that in the AU, when leaders try to get together to have a closed-door meeting, the international community wants to be in on it. Even I, as an African, say to people, ‘oo, I&#8217;m the United Nations’. That&#8217;s their conversation they need to have. I can have a private one as well, as a brother or sister conversation to them. But in this piece here, give them space, because every one of them has baggage, and that baggage is colonial. And many of them are tied to it inextricably, and it&#8217;s hard.



So what common ground can they come together on to move us forward? And I think that the fact that we&#8217;re seeing no solidarity with Africa right now has actually empowered a conversation. I think the United Nations has been helpful for a sanguine Economic Commission for Africa that did a lot of work with the Minister of Finance. So they were able to take the issues in an international arena and argue them, and it&#8217;s quite difficult for our people to do that because essentially, they&#8217;re in their own bubble, fighting the day-to-day challenges of broken democracies and an incredibly different set of difficult situations, conflict, etc.



Q: At the lecture, you were also speaking about the need for self-determination; what does Africa need to do for that?



A: I think we&#8217;ve been told what to do and what&#8217;s good for us. And we have to come back and determine what is good for us. That&#8217;s why I said for education, it&#8217;s really important we think about that. And we think about what skills are going to put a kid, from when they get into school for 15 years, to the workplace? Is it the skills of tomorrow?



Then you hear what&#8217;s going on in South Africa with AI, and you&#8217;re thinking, ‘okay, what is the transition going to look like? How do we build that capacity? How do we look at the financial architecture, which was really built for another era, and not for our development – [what about] access courses or even profiting from the natural resources that we have, so that we can build?’ And so it&#8217;s going to be complex, because we are many, and our issues are very complex.



We need to think, ‘what is the low hanging fruit for a politician that is bound by a four or five-year cycle of democracy and elective office, to one that is longer?’ Longer term means you need institutional memory; that means that the services the institutions need to be able to carry us through these different cycles of elections.



The policy somersaults that we are feeling right now, I guess they feel them in the United Kingdom, they feel them in countries in Europe now that are going so far right from being so far left. So, it’s important, and then I think that, the more we educate people, the better constituencies we have for engaging. You can&#8217;t engage with one person, one vote, when there is quite frankly, a lack of education as to understanding why the vote, and what&#8217;s my vote worth? Is it $5? Or is it educational reform, and health services, and things that are my rights, that&#8217;s what my vote is. So it&#8217;s a little bit of a journey, as you know, the long road to freedom – the road is still being tracked.



Q: Is there anything else you&#8217;d like to anecdotally share on the issues you spoke about either in the lecture or about achieving the SDGs?



A: There are so many. Climate for me is the biggest challenge that we have, and opportunity. So when a farmer says to me that this is not about a flood, or temperatures, it&#8217;s about ‘I wake up in the morning



and my crop is gone because of a dust storm, and that dust storm has come because of drought, and my farm is gone, my livelihood is gone’. And then the livelihoods of all these Maasai women and men that I met, their livelihoods, their cattle have died. You see the carcasses on the road. And we don&#8217;t want to talk about that much. But that&#8217;s assets that have just been taken away. And so when Kenya is dealing with that, they&#8217;re saying, ‘okay, right now, the private sector is coming in, and we&#8217;re asking them to put a fund together, so they buy the cattle before they die’. So there are resources for that community, for the hard times, and they can replenish stock. Then we have put things together that will help us to build back with a level of resilience.



Those are real stories. They are real situations that have to sometimes find their way into the media, into the headlines. Not so much the misery of it, but the way that we can prevent it and then link that to the 1.5 degrees. I think there&#8217;s a disconnect between science, the 1.5 degrees and the reality on the ground. We need to link it, we need to say a third of Pakistan is underwater, because we&#8217;ve just had floods that are melting glaciers, and we can tie that to China, and it&#8217;s industrial pollution. We can do all this. So how do you tell the story?



I listened to an elder just three days ago, and his eyesight had gone. And all he said was ‘we&#8217;re very grateful for what you&#8217;ve been able to give us here, but there&#8217;s a lot of people you can&#8217;t see that haven&#8217;t been able to get to this’. And the first thing he said was women and people with disabilities. And it just made me think, ‘wow, this person right now is not talking about can we have more for me and my tribe’, which is what generally gets into a story, he’s been very specific about the people that are being left behind, that we don&#8217;t see.



I think he&#8217;s given me fodder for my advocacy. Because when I go back into those sterile rooms, that somehow craft language that I don&#8217;t understand, and many people don&#8217;t understand, we can break it down. And this is where I think the partnership with the media is so important. This is a new partnership that we need to have.

Batet Receives Un Deputy Secretary-general, Amina J. Mohammed

‘What We Need To See Is Healthy Respect, And These Are The Threads Of Our Human Fabric’: Amina J Mohammed On Diversity, SDGs, Climate Change and Africa Moving Forward

Onyinye Anyaegbu, the London-based co-founder and CEO of African art trading platform ARTSPLIT, sees art as an alternative investment.



The global art market is estimated to be worth a staggering $65.1 billion according to the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2022 and Nigerian artists are finally gaining praise. With paintings of renowned artists like the late Ben Enwonwu, considered by most collectors to be the father of Nigerian modernism, fetching over $1.4 million at Sotheby’s and another going for $1.5 million at Bonhams, Nigerian art is in high demand globally and collectors and investors are actively acquiring works with the view of cashing in on the increasing demand.



According to figures from Bonhams, about 90% of the value of their auction sales in 2017 came from Nigerian artists. And poised to disrupt this new art economy is ARTSPLIT, a trading and social app providing users with an interactive space to participate in live auctions, bids, trades, portfolio management as well as access to invest and lease African artworks. According to the London-based co-founder and CEO of the platform, Onyinye Anyaegbu, this solution is a timely answer to an issue most collectors face.



“My brother came to me with this idea about Art. He just started his art journey and got introduced to being a collector and he was really enjoying it and he started collecting art as a great investment. And I was really fascinated by the whole African art space because of him. He told me the problem he had was that right now, as a collector even though you may have about $300,000 worth of art sitting at home, when you take it to the bank, you cannot leverage the art for anything financial,” says Anyaegbu.



“If you ever wanted liquidity you have to sell it out completely. As we spoke we realized that this is such a big collector problem and as Nigerian collectors are probably a bit more sophisticated and really that’s where it started from. As a collector, you collect all this amazing work and you don’t even have enough space for it and you cannot leverage the art for any financial instrument.”



The art trading platform for African art is providing collectors a way to get more out of their work by providing the opportunity to own shares also known as splits of prestigious African artworks that can be traded by collectors in real time.



“So, we figured what if you create a platform where you don’t lose your work but you get other people to invest in your platform and ARTSPLIT was born. The first milestone was the beta testing and seeing all our thoughts come to life in terms of the app technology. We spent a lot of time talking and mapping processes and experiences of how it should feel for a user. How do you trade, where do you trade from, and having a tech partner come in and take that and flip it into an app was amazing and that was a huge milestone for us,” avers Anyaegbu.



The app offers the community of collectors the flexibility of either co-ownership or full ownership with further opportunities for actual tangible ownership of these art works for a period of time.



“It does not end there. ARTSPLIT also provides opportunities for owners of investment grade African art to list their works, have them evaluated and sold to members of our community. You can decide to sell your work in full, or in splits (minimum of 10%) which will enable you to keep the ownership of your work and still benefit from trade of your work,” says Anyaegbu.



Five Nigerian artists took part in ARTSPLIT MOCONA, their split-and-lease online contemporary arts auction in July with bids amounting to $57,000 and with an average growth value of 14%. The auction profiled prominent Nigerian artists paving their way in the contemporary art scene including the likes of Abiodun Olaku, Duke Asidere, Edosa Ogiugo, El-Dragg Okwoju and Oliver Enwonwu.



Anyaegbu and her team are already on their fourth round of funding raising $2.5 million against a $5 million benchmark. ARTSPLIT with its team of art lovers is on a mission to raise the global profile of African art by building a community of collectors and investors as well as providing advisory and management services for art collection.

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App For Art’s Sake: Building A Community Of Collectors And Investors In Nigeria

The word ‘multi’ comes up many times in a conversation with 28-year-old Dubai-based Nigerian businesswoman Gbemi Giwa.



“I am a multi-passionate entrepreneur with a knack for turning ideas into creative impactful brands…. I am a multi-hyphenated person…” she says in a Zoom interview on a hot summer day in August from her abode in the sunny city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.



Although Giwa started out as an influencer and launched several businesses in the glistening Middle Eastern emirate by the time she turned 26, she is wary of calling herself ‘a serial entrepreneur’.



Now making a conscious effort to focus solely on her core competence – the food business – she says her passion project remains Catfish, an online restaurant serving “a healthy twist on African dishes” that she launched in Dubai in 2018.



The realization to hone in on one serious endeavor came after a few “bold moves” and the twists and turns that the Covid-19 pandemic brought when Giwa was forced to close down Gbemi’s Kitchen, the physical restaurant she started in 2019 at the Jumeirah Lake Towers in Dubai serving authentic Nigerian food.



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“In 2020, Covid hit and for the first time, I navigated a big loss with the shutting of my restaurant concepts, forcing me to start afresh with a larger focus on building a Covid-proof business with a deeper focus on digital,” she says of those tough months.



She started by launching a consulting company called Digiboss to help women in business build their online profiles to establish themselves as thought leaders, whilst consistently attracting profitable partnership opportunities.



“I help millennial women build an impactful personal brand and commit to taking action by teaching them profitable action steps to validate their creative ideas, craft them into polished concepts and launch them into the real world,” says Giwa.



“Using the same method I teach my clients, I was able to secure funding to relaunch my restaurant Catfish just at the end of the pandemic. I’m currently navigating our redirection into the e-commerce space and retail by taking a piece of the growing ready-to-eat industry.”



The food business is not new for her. It was while at design school in 2014 that she launched Dubai Fit Foodie, a wellness blog she calls her “longest-paying side hustle”. Her growing years shaped her early love for African food and she wanted to give it the respect it deserved.



A year later, she turned her love for dancing by launching dance classes in Dubai, teaching Afrofit, which she calls her “second longest-paying side hustle”.



In 2016, she specialized in creating impactful digital campaigns for local and international brands in the Middle East. A year later, yet again foraying into the business world, she launched a boutique agency specializing in branding and content creation for F&amp;B concepts.



‘A good idea is nothing without action’. 



Even when she was 16, on a plane to Dubai from Lagos to enrol at the American University of Sharjah, she was already harboring ideas of creating content and an impactful career. Even if at times, this meant going against the norm and using the word ‘no’ multiple times to her now-late father, also a businessman, who took a keen interest in her professional journey.



“I am from a classic African family that says ‘either you become a doctor or a lawyer, or you are nobody’.



“But ever since I went to design school, I’ve been obsessed with ideas. I believe good ideas come when you explore and exhaust several bad ideas, but a good idea is nothing without action.”



Luckily, she was glad to find herself in Dubai.



“It’s one of the easiest places to do business in, especially if you know the right people and have the money… I always tell youngsters it’s better to partner with the right mentor, as they have the experience and you can keep learning from them.”



Where there’s hustle, there’s also heart.



“My passion will always be around creating content, product, and brands that reflect my African roots and help people embrace wellness in order to feel like their happier healthiest selves,” says Giwa.



Currently catering for events and working towards moving Catfish into the e-commerce space, she will also be seen at The Ripe Market, a farmers’ market in Dubai, from October.

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Hustle And Heart: The Nigerian Entrepreneur Promoting African Food In Dubai

Nigerian creative Mo Abudu is bringing Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman as a film, directed by Biyi Bandele, who passed away early this month.



EbonyLife Group CEO, Mo Abudu, is bringing Professor Wole Soyinka’s 1975 stage play Death and the King’s Horseman as a feature adaptation, in a project with streaming service Netflix.



Nigerian playwright and iconic novelist Soyinka is the first Black winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature — and its first African winner.



The film, set to be the first Yoruba language movie ever to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September 2022, is based on actual historical events that took place during British colonial rule in Nigeria.



“Our goal whenever we tell African stories is to be truly authentic and stay as close as possible to the original work. In this case, it was especially important because Professor Soyinka’s work is already well-known globally and he is one of the greatest literary talents of our time. It is a great honor to be trusted with telling this compelling African drama steeped in our local traditions,” says Abudu in an interview with FORBES AFRICA.



Soyinka’s play was adapted as a feature film by famed Nigerian playwright and director Biyi Bandele, who passed away on August 7, the month before its premiere.



The filmmaker had grabbed global headlines with his directorial work of the best-selling Chimamanda Adichie book Half of a Yellow Sun and the most recent Netflix series Blood Sisters.



“Biyi’s death was a complete shock and unexpected. We were all planning to make it to the TIFF and he was over the moon. He poured everything into this depiction and it is a real loss to the industry,” says Abudu, reportedly the first African to sign a multiple deal with Netflix in 2020.



Death and the King’s Horseman is expected to air after its screening at TIFF.

Mo Abudu, image supplied by EbonyLife

Iconic Nigerian Nobel Laureate’s Play To Come To Life

<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large">“But the business side, you have to learn about it…..we’re not born with that knowledge, you need to learn it.&#8221; <cite>Tiwa Savage, Award-Winning Nigerian singer</cite></blockquote>

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AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE FIGHT FOR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS for the people of Cameroon is Cameroonian Maximilienne C. Ngo Mbe, recently honored with the prestigious 2022 Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Human Rights Award.



In an interview with FORBES AFRICA, Ngo Mbe speaks of her early motivation to take to defending human rights: “My father, being a teacher, saw his rights regularly besmirched and violated… He received a miserable salary and on top of that he had to wait months to receive it. What’s more, the working conditions were difficult. It is all this situation that pushed me to fight since my childhood for the respect of teachers’ rights.” Ngo Mbe, Executive Director of the Central Africa Human Rights Defenders Network (REDHAC), says receiving the award feels like a dream.



Since 2010, she has led REDHAC in its efforts to promote civic spaces and protect fundamental freedoms throughout Central Africa through investigations of human rights abuses, advocacy before regional human rights bodies, monitoring of democratic processes, and demanding state accountability. She was also named an International Woman of Courage in 2021 by the U.S. Department of State.



“The empowerment of women has always been of paramount importance in so far as their contribution to the management of the household is undeniable,” she says, sharing her thoughts on the importance of uplifting women on the continent. “Is it not women in rural and urban areas who make sure that daily meals are cooked and that children receive an education? If, for any number of reasons, the father of the family is unable to play his role fully, it is the woman who does so effectively. We have seen this during the crises that have shaken the world.”



With over 30 years of experience, Ngo Mbe is sure about her mission going forward.



“I know one thing – I am leading a legitimate and laudable fight for the defense, protection and promotion of human rights. Many people benefit from it in Cameroon and in the Central African sub-region. I receive threats, dirty tricks, but also awards. This is how my life goes and I assume it is a long-term struggle, at the same time exhausting, arduous and exhilarating. How far and when? Only God knows.



“In order to move forward in life, you have to look in the rear-view mirror. I realize that beyond the threats and blows that we take at REDHAC, from afar, we are seen, and we are appreciated.”

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‘Leading A Legitimate And Laudable Fight’ -Cameroonian Human Rights Activist

Temilade Openiyi has had a slew of recent successes and is one of the few female producers in the Nigerian music scene grabbing the attention of global stars.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large">“I would just sit and write about how I was feeling and the things I was going through. It could be about anything and it just came out in a poetic way. That is when I found out I had a passion for music and soon those poems became lyrics.”</blockquote>



In October 2021, Nigerian Afrobeats chart-topper Wizkid released Essence, which would go on to become one of the biggest Afrobeats’ songs also dominating global streaming charts. One of the magical components of Essence was the sultry vocals of Nigerian emerging artist Temilade Openiyi, known professionally as ‘Tems’.



This winner of the Best International Act at the 2022 BET Awards hails from the new movement of artistic expression in the Nigerian music scene known as Alté, meaning alternative, which is a fusion of Afrobeats, dancehall, reggae, hip hop and alternative R&amp;B. After gaining worldwide recognition with her hit singles Mr Rebel and Try Me, Essence’s success, which was further ignited by Canadian singer Justin Bieber jumping on the remix, made Tems a household name globally.



“I had no idea my life was about to change when I did that song. Every day since then is like a dream and I am super thankful for the opportunity I have for people to hear my work on a global scale,” says Tems to FORBES AFRICA.



The 26-year-old honed her musical prowess in Lagos, Nigeria, where she was born. She moved to the United Kingdom with her parents as a child but returned home after their divorce. With no friends and a solitary existence, Tems took to writing poems as an escape.



“I would just sit and write about how I was feeling and the things I was going through. It could be about anything and it just came out in a poetic way. That is when I found out I had a passion for music and soon those poems became lyrics,” avers Tems.



With no money, Tems broke barriers by producing her own beat making her one of the few female producers in the Nigerian music scene and soon started getting the attention of global music stars like Chris Brown, Alicia Keys and Adele.



Her track-record has led to other collaborations like the recent hit single Fountains by Drake and Future as well as most recently, being featured on the official EP of the new Black Panther: Wakanda Forever movie where she sings the cover of Bob Marley’s No Woman, No Cry, which got over 172 million views in just 24 hours.

Temilade Openiyi; image supplied

Right Notes: The Nigerian Singer On Her Own Alternative Beat

The Gambia is Africa’s smallest mainland nation, both in size and population. It’s also home to a growing technology sector, focused on building and deploying tailored solutions for the changing African digital landscape. Among its rising stars are women, many who have had to overcome myriad cultural barriers to join the sector. In turn, they are opening the way for other female leaders in the field. FORBES AFRICA takes a closer look at Gambia’s women in tech.



BY MARIE SHABAYA



AWAMARY LOWE-KHAN WAS JUST 23 YEARS old when she became a Chief Financial Officer. It was a determination to succeed and give her son “the world”, as she now puts it, that drove her career to early heights. Years later, she leveled that energy at another challenge; technology entrepreneurship.



For over a decade now, she has been working in the industry via PointClick Technologies which she co-founded with her husband in 2007 in Raleigh, North Carolina.



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“Relieving girls of the chores [at home] and challenging the [pervasive] gender norms in Gambian culture by encouraging parents to let their girls take a day off may be a solution.”- Awamary Lowe-Khan
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This among a number of innovation projects led her back home to The Gambia, where she not only established the African off-shoot of PointClick Technologies but also The Woman Boss, a female-focused organization tailored to women and girls in the country looking to make their way in entrepreneurship and technology.



“Reduced access to capital is one of the biggest challenges women in tech face. Because of the reduced number of women in tech in the ecosystem, there is a lack of access to women mentors, especially back when we founded our company in 2007.



This also means that there is a lack of access to diverse and inclusive spaces for minority women,” she says.



The Woman Boss is part of a growing movement on the continent and unique in The Gambia as it works to improve the tides for women in the technology sector.



Particularly, in the tiny West African nation, cultural norms and related obstacles have meant that young women have little exposure to technology as a career option even if they make it into tertiary education.



“They tend to pick traditional subjects but never tech. This could be because there are no recognizable leaders in the industry for them. We want to change the norm so when it is time for graduation, they view tech as an option. They are curious about technology as they become familiar with it,” explains Lowe-Khan.



Gender disparities in The Gambia are far-reaching but can be seen clearly when analysing the country’s technology sector. According to a recent World Bank study, in the country’s budding digital economy, gender gaps in the industry begin as early as primary school. It is believed that only 10% of adolescent boys and 6% of adolescent girls (between 15–18 years old) in The Gambia have even basic ICT skills.



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:36% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="767" height="1024" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Screenshot-2022-08-08-at-09.26.48-767x1024.png" alt="" class="wp-image-55865 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Screenshot-2022-08-08-at-09.26.48-767x1024.png 767w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Screenshot-2022-08-08-at-09.26.48-225x300.png 225w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Screenshot-2022-08-08-at-09.26.48-768x1026.png 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Screenshot-2022-08-08-at-09.26.48.png 840w" sizes="(max-width: 767px) 100vw, 767px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
“Returning to work after maternity leave can be quite challenging for some, and as a result we now have a crèche facility for staff. This is a first in The Gambia and we hope that other institutions can follow suit.” – Dr Jorjoh Ndure-Tambedou
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This is due to a number of prevailing factors including, but not limited to, low digital literacy rates among teachers and teacher trainers, limited access to computers both at school and at home as well as the gender expectations at home which means girls have limited time to practice these skills even if they do have access to a computer.



“Relieving girls of the chores [at home] and challenging the [pervasive] gender norms in Gambian culture by encouraging parents to let their girls take a day off may be a solution,” posits Lowe-Khan. Part of The Woman Boss mandate is to sensitize young women across the country’s high schools with the awareness of the technology sector as well as preparing them for leadership within the field. To date, they have worked with over 1,300 girls in secondary school and, at the same time, empower them with new information about the choices they can make for their future.



“Slowly but surely, we are changing mindsets&#8230; this is all part of innovation. There’s definitely been a change in the last three years since we started in The Gambia. We want to empower young girls to solve their own problems,” Lowe-Khan says. A model of one of these young women in the Gambian technology scene can be found in Jankeh Sanyang. The 25-year-old is a Product Manager at Forté Innovations, a leading software developer in the country’s capital, Banjul. Even she admits that the tech track was an unusual one for a Gambian woman but she entered the industry boldly thanks to the support of her family.



“When I completed high school, my peers naturally went to university or college. I didn’t follow that path straighway. I went to do courses such as Networking, Server Management, and Database Management for a year and a half. I luckily got a job at a hospital which worked mostly on digital systems,” recalls Sanyang.



Since then, she has gone on to climb the corporate ladder to the role she is currently in, which required additional study, from her initial certificate courses.



Her work has allowed unique exposure to not just the highest levels of the technology industry in The Gambia but the difficulties of being a career woman in her society, particularly at her age.



“Professional women in this part of the world must be at their best both within the household, and the work environment, whilst our male colleagues do not. This obviously gives them an advantage because, as women are struggling to hit their 10,000 hours because of other commitments and constraints, men are advancing up the career ladder. My job, for example, gives me access to men operating at the highest levels of both the public and private sector.



“As I am frequently the only female (also the youngest person) in the room, they are often shocked to see a 25-year-old woman taking the lead. So during interactions, one may get comments like ‘you are pretty good for a girl’ or ‘what is a girl like you doing in tech?’ Luckily for me, I have a strong supportive team that ensures I remain safe,” she says.



For Sanyang, young women in The Gambia’s technology industry have a myriad of barriers to overcome, many of them set in the way of thinking within the country’s cultural context.



“A lot of women never make it to the top of the tech field in The Gambia. This is not always due to the lack of talent or commitment, but mostly down to the patriarchal society we are in. Often when we get married or have children, as women, we are expected to stay home and care for the family. It is often a huge challenge to get back as there is no support from government, family etc to return to the field,” she explains.



This doesn’t mean that these obstacles can’t be overcome. Dr Jorjoh Ndure-Tambedou, a feted leader in the Gambian technology ecosystem, is the CEO of InSIST Global and one of the founders of Afrijula, a digital financial tool for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:37% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="724" height="1024" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Screenshot-2022-08-08-at-09.26.40-724x1024.png" alt="" class="wp-image-55866 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Screenshot-2022-08-08-at-09.26.40-724x1024.png 724w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Screenshot-2022-08-08-at-09.26.40-212x300.png 212w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Screenshot-2022-08-08-at-09.26.40.png 738w" sizes="(max-width: 724px) 100vw, 724px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
“As I am frequently the only female (also the youngest person) in the room, they are often shocked to see a 25-year-old woman taking the lead. So during interactions, one may get comments like ‘you are pretty good for a girl’ or ‘what is a girl like you doing in tech?’ ” – Jankeh Sanyang
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For her, the challenge of being a mother in the industry was met by supportive leadership which she is now extending to her own staff.



“A common challenge most women face is having a work/life balance, especially mothers. I was fortunate enough as my predecessor was very supportive and I had some flexibility allowing me to be able to work from home when necessary. Returning to work after maternity leave can be quite challenging for some, and as a result we now have a crèche facility for staff. This is a first in The Gambia and we hope that other institutions can follow suit. Having experienced these challenges in previous roles, I am now in a position to support women by providing the environment to make the transition easier.”



Echoing Lowe-Khan’s view of the country’s technology, Ndure- Tambedou is hopeful that more women will follow suit as they see more leaders like herself in top positions in the industry.



She believes that conformity to Gambian cultural norms may be the enemy of progress for the sector.



Instead, she advocates a bolder approach, encouraging women to be who they were born to be.



“As women we do not have anything to prove to anyone, just be yourself, do what you know how to do and be prepared to ask for guidance should you need any. I would strongly encourage more women to work in the industry. I find it quite fulfilling as I can see the tangible value of what I am doing for the very people they are intended for, Africans!”

Black Student Girl Holding Laptop Computer Standing On Pink Background

TECH QUEENS CHANGING THE MINDSET IN GAMBIA

Staying out of the socio-cultural fray is no longer an option for most brands and businesses. Can “safety” be a framework for when and how CEOs and CMOs should consider acting?



For the CEOs of the world’s largest companies, navigating when and how to enter cultural conversations, when and how to show solidarity, allyship and citizenship is fraught with real and perceived risk. The consequences of both action and inaction can be measured in an eco-system of reputational, economic and/or political impacts. The fear of alienating people, be they buyers, subscribers, employees, or shareholders en-masse, has long kept good people and good companies from doing more good things and standing up against more bad things. 



If we lived and marketed in <a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/1176668064/pattern-i-could-really-use-some" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">precedented times</a>, this would all be easier, but we don’t. We live and market in times when the values-based divide between red and blue is so enormous that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/03/08/they-are-preparing-war-an-expert-civil-wars-discusses-where-political-extremists-are-taking-this-country/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">civil war seems as likely as civil discourse</a>. The once-unthinkable is now entirely thinkable as most identity groups—from the historically under-represented to the historically privileged—feel as if they are under attack—despite the socio-cultural, economic, legislative, and electoral evidence making clear that some remain far more so than others, and that not all perception is reality.



Today, brands are boycotted for pushing back against hate; for advocating for equity and inclusion; for doing and saying things that not so long ago would have seemed reasonable and right but, now, don’t. Making decisions about when to act and when not to is a calculus that, for CEOs and the CMOs who help them steward these brands and businesses, fraught with political and bottom-line considerations, as, no matter one’s heart or values, fiduciary duty calls. In fact, according to a recent survey, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/madelinehalpert/2022/07/20/less-than-10-of-companies-commented-publicly-on-roe-v-wade-decision-poll-finds/amp/">fewer than 10% of US companies spoke out against the SCOTUS Roe reversal</a>. But staying entirely out of the cultural fray is no longer an option, no matter the risks, as people—whether buyers, employees, partners or vendors—are <a href="https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-more-companies-are-standing-up-on-social-issues/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">increasingly looking to businesses</a> to address social issues, having <a href="https://www.edelman.com/trust/2021-trust-barometer" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">lost trust</a>in government’s ability to do same.



These growing expectations require a new level of corporate accountability and transparency to an ecosystem of stakeholders, not just shareholders. And as CEOs from across the globe watched as Bob Chapek was publicly pilloried both for what he, at first, didn’t do by remaining silent on Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill and then by Florida’s lawmakers who threatened massive economic consequences when he spoke out in support of ABC, they got scared.



So, how do you decide when and how to step in without, as Sarah Kate Ellis, the long-time President of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.glaad.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">GLAAD</a>, an organization dedicated to accelerating change for the LGBTQ community, calls it, “sticking your neck out.”



While the work Ellis and GLAAD do focuses on the LGBTQ community specifically, she has a simple framework for determining when and why to get involved that has application to other communities as readily. The simple construct occurred to her at at The World Economic Forum in Davos this past May, as she listened to the assembled consider how to mitigate the risks of doing and saying something that needs to be done and said despite ramifications. Her very simple framework? Act when the safety of others is at risk.



“Companies and CEOs are having to speak up constantly on social issues,” she says, “and I was trying to think about how we could shift the narrative from isolated issues—LGBTQ+ rights, guns, Roe—and wondering what kind of framework we could build that is rooted in fact, and depoliticizes issues that (have been) wrongly politicized. These are not political issues, they impact the safety, health and well-being of humans across the board.”



The premise is great, but how exactly does one appeal to humans across the board when the pieces on the board are more akin to chess pieces battling than disparate parts of one whole?



To Ellis, it begins with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs</a>. “If you look at Maslow, ‘safety’ is foundational,” she reasons. “So, the framework should be simple and factual: it’s all about people’s safety. Safety in schools, safety at work, safety for women, safety for the LGBTQ community. Safety for the under-represented. You’re either for safety or against it.”



Who could reasonably be against safety? Well, at a time when&nbsp;<a href="https://leafgroup.zoom.us/j/84570240131" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">7% of Americans</a>&nbsp;believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows, anything’s possible. As Ellis points out, “there is a fringe that will always be fringe and you can’t argue with them, but you can have a stance and a framework that is for good and for all.”



But even “safety” can be subjective. When asked what she’d say to those would argue for the safety of the unborn child, she admits, “There’s no perfect framework. But CEOs are having to speak up all the time on one or another social issue and it’s a race on narrative. You’ve said you support us, you market to us, you have some policies and procedures, but what are you doing in the public sphere when the rubber hits the road? We think ‘safety’ lets them get ahead of issues and creates a decision tree that can help them do the right thing when the right thing seems hard.”



For businesses, no matter what or whom you ally with or against there will be those who love you for it and those who don’t. This has always been true — it’s just more so now, with no signs on the horizon that it will become less so moving forward. Employee, consumer, shareholder and stakeholder activism and expectations all but mandates corporate action, accountability and transparency in ways heretofore unconsidered. And this is true regardless of whether you fall on Hobby Lobby’s side of the conversation or Patagonia’s.



Ellis is, of course, right. No perfect framework for this exists in these particularly imperfect times. And as much as she thinks this is a framework for any one CEO, her bigger hope is that it becomes a framework for a coalition of them. “The biggest thing is CEOs going in together and sign[ing] some sort of shared declaration,” she says. “‘We believe in the safety of our employees and customers. This is where we stand, and we will act in support of (it) whenever it is challenged.’”&nbsp;



Ensuring social, cultural, and economic safety seems a reasonable bar for businesses to hurdle. After all, if you can’t stand resolutely for the safety of those you work with, sell to, and seek to serve, what exactly can you stand for?



By Seth Matlins, Forbes Staff

Young businesswoman walking with digital tablet at coworking

A Framework For CEOs And CMOs On When And How To Enter The Cultural Conversation

Tobi Amusan’s gold at the recent World Athletics Championships was a win not just for Nigeria but for Africa, says the 25-year-old.



For years, Nigerian-born Oluwatobiloba Amusan considered herself as the “almost girl”. She placed fourth at the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Doha in 2019 and fourth again at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.



So, when on July 24 this year, she smashed the 100-meter women’s hurdles world record with an outstanding 12.12 seconds in the semi-finals and 12.06 for the finals, the ‘almost girl’ finally bagged a gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon in the United States becoming the first world champion from Nigeria.



“I thank God for his blessing and for finally giving me the strength to come first place. I feel like this is a win not only for myself but also for Nigeria and Africa,” says Amusan.



She beat former record-holder Kendra Harrison’s 2016 record of 12.20 by 0.8 of a second.



“It was very competitive so the goal was to execute and survive to the finals and I thank God for keeping me healthy throughout the process,” says Amusan to FORBES AFRICA.



The 25-year-old sprinter was born in Ogun State in the Western part of Nigeria. She began her sports career as a soccer player until her coach decided she had a lot more potential for the track.



“I ended up beating all the best people in the team and that’s how I found my calling.”



That calling took her to the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) where she held several titles including the 60-meter indoor record, the 200-meter indoor record, the 100-meter hurdles as well as the 200-meter flat record.



In a statement conveyed by the special advisor to the president on media and publicity, Femi Adesina, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said on Amusan’s win: “The President joins millions of Nigerians in celebrating this outstanding feat by a compatriot and two-time African Games champion, who in one night stunned the athletics world with her superlative and stellar performance. The President thanks the track superstar for making the Nigerian national anthem resonate again from the international podium, leaving the nation with the excitement and unforgettable memories of tears of joy and triumph; hope and victory; incredulity and belief.”

World Athletics Championships Oregon22 – Day Ten

Nigerian Sprinter On Smashing Records In Stunning Feat At Oregon

The resignation of Glossier CEO Emily Weiss inspired another wave of obituaries for young, female founders. Nevertheless, they persist—and refuse to be put on glass pedestals again.



In October 2021, Rent the Runway cofounder Jennifer Hyman took her 12-year-old subscription fashion company public at a $1.7 billion valuation, valuing her 5.1% stake at nearly $49 million. The 41-year-old CEO was one of only about 25 American women in history to go public with a company she had founded. But Rent the Runway’s IPO was even more unusual for not only having a female founder but also a female CFO and a female COO.



Hyman celebrated the moment on a flowery Nasdaq podium surrounded by the key women on her team, her two daughters and a shower of pink confetti. But for all the femininity on stage, there is one word that Hyman would not use to mark the moment: “Girlboss.”



Making History and Bank: In October 2021, Rent the Runway became the first company to go public with a female CEO, COO and CFO—at a $1.7 billion valuation.RENT THE RUNWAY



“We&#8217;ve created a false narrative because we looked at two or three examples of women who were building businesses who happen to have a high social media following, and we call it a Girlboss Era,” Hyman says. “The Girlboss Era has never existed.”



Except it did.



The now dreaded hashtag dates to 2014, when then-30-year-old Sophia Amoruso, founder of the retail brand Nasty Gal, published a memoir called&nbsp;#Girlboss. In eight years, Amoruso had grown Nasty Gal from an eBay startup into a business with $40 million in funding, customers in 60 countries and a brick-and-mortar store on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. The book spent 18 weeks on the&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;bestseller list and propelled Amoruso to launch Girlboss Radio, a podcast featuring interviews with other female founders.



Leaning Out: After eight years of running the beauty brand she founded, Emily Weiss stepped down as CEO of Glossier in May amid turmoil.JOEL BARHAMAND



The Girlboss phenomenon is on Hyman’s mind because in late May, 37-year-old Glossier founder Emily Weiss announced that she was stepping down as CEO from the company she launched in 2014 and, after a maternity leave, becoming executive chairman. Weiss’ beauty business was growing into a $1.8 billion makeup juggernaut at the same time “Girlboss” was expanding in the public discourse.



It was around this same period that J.Crew included Ty Haney’s two-year-old athleisure company, Outdoor Voices, in a ‘brands we love’ feature. Haney opened OV’s first brick-and-mortar store in Austin in the fall of 2015. The then-27-year-old Haney would go on to raise more than $60 million for Outdoor Voices from investors including General Catalyst, GV, and former J.Crew CEO Mickey Drexler.



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<h4 id="h-hashtagging-it-out">HASHTAGGING IT OUT</h4>



<h4 id="h-since-sophia-amoruso-published-her-memoir-girlboss-in-2014-videos-with-that-hashtag-have-been-viewed-more-than-6-billion-times-on-tiktok-with-an-additional-26-million-posts-on-instagram-girlboss-has-also-been-used-more-than-4-5-million-times-on-twitter-during-the-past-8-years-with-about-half-of-that-coming-in-2021-just-as-some-of-the-more-prominent-female-founders-were-being-canceled">Since Sophia Amoruso published her memoir, #Girlboss, in 2014, videos with that hashtag have been viewed more than 6 billion times on TikTok with an additional 26 million posts on Instagram. #Girlboss has also been used more than 4.5 million times on Twitter during the past 8 years, with about half of that coming in 2021—just as some of the more prominent female founders were being canceled.</h4>



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That same year, two former Warby Parker prodigies, Steph Korey and Jen Rubio, founded Away, the smart-luggage company that eventually landed Korey on the cover of&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in November 2018 with a $1.4 billion valuation by 2019. And a year after Away was born, Audrey Gelman launched The Wing, a female-only coworking space that offered an A-List roster of speakers (including Christiane Amanpour and Hillary Clinton) for Wing members to enjoy after business hours. Ambitious women paid up to $2,700 a year for access to the Wing, and the buzzy brand hit a $400 million valuation before the pandemic took hold in 2020.



With such meteoric success stories, each of these women was soon hailed as a “Girlboss”—which often came with the benefits of being young, attractive and white. And when their high-flying brands fell back to earth over the next few years, the schadenfreude was relentless. A Netflix show called&nbsp;#GIRLBOSS&nbsp;was not enough to buoy Amoruso’s Nasty Gal brand; in 2016, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and was purchased the next year by The Boohoo Group for $20 million, a fraction of its peak valuation of $86 million in 2014, according to PitchBook.



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“It&#8217;s reminding everyone that there is a style of being a boss. And no matter how hard you work, you&#8217;re still a girl—you&#8217;re a girl in a man&#8217;s world.”–Kristen Syrett, Rutgers professor



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At Outdoor Voices, Haney found her leadership capabilities under fire in early 2020, with colleagues whispering to reporters that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/business/outdoor-voices-ty-haney-mickey-drexler.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">she was “spoiled and mercurial</a>.” By March of that year, Haney was pushed out of the company she founded. During the same period, Korey and Gelman also found their leadership styles pilloried in the media and by the peak of the pandemic in 2020, both women had resigned as CEO of their respective companies.



By the time Weiss stepped down as Glossier’s CEO in May, obituaries for the Girlboss Era had been written for at least two years. Yet the resignation of Weiss, who had been the face of one of the trendiest millennial companies, provided new fodder for commentary and conclusions about what it means when a female founder moves away from the brand she built. But working female entrepreneurs say these post-mortems are both sexist and unfair to the women who are still running disruptive, high-growth businesses.



“When a female founder steps down, it’s a headline like The Death of the Girlboss,” says Laura Behrens Wu, who was featured on the 2017 Forbes&nbsp;30 Under 30 for founding logistics outfit Shippo. “When a guy does it? There’s no real headline because it happens so frequently that it’s no big deal.” Wu points to 41-year old Flexport founder and CEO Ryan Peterson,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2022/06/08/exclusive-amazons-consumer-chief-dave-clark-joins-supply-chain-startup-flexport-as-co-ceo/?sh=1a260af3e82e">who announced plans to resign from his CEO seat</a>&nbsp;soon after Weiss stepped down. But the news about Peterson didn’t launch 1000 thinkpieces about the future of male CEOs, Wu notes, whereas a deposed Girlboss “becomes an extrapolation about the entirety of female founders.”



While the Girlboss concept began under a guise of empowerment, it has ultimately been damaging, a Scarlet G, for female entrepreneurs. The condescending moniker diminished female founders seeking investors, who judged them not on the quality of their companies but by their gender.



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&#8220;The heyday of female founders or Girlbosses has actually made the situation more difficult because it clouds the reality that it&#8217;s as difficult as ever to raise money as a woman.”– Jennifer Hyman, Rent the Runway CEO and Cofounder



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“As soon as you modify something like ‘boss’—and you don&#8217;t have ‘Boyboss’ or ‘Maleboss’—it really does make it incredibly salient that we are still, as women, fighting against [an image] that was not shaped by us,” says Kristen Syrett, a professor of linguistics at Rutgers University. “It&#8217;s reminding everyone that there is a style of being a boss; that there&#8217;s being a boss and then there&#8217;s the girl boss. And no matter how hard you work, you&#8217;re still a girl—you&#8217;re a girl in a man&#8217;s world.”



In early June, no less an expert than Sophia Amoruso implored her Twitter followers: “please stop using girlboss thanks.”



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Amoruso might be ready to move on, but Rent the Runway’s Jen Hyman and the other founders interviewed by&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;are left grappling with the wreckage of the GirlBoss Era.



“Sometimes, the positivity that the media has had about the heyday of female founders or Girlbosses has actually made the situation more difficult,” Hyman says, “because it clouds the reality that it&#8217;s as difficult as ever to raise money as a woman.”



Lilla Cosgrove is living that reality. In 2017, she cofounded the orthodontic aligner company Candid and set out to become&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2019/04/16/something-to-smile-about-candid-raises-63-million-to-be-the-warby-parker-of-braces/?sh=17ead9a4b256">the Warby Parker of braces</a>. Since then, Cosgrove has raised over $150 million. Like many CEOs over the past two years, she’s had to pivot her company, in this case from a direct-to-consumer brand to a business-to-business model selling retainers straight to dentists.&nbsp;“It’s hard being a human in the world right now with everything going on socially and economically, let alone being a founder,” the 31-year-old Cosgrove told&nbsp;Forbes, shortly before the Supreme Court ruled on&nbsp;Roe v. Wade. “And then being a female founder on top of that? Access to capital and support still feels harder than it should be.”



Indeed, only 2% of all venture capital goes to female founders, and just 0.2% of all venture funding goes to female founders of color, a rate that has barely budged in the four years since #MeToo and #TimesUp transformed the national dialog.



A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2022/06/06/female-entrepreneurs-funded-by-female-vcs-face-difficulties-obtaining-future-funds/?sh=3672e8c66a7c">recent study published in the Organization Science journal&nbsp;</a>showed that, among some 2,100 startups, the female-founded companies that received money from female investors in early funding rounds were&nbsp;less&nbsp;likely to receive funding in subsequent rounds. The researchers’ conclusion was that their early-stage capital was a token gesture based on shared gender, not a strategic investment in a promising idea.



According to Heidi Patel, a managing partner at Rethink Impact, the largest venture capital firm in the U.S. that invests exclusively in female leaders ($300 million under management), the term “Girlboss” is a byproduct of this environment. If investors wanted to feel confident writing a check to a female founder, funding someone with a high public profile was more of a vehicle aimed at raising personal brand awareness—and eventually capital. “It was something really unique to consumer businesses,” Patel says. “It was really a marketing angle and it&#8217;s an aspirational storyline, I think, that was created to appeal to young female consumers.”



Ty, Ty Again: Two years being ousted as CEO of Outdoor Voices, 33-year-old founder Ty Haney has a new web3 platform—Try Your Best.JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES



Emphasis on young: As the name implies, Girlboss was aimed at Millennials and Gen Z. By contrast, the top five women on the 2022 Forbes Richest Self-Made Women list are worth more than $30 billion and each was born before 1948 (average age: 60)—and none would self-identify as a Girlboss.



Interestingly, Outdoor Voices founder Haney insists she’s never actually been called a “Girlboss” or used the word self-referentially. “I’ve never been or associated myself with the term Girlboss and it’s time journalists stop trying to get clicks off our stories and this theme,” Haney wrote on Instagram after Weiss announced her resignation. As Haney&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUHH1nyHSKQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">admitted to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in a 2021 interview</a>: “Being a female founder helped me. I was a darling in the press and that helped create a direct relationship with a budding community [of customers]. And from a fundraising perspective, it helped.”



The positive press that lifted Haney, and other female founders like her, also drew greater attention to her failings—creating a cycle that feeds the perception that “cancel culture” is eager to claim the next female leader who misspeaks or missteps.



It’s a vicious cycle many young, female founders CEOs are hoping to avoid. Eliza Becton, who was on the 2014 Forbes 30 Under 30 list after founding the smart water cooler company Bevi, has raised $95 million to bring internet-connected natural drink dispenser to 4,000 offices (and counting) in the United States. “I don’t like a lot of attention,” says the 38-year-old Becton. “I really enjoy what I do, and I like spending time with family, friends and customers,” says Becton, “But I prefer to be head down in the work and doing product development. It’s what makes me happy. I don’t love being public-facing, and frankly, I find it distracting.”



Alexa Hirschfeld is another entrepreneur who has seen these distractions and opted out. As the cofounder of digital stationery company Paperless Post, Hirschfeld oversees 100 employees and runs an entity that has attracted over 175 million users to its platform. Paperless Post is valued at a healthy $115 million, but like Becton, Hirschfeld isn’t looking to elevate her personal brand.



“I don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘What am I going to do today as a woman in tech?’” she says. “I&#8217;m worrying about my product, the company, the job; I&#8217;m worrying about what everybody worries about who puts themself out there, and takes risks and has a lot of responsibilities.”



For Ashley Edwards, the founder of MindRight Health, the lessons of the Girlboss Era are painfully obvious, especially as a woman of color. The 31-year-old founder just closed a $1.8 million funding round from investors, including Melinda French Gates, to grow her mental health coaching platform for underserved teens. “I’m really proud of what I’ve accomplished as a woman and as a Black woman,” says Edwards. “Most of my time is just spent doing the work.”



Laura Behrens Wu, whose Shippo hit a $1 billion valuation this month, agrees and believes she’s avoided many of the Girlboss minefields because she’s rejected most media–including social media.



“It’s not been a priority,” she says. “I haven&#8217;t been able to tie it to some kind of business priority, or something that I really care about as a CEO.”



Which is exactly the advice many older executives have for women in the post-Girlboss Era. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/anita-carmichael-roberts/?sh=741d7ab13e63">Anita Carmichael Roberts</a> is a military veteran, the founding partner of Silicon Hills Capital, and a member of the Forbes 50 Over 50 list, has never been burdened with the Girlboss mantel because of her age and race. Indeed, many in the business world wouldn’t even assume that a 53-year-old Black woman could be in charge of millions of dollars and investment decisions. “People don&#8217;t see us as the boss, right?” Roberts says. “When I say I&#8217;m a boss, that means that I&#8217;m the baddest thing in the room—women or men.”



By Maggie McGrath, Forbes Staff and Alexandra Sternlicht, Forbes Staff

Businesswoman on laptop at window in morning sun

Why Female Entrepreneurs Welcome The End Of The Girlboss Era—Once And For All

Having grown up as a conservative Northern Nigerian, it was ingrained in Fatima Babakura that at a certain age, inevitably, she would have to finish school and then get married “to someone rich who can take care of you”.



But Babakura was never going to let this happen.



“Living in Lagos gave me a different perspective because I was living around people whose mindset was ‘make your own money and then go to school’ so it’s not like you are waiting for someone to come and take care of you’,” Babakura tells FORBES AFRICA. “And because I was privileged enough to experience that, I am not your average Northern Nigerian girl.”



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Babakura is the founder, chief executive officer and designer of Timabee, an accessories brand that “redefines luxury in Africa and beyond”.



Her sharp eye for design, curiosity and yen for imagining a product and bringing it to life motivated her to start Timabee.



Babakura began the brand in her first year of university in Canada.



She had designed a “simple handbag” and given it to her close family friend as a gift.



“I didn’t even think it was that great,” she laughs. But continuing on with her theme to be “curious”, she set out to find a manufacturer who would make this bag.



“Keep in mind, I was an accounting student with no business or fashion background. I did a simple Google search which led me to Alibaba where I found a company that agreed to make me a sample for $150 in December 2013.”



From the pocket money she received from her parents, 17-year-old Babakura set out to spend the $150 which she ended up losing as “I interacted with a fraudulent vendor and had no clue”.



Losing the money did not stop her.



“I was determined to find someone else to make my bag, but this time I was a lot more careful and I did my due diligence researching the company.”



One of the biggest highlights for Timabee was in 2021, when the brand was approved by award-winning American artist and businesswoman, Beyoncé.



“Last year, when Beyoncé’s team compiled a list of black-owned businesses, we were honored to make the list. It just goes to show that as a small, growing brand, the work we put in every day does not go unnoticed.”



Having taken the pro-women approach when it comes to running her business, she wants to encourage many women, including those who may look like her, to feel empowered to start enterprises.



“Starting Timabee as a young girl, there were many mistakes I made as I did not seek out mentorship earlier on due to the fear of being rejected. I learned a lot through trial and error, many of which cost the company money and could have easily been avoided had I sought mentorship,” Babakura says. “This is a major reason why I have set up Timabee global resources, a concept aimed at helping entrepreneurs in the accessory business navigate their way to global recognition and achieve success. I truly believe in paying it forward and so in the next three years, I hope to open a mentoring school specifically for high school and university students where they can have hands-on experience on the business of fashion especially as it relates to Africa.



“Many girls from Northern Nigeria aspire to marry rich as a ‘career path’, sadly. I believe that through my mentorship program, the right mindset will be the foundation for future success especially since I will be an example to them through my achievements as a Northern girl.”



Words and Curation: Chanel Retief Art Director: Lucy Nkosi Additional Research &amp; Reporting: Lillian Roberts Photography: Ilan Godfrey for Forbes Videography and production: Timothy Pierson for Forbes &amp; Chad McClymonds for Forbes Video Editor: Chanel Retief Styling: Katlego Magano of Oak Ave; Assistant: Tumelo Nkwe Hair &amp; Makeup: SnehhOnline Beauty; Thapelo Letsebe Location: Image Lounge, Botswana and 2022 Forbes Under 30 Summit



<a href="https://shop.forbesafrica.com/product/single-digital-issue-june-july-2022/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Get your digital copy here</a>



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#FORBESAFRICA30UNDER30: Meet Cover Star FATIMA BABAKURA- ‘I am not your average Northern Nigerian girl’

We asked some of the top CMOs – all women from a cross-section of industries – for their sterling views.



The corner office is not just the prized preserve of the CEO. A new band of C-suite executives has emerged in the last two years of the pandemic with growing significance as any big company’s core arsenal to entrench ‘the new normal’. CIOs, CTOs and CMOs are the new rock stars changing the lexicon of business.



Marketing trends especially have seen drastic shifts over the last two years to find new ways to pandemic-proof businesses. According to Forbes, Chief Marketing Officers were tasked with much more than navigating their own companies out of the Covid-19 crisis. In these turbulent times, now more than ever, businesses are relying more on marketers and their new ways of retaining and increasing customers.



And what’s more heartening?



Women are front-runners in this area. In Forbes’ 2021 list of World’s Most Influential CMOs, the honorees included 28 women and 22 men. In Africa, we did our own compilation of female CMOs shifting the narrative and asked them about their success and strategies for 2022.



Alison Badenhorst, Chief Marketing Officer, Rand Merchant Bank 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large">“Content and finding multi-dimensional ways of connecting with audiences have changed over time.”</blockquote>



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The CMO at Rand Merchant Bank (RMB), Alison Badenhorst, always knew she was a creative soul with a yen for marketing, even while at university.



From Deutsche Bank in London to Standard Bank in South Africa and now RMB, Badenhorst says that though she started in sales, her intention was always to go into marketing.



She says that marketing sits at a very interesting intersection between business, audience, technology and enablement. Essentially, marketers are “very fortunate to have a very holistic view of what&#8217;s happening” as they are involved both externally and internally.



“It allows us to hold up the mirror to business, sometimes in terms of some of the research and the insights we can bring, and then off the back end of that, provide relevant solutions.”



She agrees that the pandemic accelerated the development and adoption of technology.



“I think while it&#8217;s always been there, the technology and data are definitely transforming our industry and how we market and how we connect with our audiences. Content and finding multi-dimensional ways of connecting with audiences have changed over time.



 “And being able to tailor much more personalized content and experiences, whether it&#8217;s in the format of a podcast, or whether it&#8217;s through a virtual event, I think that data and then bringing that intersection of the various touchpoints together that are going to be meaningful and value-adding to our clients, is going to be really important.”



Candice Fangueiro, Head of Content, Showmax Africa



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Remember the time you loved a movie, and you got your favorite DVD or VHS tape from places like Look &amp; Listen or Musica, or even rented it out from Mr Video? Candice Fangueiro started her career as a marketing assistant for such companies and is now the Head of Content at one of Africa’s biggest online streaming platforms, Showmax Africa.



“I thoroughly enjoyed working in the home entertainment space. I was also very fortunate to work with 20th Century Fox in Sweden at their studios, when they needed someone,” Fangueiro tells FORBES AFRICA. “I went over for three months and learned a lot from the Nordic team, and how they do things in the home entertainment space. I then came back to South Africa and realized that DVDs are on the decline.”



Fangueiro was hired at Showmax to bring international content, but the big buzzword when she began was “originals” – all the rage also with competing platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. And with Disney Plus finding its way to South Africa mid this year, the need for original content has never been greater.



“That was when we kicked off with Tali’s Wedding Diary as our first Showmax original. And it was a great success, a great marketing campaign coupled with a really fun take on a new series, and that kind of launched us. And off the back of that success, we knew this is the way we needed to go. And we needed to focus on our content creation, as opposed to just acquisition.”



Since then, Showmax has launched a number of originals such as the telenovela series, The Wife, reality shows such as The Real Housewives of Durban, Temptation Island South Africa, Life With Kelly Khumalo and docuseries such as Devilsdorp.



“I think now more than ever, you know, Africa&#8217;s on that global stage, and if anything, we&#8217;ve seen that there&#8217;s such a hunger and a demand for African content.”



Since Covid-19, Fangueiro has noted this need also because the concept of “time is precious” has become a key factor in consumer lives, and marketers and content creators need to consistently churn out “content worth their time”.



“I think, for me as a content creator, this is something we&#8217;ve had even before the pandemic and that’s looking at ‘is my content worth your data’?” Fangueiro says. “People are going to pick what they want to do and choose to do with their time. You hop on to social media, and people are giving their time to social media, they are now engaging with content via short-form rather than long-form; Instagram reels, TikTok videos, YouTube shorts; there&#8217;s just so much content that is out there.



“And so we need to be very careful in identifying what we want to do and what we want to produce to make sure that when people choose what they want to do with their time, they&#8217;re choosing to come to our platform.”



Daniele Joubert, Eater Growth Lead at Uber Eats and Co-chair Women @ Uber SSA



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New age marketing requires new age thinking. From studying Industrial Engineering at Stellenbosch University in South Africa to becoming part of a team that was created only in 2020 specializing in performance marketing in client experience on Uber Eats, Daniele Joubert has come a long way. Uber Eats is an online food ordering and delivery application launched by e-hailing company, Uber, in 2014. What’s the experience like?



Q. Please describe the work you and your team do at Uber Eats?



My team and I look after everything from a campaign perspective that happens on the app, anything Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that we send out locally – working with regional teams on what they send out, and with global teams on what they look at. So, everything from consumer engagement through owned channels. And the second thing that we actually look at is non-owned channels. So, any marketing that could be like flyering (distributing flyers). Or we also have currently had umbrellas on stands at Camps Bay in Cape Town. So if you lie on the beach, it touches on awareness and consideration. But a very key focus is how do we really measure the top-line business impact of that, and we also look after partnerships.



Q. Do you think people in the marketing space, such as yourself, whose core focus is to drive traffic back into business are the new frontiers of business?



I want to say yes. But I also realize that we can&#8217;t do it ourselves. Like we can&#8217;t do it alone. I think one of the things that I&#8217;ve just realized is that you need the forest and the trees. Yes, we can say we&#8217;re the new frontier, but you need to have all sides of a company collaboratively working together. Because if I don&#8217;t have a product, and if I don&#8217;t have a product team that delivers the best freakin’ product in the world, I can stand on my ears; I can shout and that&#8217;s the biggest thing with coming from experience. In the past, I actually think it was easier to have a brand perception market, like who you are, clients are locked into you because it&#8217;s hard to move. These days, consumers are picky, and they can move very quickly.



Lindi Davids, Marketing Director, Viu



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large">“I ran smaller influencer campaigns at various places that have worked.”</blockquote>



Davids’ parents did not want to pay for her to get a degree in filmmaking.



“I was like ‘fine, I&#8217;ll do what I need to do’. And I did politics. And then told myself that I was going to become a documentary filmmaker; you know that usual dream that you have when you are 18 or 19 years old.”



Through internships at big production companies or channels like CNN and Disney Channel, Davids somehow found herself surrounded by “marketing gurus”. So when you mix someone who has a love for television production and marketing together, you get Lindi Davids, now the Marketing Director at Viu, a Hong Kong-based over-the-top (OTT) video streaming provider.



Responsible for Viu South Africa&#8217;s overall marketing and communications strategy, as a marketing novice, Davids has seen a big change in the way marketing is being done now; from on-the-ground activations to primarily activating campaigns or products in the digital space. But what has not changed is the way marketers should have access to information.



“Intel is extremely important, as you know especially in Africa, it&#8217;s the one thing that I have learned,” Davids tells FORBES AFRICA. “You can have as many digital specs as you like, but if a person can&#8217;t feel the brand, does not see it at the spaza shop, or when they go down the road, if they don&#8217;t see it at a taxi rank, if they don&#8217;t have word of mouth, you can throw a banner at them as many times as you like, and you can stalk them online. But if they do not trust your brand, they&#8217;re not going to click on the banner, or they may, but they&#8217;re not going to put their credit card details into the basic payment information portal.”



Part of this is also relying on influencers, but not only the likes of big names such as Bonang Matheba or Mihlali Ndamase (although they do play a massive part in driving traffic), Davids believes that micro-influencers play just as important a role in connecting the product to the consumer.



“The proof is in the pudding. I&#8217;ve definitely seen it. I ran smaller influencer campaigns at various places that have worked.” Davids explains. “It&#8217;s great to have that word of mouth rather than big influencers telling you they are going to be somewhere but I have not seen that really in a big way converted in the numbers that I need.



“Where I&#8217;m really seeing a difference is the person that you really follow. The person that you really trust on your Instagram feed or your YouTube feed. It&#8217;s those people you can rely on.”



Tish Haridass, Content Marketing Manager, Yoco



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After graduating from Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, Haridass started off as a copywriter before having to oversee the production of brand content across platforms at Yoco. Yoco is an African technology company that specializes in selling card machines and in online payments. As its content marketing manager, Haridass facilitates the ongoing evolution of Yoco&#8217;s content strategy and works closely with channel owners and area marketing managers (social media, events, collaborations) to grow the Yoco presence in the small business industry.



Q. How did you find bringing the world of digital marketing into the fintech space?



I guess what had been interesting about coming up through agencies or coming up through consulting and freelancing, over the eight years before I got to Yoco, is that I had worked for every imaginable possible client. In one day, I would go from writing about beer to writing about how-to-become-a-pilot. Literally, there&#8217;s this expansive list of clients. But one of the great things about Yoco at the time is we were still quite a small company, this is the beginning of 2020. And, because sort of everyone in our workforce was new to fintech, it&#8217;s very difficult to hire people in this industry and make it a requirement that they understand the industry. So, it felt like everybody was in the same boat and kind of learning as we went. And so to that end, it made the process so much easier.



Q. With the rise of digital, especially, it has helped build this content creation and marketing sphere that we live in now. But coupled with Covid-19, what are some of the marketing trends for 2022?



I think one of the things that we&#8217;re really taking on board internally is we have to be honest about where South Africa is in terms of access, in terms of the content that people can actually receive and engage with. I think marketing teams, especially those of us that work in the city and that work for bigger companies, can start to produce things for an audience that is technologically quite far ahead, actually, of where the majority of South Africa is. So, it&#8217;s all very well for me to say 32-second video clips, TikTok style, is going to be the trend of 2022. But internally, we stopped for a moment and have [realized] our target market is actually outside of the urban areas and are possibly not using the smartphones that we think that they&#8217;re using. They may not have access to the internet the way that we imagine they do. And we need to build trends that are aligned to them rather than look at trends that are aligned to content and platforms. We have taken a back-to-the-basics approach by looking at some of the things that have performed the best for us over the last two years of pandemic living; that have been really what I would have considered being the basics of content. So, that&#8217;s where we are prioritizing our focus, specifically to reach people who are largely just not addressed by other marketing companies.

What is the Marketing Mantra That Will Define 2022 For Africa

Miss out on this years #LWS2022? Catch all the In The Spotlight segments, Panel discussions and One-on-One talks now available. 



For seven years, FORBES WOMAN AFRICA’s Leading Women Summit has created powerful connections and communities. The theme for 2022 is Resetting Everything: The New Face of Leadership. Renuka Methil, Managing Editor, FORBES AFRICA and FORBES WOMAN AFRICA gives her welcoming address to this 2-day Virtual Summit, crossing multiple time zones as one collective audience.



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<h2 class="has-text-align-center">A New Lens on Innovation for African Women Leaders</h2>



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Women control $126TN of global wealth, and yet, financial services aren’t meeting their needs. The Covid-19 Pandemic has also had a far-reaching impact on African women over the past two years. Mastercard spearheads the Women By Design program to create possibilities in a world that works better for women. CNBC Africa anchor Fiona Muthoni speaks to Beatrice Cornacchia, Senior Vice President, Marketing &amp; Communications, EEMEA: Mastercard



<h2 class="has-text-align-center" id="h-the-future-of-relationships-in-a-pandemic-world">The Future of Relationships in a Pandemic World</h2>



CNBC Africa Anchor Tania Habimana, moderates this discussion with Chido Cleopatra Mpemba, AU&#8217;s Special Envoy on Youth; Neema Iyer, Founder &amp; Executive Director, Pollicy: Uganda and Joy Des Fountain, Founder, myFanPark.SHOW LESS



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The fully-virtual summit is available <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW6nIAms_84wrHda6QMIA38G2tYhbCJ_Y" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>

Green Circle Social Media Platforms Mind Map (1)

Celebrating Seven Years of the FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit￼

Waabi, a Toronto-based AI startup that came out of stealth last year, says it’s developed an advanced simulator that can train autonomous vehicles to handle nearly limitless types of driving conditions–in a virtual world–and do so faster and more thoroughly than self-driving rivals that prioritize road tests.



The Waabi World platform is more comprehensive than any used by competitors as it can more accurately mimic real-world scenarios and create the types of rare, challenging “edge cases” that occur on the road only rarely, company founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun tells&nbsp;Forbes. Learning in this elaborate virtual world is happening constantly, preparing the software to eventually drive a range of vehicles from robotaxis to semi-trucks.



It’s the “most scalable, high-fidelity, closed-loop simulator that ever existed and, we believe, the key to unlocking self-driving technology at scale,” says Urtasun, who is also professor of computer science at the University of Toronto and a past chief scientist for Uber’s autonomous vehicle team. “It&#8217;s an immersive and reactive environment that can automatically design tests for our self-driving brain, which we call the Waabi Driver, and also automatically assess the skills of the Waabi Driver. Ultimately, it can also teach the Waabi Driver to learn the skills of driving.”



The company isn’t planning to license the Waabi World platform to other AV developers. Urtasun said the focus is on intense training of its software for now, declining to say when Waabi’s first autonomous vehicles would be on the road. We’re advancing really well, really, really fast,” she said, without elaborating.&nbsp;



The pace of development for the leading autonomous vehicle companies, including Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, General Motors-backed Cruise, Argo Ai, which is funded by Ford and Volkswagen, Amazon’s Zoox and robotic truck developer TuSimple, has been somewhat slower than anticipated though all the companies are making progress toward broader commercialization. Those companies, which have raised billions of dollars, are doing rigorous on-road testing to verify software and sensors, as well as racking up countless miles in simulation, yet it’s unclear when robotaxis and autonomous trucks will be ubiquitous.



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Waabi–a name inspired by an Ojibwe word meaning “she has vision”–emerged from stealth mode in June 2021, announcing an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2021/06/08/uber-veteran-launches-her-ai-mindset-self-driving-startup-with-835-million-round/?sh=7e4babe26edf">initial $83.5 million funding</a>&nbsp;round. Urtasun declined to say whether she’s raised additional funds in subsequent rounds. The initial focus will be applying the Waabi Driver software to self-driving trucks, but Urtasun envisions broad usage across all forms of vehicles.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We talk a lot about how you need a different brain for the self-driving vehicle for it to generalize to all the different things that might happen, but there is one more piece that you need which is a different way of testing, as well as training the system to really handle all situations,” she says. “The industry mainly does this by testing and driving millions of miles in the real world. This is very costly and it doesn&#8217;t scale. &#8230; We need a totally different approach and this is what Waabi World is.”



If Waabi does indeed have a more comprehensive, robust simulation system than any that currently exists, it could prove to be a critical asset for the young company. The current limitations of simulation-based training software is one reason that Zoox is increasing its real-world testing, CTO and cofounder Jesse Levinson told reporters this week.&nbsp;



“In many ways the simulator is actually more useful than real driving but of course you can’t just not drive in real life either because simulations are not perfect, yet, We have not built the matrix for self-driving cars such that there are absolutely no differences between the simulated world and the real world,” he said. “It&#8217;s getting better and better so there are fewer and fewer things that you learn in real life that you can&#8217;t learn in simulation. But I do think it&#8217;s going to be a long time before there&#8217;s nothing you can learn in real life that you can&#8217;t learn in simulation.”



By Alan Ohnsman, Forbes Staff

Key Speakers At The Economist Canada Summit

Can Next-Generation Simulation Build A Better Self-Driving Car? This AI Upstart Thinks So

As Twitter’s first ever Chief Marketing Officer, <a href="https://twitter.com/leslieberland?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Leslie Berland</a> began her tenure in 2016 with an unconventional strategy, enlisting employees from across the organization to provide input into the company’s new brand identity. Never mind that many of them didn’t even think the company needed a brand identity at all. But Berland was determined to focus on employee input before launching any public facing marketing strategies. The approach paid off. Six years later, Berland still believes Twitter employees are the company’s north star. 



I spoke to Berland about this as well as Twitter’s efforts to combat harassment on the platform, how they’re elevating marginalized voices and of course, the enormous responsibility the platform takes on during world events. 



Amy Shoenthal:&nbsp;Tell me about your career path, going from a pretty high profile role at American Express to being the first CMO of Twitter.



Leslie Berland:&nbsp;I was at American Express for ten years. During those last few years I was focused on finding ways for American Express to innovate with younger companies.



When Twitter called to recruit me, it felt very much like a once in a lifetime opportunity. There hadn’t been a seated CMO at the company yet. It was 2016 and the world thought Twitter was dying. We were struggling to define who we were and where we were going.&nbsp;



Shoenthal: That sounds like a risky jump, going from a very established company where you had been for ten years to what perhaps seemed like a floundering tech company at the time. Berland: It definitely felt like a fork in the road decision. I don&#8217;t think those types of choices come by very often where you&#8217;re looking at two amazing but extremely different paths.So I made the jump. I loved the people. I deeply respected <a href="https://twitter.com/jack" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jack</a>. I loved the challenge. And I thought the potential impact was extraordinary. 



I was very much drawn to the ability to help shape and turn around a company with a group of employees who were committed to building for the future. The importance of the platform adds a weight to working here still, as you can see with everything going on in the world today. I am and have always been extremely confident in the staying power and the growing power of Twitter, even in the moments where everyone thought we were taking a different turn. I think it’s existential, necessary, critical and magical. Every day I’m grateful to be here. It has been every bit the ride I thought it was going to be with some extra twists and turns.&nbsp;



Shoenthal: Tell me about those extra twists and turns. How did you work through them?



Berland: There was so much happening at the company when I joined. Jack had just come back as CEO and the leadership team had changed quite significantly. There were amazingly talented people working in marketing but without a CMO, the marketing teams were siloed throughout the organization. It needed building and focus and organization early on. But you can’t come into an opportunity like that and boil the ocean. I couldn’t fix everything and build at the same time.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The biggest challenge was the perception. People define Twitter in so many different ways. But it was very clear that the confusion over those different definitions was holding us back. So I pulled a small team together to do some brand identity work. We did most of that work completely in house.



We eventually centered on this simple statement: “Twitter is what’s happening.” It wasn’t a splashy brand campaign. It was a way to center and anchor how we saw and understood ourselves.&nbsp;



The feedback from the industry at that time was, wow, Twitter finally knows what it is. It shows the power of prioritizing what’s important, trusting your people, not over layering with process. Once we set and established that foundation everything else came together naturally.



When you are at companies like ours, the employees are critical. The employees are the biggest supporters but also the biggest critics. We need the feedback from our people. Sometimes I see companies fall into the trap of doing all these external campaigns but they haven’t taken the time to allow the employees to absorb what it means. When we do anything externally, the first filter is the people. They are the litmus test of what we do and how we do it.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Jack and others recognized that I was so focused on our employees in the brand identity work we were doing, they actually suggested I expand my role to be the Head of People. That role is intense and meaningful. It was an enormous learning experience for me as somebody who cares deeply about the culture of this company.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Shoenthal: I want to talk about Jack a little bit since you mentioned how close you were. Jack Dorsey just left Twitter, what does that mean for you and for the company?



Berland: I am extremely grateful for the years Jack and I worked together.&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/paraga?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Parag</a>, our new CEO, worked very closely with Jack. I have been absolutely inspired by his leadership throughout this change. The way he has shown up, his focus, his decisiveness, his authenticity, his openness is exactly what we need in the next chapter. I love working with him and I have full confidence in where he’ll take us.&nbsp;



Shoenthal:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/twitter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter’s</a>&nbsp;social media has always been great but you’ve really been on fire lately with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/05/twitter-users-facebook-outage-instagram-whatsapp/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“Hello, literally everyone”</a>&nbsp;when Facebook and Instagram were down, and “<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-were-sorry-or-youre-welcome/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">We’re sorry, or you’re welcome</a>” when announcing it was retiring the Fleets product feature. Can you let us in on any of the social marketing team’s secret sauce and how they’re able to quickly post such sharp and witty reactions to real-time events?



Berland: It’s funny because we haven’t always been so amazing at this. Our Twitter presence used to read like a marketing handle. Our purpose was serving public conversation but we weren’t actually being conversational. We spent so much time going back and forth debating what our tone was, and then one day we said we’re just going to start talking.&nbsp;



The first tweet that shifted to this was when we tweeted, “you up?” The amount of texts that came in asking if we were hacked was hilarious, and the amount of responses we got on the platform was astounding. It was such an important moment.&nbsp;&nbsp;



We are fortunate that we are able to see all the conversations on Twitter as they unfold. The team is just so incredible in knowing the pulse of what’s happening every day. They’re incredible with their writing, but also with just having fun.&nbsp;



A lot of companies worry that every tweet has to be well designed and perfect and make it a piece of marketing collateral. As a company we are weird, messy and silly but raw and authentic. Once we moved into that, it became our voice. Unshackle the teams and let them do what they do best. And of course make sure social media teams are diverse so you have lots of different perspectives so we’re not talking to ourselves. That’s critical.&nbsp;



Shoenthal: Speaking of diverse teams, how are you working to advance inclusion in an industry that&#8217;s taken so much heat for its lack of it?



Berland: I give all the credit to my colleagues and every single person at the company that pushes this culture forward. It is not a one person job.&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/DalanaBrand" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dalana Brand</a>&nbsp;is our Chief Human Resources Officer and she’s amazing. This is something that has always been very ingrained at Twitter but over the years we’ve become much more intentional and goal-oriented about it. Now we have put the resources, people and time behind it.&nbsp;



<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/02/twitter-hires-god-is-rivera-as-global-director-of-culture-and-community/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">God-is Rivera</a>&nbsp;runs culture and community.&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/GodisRivera" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">She</a>&nbsp;is all about elevating diverse voices on Twitter through events, experiences and conversations. We try to be very present and engaged so we can learn and truly serve those customers better – we’re always improving. It’s hard to build that trust, especially at a company like ours where people come onto the platform every day and interact with something different.&nbsp;&nbsp;



During the Black Lives Matter resurgence last June,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1274087688321200128?s=20&amp;t=aNZz7yzmdsWvGq_1kBQZmg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">we put tweets on billboards</a>. It was a series of simple tweets but the concept speaks to what we’re trying to do, which is elevate voices. Our teams have become so much more diverse over the past few years with our goal setting and our amazing I&amp;D team and the leaders working to keep people engaged. For us it’s not a ‘nice to do,’ it’s a must-do. We must look like all the communities we serve around the world.&nbsp;



Shoenthal: Twitter hasn’t always been a pinnacle of inclusion though. It’s been criticized for allowing harassment and bullying, specifically directed towards women. I know the company has recently taken more steps to combat this, can you comment on the actions that have been taken and what, if any, additional plans are in the works to help deal with this issue?



Berland: This was a huge problem when I started in 2016. To look back at the progress we’ve made is extraordinary and powerful. But this is always-on work that doesn’t end. I do give massive credit to engineering, product, trust &amp; safety and all the teams who do very important, very draining work.&nbsp;



Every employee at Twitter cares about this. People need to come to Twitter and feel safe. Everything from the controls we’ve created to who can engage with your tweets, to the more automated work tracking what’s said on the platform, addressing abuse and harassment, all the way to the time it takes people to respond when you report a tweet. This is something that touches everybody at the company in all of our work and will always be ongoing as the world continues to evolve and change. We learn and we grow and we evolve as well.&nbsp;



Shoenthal: Speaking of how the world is evolving and changing, it’s been a dramatic few days. Quite often, Twitter is the first place people turn to watch world events unfold in real-time. I noticed the&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1496698664747687942?s=20&amp;t=1W3KB8t1db0rEUPXMRnXhg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter safety thread</a>&nbsp;about considerations when tweeting in conflict zones that was posted immediately when the attacks began in Ukraine. Can you share anything in terms of the role Twitter is playing during world events like the one we’re experiencing right now?



Berland: During times like these, we feel the weight of our work. Across the company, we feel that responsibility, that care and that empathy every single day. We have teams working on exactly what you’re referencing in regards to safety. We’re thinking through things like how do we ensure that we educate people and keep them safe while allowing these critical conversations to continue? How do we ensure that only credible information is surfaced, and people get access to the information they need? We need to make sure the foundation of Twitter is running so these critical conversations can happen. We take this seriously because we understand how much is at stake.



By Amy Shoenthal, Forbes Staff

Twitter’s #HereWeAre At Cannes Lions

How Twitter’s CMO Takes A People-First Approach To Leadership

2022 is unravelling a workforce that is re-emerging from social isolation and rejigging a global economy hard-hit by two pandemic years. It’s also often in challenging times that true leadership emerges from the cracks, and with renewed vigour. Some of these ground-breaking women leaders will share their thoughts and hard-earned insights at the 2022 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit, presented by Mastercard.



Coinciding with International Women’s Day, the free-to-attend, two-day summit will take place on the Hopin virtual platform on 8 and 9 March. Themed ‘Resetting Everything: The New Face of Leadership’, the fully-virtual seventh edition of the summit will bring together another powerful community of visionary champions. These industry leaders will use this platform to reflect on the times, trends and topics leading pandemic recovery in Africa and the world.



“As Africa looks to recover from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is critical that we build a better future &#8211; one where everyone is included,” says Ebehijie Momoh, Country Manager and Area Business Head for West Africa at Mastercard. “Mastercard has a strong sense of responsibility to take action when it comes to equality, which is why we are proud to present the FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit. With an unparalleled speaker line-up, this year’s event promises to be a source of inspiration, empowerment and encouragement for leading women across the continent, as they set a new course for a more inclusive, and equitable future.”



“Having started only seven years ago, and pivoting to the virtual space during the pandemic years, the FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit remains a popular annual event for global leaders,” said Renuka Methil, Managing Editor of FORBES AFRICA and FORBES WOMAN AFRICA. “This is a testament to the calibre of our speakers, the engaging platform, and the value attendees receive out of every discussion. We’re very excited to announce our exciting speaker line-up that brings together some of the continent’s most influential women for hard-hitting engagements and discussions.”



<h2 class="has-text-align-center" id="h-2022-forbes-woman-africa-leading-women-summit-speaker-line-up">2022 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit speaker line-up</h2>



<h3 class="has-text-align-center">Women in Science and Medicine</h3>



Dr Soumya Swaminathan is the WHO Chief Scientist, strengthening the organisation’s core scientific work and ensuring the quality and consistency of its norms and standards. A paediatrician from India and globally recognised researcher on TB and HIV, she brings 30 years of experience in clinical care and research.



Dr Shaheenah Dawood is a consultant medical oncologist and associate professor in clinical oncology in the United Arab Emirates. She’s been awarded multiple scholar-in-training awards and ASCO merit awards. She served as an editorial fellow at the New England Journal of Medicine and has an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. She leads the oncology clinical trials programme at Mediclinic City Hospital Dubai, and serves on various leading summits.



Mabusha Petronella Nyelisani is a Natural Scientist with an MBA degree, BSc Honours degree and BSc degree in Geology. She has a decade of experience in mining, currently working as a project geologist at Anglo American’s Kumba Iron Ore where she manages day-to-day operations at an exploration project.



Makobo Penelope Simelane is a Senior Geologist with an MBA and BSc Honours degree in geology and more than a decade of experience in aspects of the mining value chain. She works as a Resource Modelling and Estimation Geologist at Anglo American’s Kumba Iron Ore Sishen Mine and Centurion Corporate Office.



<h3 class="has-text-align-center">Women in Finance, Technology and Business</h3>



Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa is the CEO of Naspers in South Africa, having previously cofounded Sigma Capital, an investment holding company and holding various high-profile positions in finance. She’s involved in several youth development initiatives and is part of the Dignity Day programme led by Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum. She sits on many boards and has several accolades including CNBC Africa’s All Africa Business Leaders ‘Woman of the Year Award’ in 2019 and the Forbes Woman Africa ‘Businesswoman of the Year’ Award in 2014. In 2020, Phuthi ranked number 42 on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women International list.



Jane Karuku, MGH, is the Group Managing Director and CEO at East African Breweries Limited, one of Kenya’s biggest manufacturers. Her experience in fast-moving consumer goods and NPOs spans more than 25 years. She has served on several boards including Barclays Bank (now ABSA Kenya), and is currently a Trustee of Precious Sisters, an NPO that empowers underprivileged girls though education scholarships. Jane has been recognized and awarded for her contribution to the country’s social and economic development. She’s been awarded the Presidential Order of Service, Uzalendo Award and the Moran of Golden Heart (MGH) Award for her contributions to the country.



Beatrice Cornacchia is Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Mastercard in Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (EEMEA) and is the creative force leading the company’s brand strategy across the region’s markets. After starting her journey with the company in 1991, Cornacchia went on to head strategic sales functions and numerous marketing teams in a succession of key roles including Head of Consumer Marketing, Europe; Head of Issuer and Merchant Marketing, Europe; and Head of Marketing, Italy and Greece. Ebehijie Momoh is the Country Manager and Area Business Head, West Africa, Mastercard. She holds a BSc in Chemistry, and two MBAs. Based in Nigeria, Ebehijie is responsible for advancing the Mastercard brand presence in West Africa, deploying innovative payment solutions and partnering with local governments and market regulators to build a World Beyond Cash.



Neema Iyer is a Tanzanian artist, technologist, and founder of Pollicy, a feminist civic technology collective based in Uganda. She co-hosts the Terms and Conditions podcast, is a Practitioner Fellow at Stanford’s Digital Civil Society Lab and is on Meta’s (formerly Facebook) Global Women’s Safety Advisory Board.



Dayo Ademola is the MD for Branch International, a San Francisco-based fintech operating in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and India. She has more than 15 years’ experience in technology, fintech, banking and financial inclusion. She is passionate about leveraging technology and capital to deepen access to financial services and wealth for Africans at all levels. Dayo holds a Degree in International Business and Economics.



<h3 class="has-text-align-center">Women in Activism</h3>



Zandile Ndhlovu is the founder of The Black Mermaid Foundation, an organisation which works to enable local community access to ocean spaces for recreation, sport and business, while creating a new generation of ocean guardians. She’s a diversity and inclusion consultant contributing to global topics on ocean conservation, climate change and coastal justice.



Divya Vasant is a purpose-driven entrepreneur, founder and CEO of AMAZI, a social impact brand for enabling the economic inclusion of women. She has a background as a financial analyst, is an alumnus of the Zanele Mbeki Fellowship for Feminist Leadership, and believes mentorship is fundamental in supporting women create their own spaces



<h3 class="has-text-align-center">Women in Sports</h3>



Salima Rhadia Mukansanga has been a Rwandan international football referee since 2012. She started out in nursing, having received a Degree in Nursing before pivoting into her role as referee. To date she has officiated a number of top games including games for Afcon, FIFA and the Olympics.



<h3 class="has-text-align-center">Women in Arts, Social Entrepreneurship and Media</h3>



Harnaaz Sandhu was crowned Miss Universe 2021 and is also an actress with two Indian films set for release in 2022. She is committed to female empowerment and draws inspiration from her mother who broke generations of patriarchy to become a successful gynaecologist.



Emma Wareus won the Miss Botswana crown in 2010 before taking Miss Africa 2010 and then the first princess crown in the Miss World pageant later that year. Her humanitarian efforts include running a malaria programme with the Clinton Foundation; and becoming a brand ambassador for Cuplings, providing menstrual cups to girls. She has a Masters from the Elliot School of International Affairs and is building pro-community services with AI company, Dobby.



Shalin Sirkar is a graduate in Psychology and Legal Studies with an Honours in Philosophy, PoliBcs and Economics. She has worked in various NGOs as well as production roles in the South African film industry, establishing Chalia Films in 2004. Shalin wrote, directed, edited and produced the film MINESH, which premiered at the 70th Venice International Film Festival. In 2016, she created Kismet Rising where she works as a psychic clairvoyant.



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The 2022 Leading Women Summit has been made possible by esteemed sponsors, Mastercard and the Multichoice Group, who share our vision to encapsulate Africa&#8217;s success through storytelling, thought-provoking debates, and high-level discussions that would shape the future of Africa, for current and future female leaders.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="287" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Screenshot-2022-03-03-at-15.36.40-1024x287.png" alt="" class="wp-image-54480" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Screenshot-2022-03-03-at-15.36.40-1024x287.png 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Screenshot-2022-03-03-at-15.36.40-300x84.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Screenshot-2022-03-03-at-15.36.40-768x216.png 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Screenshot-2022-03-03-at-15.36.40.png 1190w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>



How to get involved:



You can become a part of the change by registering to attend the summit; visit the following platforms:



Register on <a href="https://hopin.com/events/forbes-woman-africa-leading-women-summit-2022">Hopin</a> for the two-day summit Our <a href="https://leadingwomensummit.co.za/">Leading Women Summit</a> website



Or you can follow and engage with us on social media @LWSummit or @forbeswomanafrica by using the hashtag #LWS2022. 



You may also come on board as an event sponsor or by exhibiting at the online marketplace.



Contact details: Sponsorship and exhibition opportunities: sales@abn360.com Media-related enquiries: yolande.dutoit@abn360.com Event-related queries: events@abn360.com

Green Circle Social Media Platforms Mind Map

Dynamic speaker line-up announced for the 2022 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit

50 Over 50: EMEA 2022

Dentaa Amoateng loved sports, singing and acting, but went on to become a paediatric nurse and a cultural bridge between the diaspora and Ghana recognized by the British royals. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large">“In London, at the time, you had so many knife crimes and black-on-black crimes and so I wanted people, especially young, black people, to know that you have great role models to look up to. And that’s how it started. I called up some friends and we did it.”  </blockquote>



American author Helen Keller once famously said, &#8220;Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.&#8221; For&nbsp;Dentaa&nbsp;Amoateng these words provided the context for her vision to create a bridge between Ghana and the diaspora.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Her&nbsp;work using the GUBA Awards, a&nbsp;non-profit&nbsp;organization that focuses on enriching the African community in the diaspora and in Africa with the aim of empowerment and growth, earned her the&nbsp;prestigious recognition of MBE by the British royal family.&nbsp;



Amoateng has promoted&nbsp;the national interest of Ghana and the African community&nbsp;for the past decade and within that time, the GUBA Awards&nbsp;have&nbsp;welcomed luminaries from all over the world such as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and wife Cherie Blair, British Prime Minister&nbsp;Boris Johnson and Ghanaian president Nana Akufo-Addo.&nbsp;



Through the awards, Amoateng&nbsp;has also championed socio-economic development in Ghana by providing access for Ghanaians in the diaspora to relocate back home and contribute to the development of their country.&nbsp;



Little did Amoateng know that when she relocated from Ghana at age five to the United&nbsp;Kingdom,&nbsp;barely&nbsp;able to speak a word of English,&nbsp;that she would be one of the leading advocates of the country.&nbsp;



“I&nbsp;was&nbsp;bullied because I was the only&nbsp;dark-skinned&nbsp;girl and the only girl with short hair so I looked different and I remember wishing I was white because they were more comfortable.&nbsp;So,&nbsp;growing up was difficult for me. When I was 11 or 12 that’s when I started appreciating where I was from and who I was,” says Amoateng.&nbsp;



With a natural affinity for sports, Amoateng liked athletics and would consistently beat her cousin who was her running mate&nbsp;and&nbsp;who&nbsp;ended up running for the English&nbsp;athletics team. Amoateng was not encouraged by her parents to pursue it. She had a love for singing but was&nbsp;yet again&nbsp;discouraged.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“They also said no to acting which I loved. They wanted me to be a doctor or lawyer. My dad asked me what else I liked instead of the creatives and I said&nbsp;‘I liked children’&nbsp;and he said&nbsp;‘why don’t you be a pediatric nurse’&nbsp;and I said&nbsp;‘ok,&nbsp;I’ll try it’&nbsp;and I loved it. I qualified at 21 as a pediatric nurse,” says Amoateng.&nbsp;&nbsp;



But this time she held on to her dream of acting. She&nbsp;started securing roles on television in the UK&nbsp;in series such as&nbsp;EastEnders&nbsp;and completed her A levels in performing arts, sociology and media&nbsp;before completing a degree in nursing which she still&nbsp;practises&nbsp;today.&nbsp;



She took her love for the media to the next level by creating her own talk show,&nbsp;The&nbsp;Dentaa&nbsp;Show, where she would&nbsp;go to&nbsp;Ghana and interview prominent people and bring it&nbsp;to&nbsp;television networks in&nbsp;the&nbsp;UK.&nbsp;That journey led to the GUBA Awards in 2009 to celebrate the people who were doing amazing work in Africa and the diaspora.&nbsp;



“In London,&nbsp;at the time,&nbsp;you had&nbsp;so many knife crimes and black-on-black crimes and so I wanted people,&nbsp;especially&nbsp;young, black&nbsp;people,&nbsp;to know that you have great role models to look up to. And that’s how it started. I called up some friends and we did it.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We had&nbsp;Channel 4, the&nbsp;BBC&nbsp;and so many media outlets and it was crazy how people took to the awards and ever since,&nbsp;it has just grown. I wanted GUBA to be the African Grammys where people hear about GUBA&nbsp;and get excited,” says&nbsp;Amoateng.&nbsp;&nbsp;



From selling her first car due to a lack of sponsorship for the&nbsp;first GUBA Awards to growing&nbsp;the platform into&nbsp;a&nbsp;movement, Amoateng has come far.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We started&nbsp;doing the GUBA expo promoting ‘made in Ghana’&nbsp;products to the UK market where we have had Tesco,&nbsp;Body&nbsp;Shop,&nbsp;Asos&nbsp;etc.&nbsp;coming to our events. We also grew to GUBA careers looking at Ghanaians in the diaspora who want to come back home and get jobs. We have managed to get so many people back home to Ghana&nbsp;to&nbsp;work,” says Amoateng.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The platform also&nbsp;offers&nbsp;work experiences where&nbsp;they&nbsp;take nurses from Ghana to hospitals and help them develop.&nbsp;Recently, Amoateng also developed the&nbsp;“Guba diaspora card”&nbsp;which is a discount card, a first of its kind in Ghana.&nbsp;&nbsp;



At the time of&nbsp;her&nbsp;MBE, Amoateng&nbsp;had been organizing the GUBA Awards for only five years.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“I got a letter saying I am being&nbsp;honored&nbsp;for my contribution in bridging the gap between the UK and Africa. I had also been able to get a lot of businesses from the UK to&nbsp;Ghana and vice versa and I never expected that. I always thought of MBE for people who were older and to achieve that in my 30s was a bit of a shock&nbsp;and it inspired me to do more and not give up.”&nbsp;

Dentaa Amoateng pic supplied

From The Queen To Ghana

Three years ago, MacKenzie Scott was an author, wife, and mother of four who&#8217;d started an anti-bullying group and, in the 90s, helped her husband launch Amazon. She kept a low profile—but then she divorced Jeff Bezos, got a quarter of his Amazon stake and almost immediately started planning how to give it all away. “I have a disproportionate amount of money to share,” she<a href="https://givingpledge.org/Pledger.aspx?id=393" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;wrote</a>&nbsp;in May 2019 when she signed the Giving Pledge, promising to give away at least half her wealth to charitable causes. “I will keep at it until the safe is empty.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



Scott has not only begun to make good on her word, but she’s doing so at a record pace and with total control over where her money goes: In a little more than two years, Scott, who is worth $57 billion, has given $8.6 billion to 780 organizations promoting issues including gender equity, racial justice, public health and beyond.&nbsp; She has done so without an office or even a mailing address, and with scant evidence of a full-time staff. Instead she works with her husband Dan, researchers and advisers from nonprofit consulting firm Bridgespan. She answers to no one, has no board of directors (that we know of) and, because she’s not making gifts through a charitable foundation, no reporting requirements, either. (In comparison, the Gates Foundation, which has nearly 1,800 employees, made $5.8 billion in grants in 2020. Scott distributed slightly more than $5.8 billion that year.)&nbsp;



And, crucially, she employs a “no-strings attached” giving philosophy, meaning each organization can use the funds however they see fit. “It empowers receivers by making them feel valued and by unlocking their best solutions,”&nbsp;<a href="https://mackenzie-scott.medium.com/seeding-by-ceding-ea6de642bf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Scott wrote on Medium in June</a>.



“A gift like this for a nonprofit is equivalent to a billion dollars,”<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2021/07/07/inside-mackenzie-scotts-no-strings-attached-philanthropy-i-was-in-tears/?sh=78acb27d5bb6">&nbsp;Accion Opportunity Fund chief executive Luz Urrutia told&nbsp;Forbes</a>&nbsp;in July. (Accion is a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business-loans/best-small-business-loans/">small business loan</a>&nbsp;provider in California focusing on women and Black-owned businesses; it&nbsp; received $15 million from Scott this year.)



Whether or not a $15 million gift is truly equivalent to $1 billion is up for debate, but there is no doubt that Scott is single handedly upending the model of how billionaires give away fortunes while supporting causes that look to disrupt the status quo and promote social justice. She is also questioning the system that put her into this position of power. “We are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change,” she said this summer.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large">I have a disproportionate amount of money to share. I will keep at it until the safe is empty.<cite>MacKenzie Scott</cite></blockquote>



At a time when billionaires like her ex-husband are blasting off to space, Scott is using her massive fortune to not only support nonprofits doing good work, but also to challenge the way wealth and power is accumulated in this country.



“Putting large donors at the center of stories on social progress is a distortion of their role,” Scott wrote in the June post.&nbsp; “In this effort, we are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands, and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others.”



Many of the world’s most powerful women still have to answer to someone else. In the case of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, it’s her boss, President Joe Biden. The president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, who is elected by leaders of the European Union, has an executive board (and governing council) tempering her decision-making process. Even Melinda French Gates, now a billionaire in her own right following her divorce from Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, leads the Gates Foundation alongside her ex—but has stated that if they can’t get along over the next two years, she will be the one who steps down from the foundation. Meanwhile, Scott has no such restraints.&nbsp;



For these reasons, Forbes has named Scott the world’s most powerful woman for the first time ever. She takes the place of Germany’s longtime chancellor Angela Merkel, who is retiring from public office. Merkel held the top spot for 15 of the last 17 years Forbes has been publishing this ranking; the only years she wasn’t number one were 2004, a year before she became chancellor and when then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on top, and 2010, when then-First Lady Michelle Obama was recognized.



“My hope is that MacKenzie’s style of giving inspires the philanthropic sector, and inspires other donors to give in a way that supports bold, big visions,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2021/07/07/inside-mackenzie-scotts-no-strings-attached-philanthropy-i-was-in-tears/?sh=78acb27d5bb6">says</a>&nbsp;Favianna Rodriguez, who works to aid communities of color in Oakland, California. “We don&#8217;t have a lot of time. We&#8217;re looking at the crisis of the epidemic, the economic crisis, the climate crisis, and this moment of racial reckoning.”



With $57 billion still to give away, Scott has big plans to continue to affect real change and have a lasting impact on the historically underfunded and overlooked. As she puts it: “Generosity is generative. Sharing makes more.”



By Maggie McGrath, Forbes Staff



<a href="http://www.forbes.com/pictures/61a8ee4f94660f9f053925cb/the-worlds-most-powerful/"></a>

Axel Springer award ceremony

Why MacKenzie Scott Is The World’s Most Powerful Woman

Forbes’ 18th annual list of power women includes 40 CEOs, 19 world leaders, an immunologist and, for the first time in more than a decade, a new number one.



LIKE SO MUCH in 2021, the state of female power around the world looks a bit different than it did just one or two years ago. Women have gained ground in the c-suite—among the women on Forbes’ 18th annual list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women are 40 CEOs, the most since 2015, who oversee a record $3.3 trillion in revenue. But what they gained in the boardroom, they lost elsewhere. For instance, there are two fewer female heads of states than a year ago.



Nothing illustrates the dynamics of this list better than the change at the very top. For only the third time in the 18 years we’ve compiled this ranking, German chancellor Angela Merkel is not No. 1. With her imminent retirement from public office comes a chance to find a new number one; this year, that honor goes to billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. She’s the third richest woman in the world, but it’s her unfettered access to that money—and her determination to donate it in a way that is meaningful and revolutionary—that puts her above the competition. 



“We are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change,” Scott said this summer.



Just behind her at No. 2 is U.S. vice president Kamala Harris, who moves up one spot now that she’s been sworn into office, swapping places with Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank who is now No. 3. All of these women represent the driving thesis behind the compilation of the list: it’s not just enough to have money, or a position of power. 



A person must be doing something with their fortune, voice or public platform. Consider Rosalind Brewer, the former chief operating officer of Starbucks who took the helm of Walgreens in March and is currently the only Black woman running an S&amp;P 500 company. 



A longtime champion of diversity in the workplace, Brewer rose 15 spots to No. 17. Or BioNTech cofounder and immunologist Özlem Türeci, who is one of 20 newcomers this year. She makes her debut on the list at No. 48 not simply because she co-founded a biotech company, but also because of her role in leading the company’s development of the mRNA Covid vaccine, in partnership with global pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer.



 N



othing illustrates the dynamics of this list better than the change at the very top. For only the third time in the 18 years we’ve compiled this ranking, German chancellor Angela Merkel is not No. 1. With her imminent retirement from public office comes a chance to find a new number one; this year, that honor goes to billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. She’s the third richest woman in the world, but it’s her unfettered access to that money—and her determination to donate it in a way that is meaningful and revolutionary—that puts her above the competition. “We are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change,” Scott said this summer. Just behind her at No. 2 is U.S. vice president Kamala Harris, who moves up one spot now that she’s been sworn into office, swapping places with Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank who is now No. 3. All of these women represent the driving thesis behind the compilation of the list: it’s not just enough to have money, or a position of power. A person must be doing something with their fortune, voice or public platform. Consider Rosalind Brewer, the former chief operating officer of Starbucks who took the helm of Walgreens in March and is currently the only Black woman running an S&amp;P 500 company. A longtime champion of diversity in the workplace, Brewer rose 15 spots to No. 17. Or BioNTech cofounder and immunologist Özlem Türeci, who is one of 20 newcomers this year. She makes her debut on the list at No. 48 not simply because she cofounded a biotech company, but also because of her role in leading the company’s development of the mRNA Covid vaccine, in partnership with global pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer.



Also making her debut on the list, at no. 94, is the new president of Tanzania, Samia Suluhu Hassan; she has been instrumental in implementing Covid protocols in her country. Then there’s Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, whose outspoken adherence to freedom and democracy in the face of increased pressure from China vaulted her 28 spots to No. 9. 



“We must safeguard our shared values to ensure our free and democratic way of life,” she said in late November. 



Some women on this list saw their power eroded in the past year. That’s particularly true for some of the women in China, where President Xi Jinping’s crackdown of the tech sector and business activities has meant less autonomy—and, in turn, lower ranks for the likes of Gree Electric’s Dong Mingzhu (down 11 spots to No. 58) and Yum China CEO Joey Wat (down 39 slots to No. 73). 



Even Queen Elizabeth isn’t immune from a reevaluation: now ranked No. 70, the monarch dropped 24 spots as a result of her diminished public appearances and the myriad of reputation crises that hit the Crown this year (including, but not limited to, Duchess Meghan Markle’s allegations of racist treatment). 



While the people on the 18th annual list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women come from 30 countries and territories and work across finance, technology, politics, philanthropy, entertainment and more, they are united by a sense of duty. Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower, and No. 100 on this year’s list, didn’t set out to release reams of data on her former employer, but has said she couldn’t stand by and watch as the company put profits over people. 



Taylor Swift (No. 78) didn’t make her first albums intending to re-record them a decade later, but it’s what she’s had to do to retain her ownership rights—and to prove to other artists the value of their work. 



“Our experience can’t be dictated by what we’re allowed to do or given permission to do,” says film director Ava Duvernay (No. 80). If there’s a thesis statement for this list, that’s as close as it comes: These are the women who are rewriting the rules of business, finance and politics. Their work is needed now more than ever.



Edited by Moira Forbes and Maggie McGrath with reporting by Nicolette Jones and Erika Burho



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/power-women/#3af596ce5e25">See full list here</a>

US-WTO-SECRETARY GENERAL-NGOZI

THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL WOMEN 2021

TOPLINE In year two of the pandemic, as South Africa celebrates Women’s Month, we can’t but look back at the lives impacted and the businesses that have been throttled by a virulent virus. Yet, in all of this, there are rays of hope, as some have shone through, to ideate and innovate and also lend a helping hand by making sure women and girls are at the center of their pandemic-proof enterprises. These female entrepreneurs have businesses in fashion and food, and run NGOs and social reform. For some, these are side hustles, but no matter the nature of their undertaking, they aim to uplift, upskill and empower. FORBES AFRICA sat down with a few such doers to glean their thoughts on how they are making it:



<h2 id="h-1-shared-collective">1. Shared Collective</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1-2-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-52325" width="586" height="329" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1-2-1024x576.png 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1-2-300x169.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1-2-768x432.png 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1-2-1536x864.png 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1-2.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 586px) 100vw, 586px" /></figure></div>



“I saw this TikTok that said I couldn’t work a nine-to-five but now I am an entrepreneur who works 24/7!” laughs Kishana Naidoo, co-founder of digital clothing platform Shared Collective or Shared Co.



“But at least we have a creative outlet,” says her business partner and fellow co-founder, Simone Veitch.



Although Veitch is in London and Naidoo in Johannesburg, both cities that are big economic hubs, the pandemic presented an opportunity for them to take advantage of the rising trend in digital spaces.



Shared Co. is a platform for women to share their wardrobe and rent from others. It enables them to monetize their clothing items by renting them out and reducing their retail consumption by renting items from others.



Although this business model will raise many questions such as ‘who rents clothes out to people during a pandemic’, the duo make it clear that security and safety is of utmost importance to them.



“We have a strict dry-cleaning policy that people both renting out and those who rent have to follow,” Veitch says. “Furthermore, with the delivery process, we want people to feel safe when going through our process.”



The inspiration for the brand came when both women working in the corporate sector were forced to pause and think when Covid struck.



“I think a lot of people went through that,” Naidoo says. “We wanted to create something that both helps women get a second income as well as feel empowered.”



“The end goal for us has always been empowering women,” Veitch adds.



<h2>2. Hair For Life</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/IMG_0462-1024x992.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52323" width="347" height="336" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/IMG_0462-1024x992.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/IMG_0462-300x291.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/IMG_0462-768x744.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/IMG_0462.jpg 1170w" sizes="(max-width: 347px) 100vw, 347px" /></figure></div>



Getting a business to run successfully during the pandemic has been a hair-raising task for most. But 29-year-old Khanyi Cele believes the magic tool to any successful business these days is utilizing social media. Hair For Life took root when Cele was searching for good quality hair for herself and was not impressed with what salons had to offer. She tells us more:



Q. What has it been like having a business during a pandemic and what has your business trajectory looked like? 



A. I have been fortunate that my business actually started picking up as Covid restrictions eased… my business has honestly not been affected in a major way by the pandemic. My business trajectory has been rather a smooth one if I should say, but with any business, there are always bumps and curves here and there especially if you working with international suppliers.



Q. You use social media as the main tool to promote your product. Do you think the future of business lies in social media?



A. Social media is certainly a platform to be reckoned with. It’s cost-effective and effective in getting your product out to people. The fact that you can reach out to people all over the world is a major selling point as I have customers from all corners asking me if I ship internationally. It is in my opinion the future of direct marketing. The results are almost instant and noticeable.



<h2>3. Team DIMA Global </h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/team-dima_-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52331" width="578" height="434" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/team-dima_-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/team-dima_-300x225.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/team-dima_-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/team-dima_-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/team-dima_.jpg 1890w" sizes="(max-width: 578px) 100vw, 578px" /></figure></div>



The University of Pennsylvania said in a report that the stigma and challenges associated with menstruation destabilize over 800 million girls daily.



“One in every ten schoolgirls in sub-Saharan Africa miss school daily. Girls report being bullied and ridiculed about their period by peers and teachers with serious and sometimes fatal consequences,” the report read.



However, they also found that global advocacy for what the world knows as “period positivity” with people demanding access to menstruation products and facilities exposes social and economic inequities and the need for reform.



One of those advocates is social entrepreneur Dima-Thalia Rizk. All the way from the heart of London, Rizk founded her community organization, Team DIMA Global, with her twin-sister Mary. The company launched a long-term project to handle “menstrual hygiene management” in Kenya. The project looks at ensuring that every girl has access to period pads 365 days a year. Period poverty is one of Rizk’s main concerns and the stigmas centered around menstruation.



“Without a doubt, menstruation is one of the most challenging topics in Africa and the world today,” Rizk says to FORBES AFRICA. “It&#8217;s a shame that we&#8217;re in 2021 and still trying to make progress in normalizing menstruation and working to help women and girls access sanitary products. It is a natural process most females have to go through and there is hardly any consideration of their wellbeing; affordable access is a human right.”



<h2>4. Khanyalanga Catering </h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/phumi-682x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52327" width="284" height="426" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/phumi-682x1024.jpg 682w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/phumi-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/phumi-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/phumi.jpg 853w" sizes="(max-width: 284px) 100vw, 284px" /></figure></div>



Motto You Live By: “I have two – &#8216;Carpe Diem&#8217; and ‘When the going gets tough, breathe, focus and move on&#8217;.”



Deloitte stated in a report in March 2020 that the majority of catering companies (particularly SMEs) “have faced sharp declines in customer numbers, ruptured asset chains, or other momentous challenges”. This was no different during the pandemic for KwaZulu-Natal-born Phumelele Masinga who saw a downward trajectory for her business which she founded in 2018.



“It&#8217;s been extremely challenging for Khanyalanga Catering,” Masinga says. “Seeing that the majority of our clients were in corporates, we took a knock as the work-from-home concept took shape. So the on and off between [lockdown alert] levels has really affected how we do business.”



Most of the challenges that Masinga has experienced has revolved around cancellations and postponements and having to adapt to making more food deliveries, as opposed to simply setting up and serving.



However, this has not demotivated Masinga in any way as she has seen through word-of-mouth that her business has grown, which she says is by “word of taste”.



“Yes, I learned some tough lessons in the beginning and I have had to adapt and be flexible (especially during this period), and I believe that we are agile enough for Khanyalanga to be a sustainable and successful business,” Masinga adds.



<h2>5. La Shadie</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/lashade-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52328" width="516" height="387" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/lashade-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/lashade-300x225.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/lashade-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/lashade-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/lashade.jpg 1890w" sizes="(max-width: 516px) 100vw, 516px" /></figure></div>



Nobody loves a side hustle and a passion for fashion more than sisters Boitumelo Moshugi and Neo Moshugi who founded sunglass brand, La Shadie. Both are practising Candidate Attorneys in Johannesburg aspiring to become successful attorneys and entrepreneurs.



La Shadie was birthed in June last year when Neo was unemployed.



“Boitumelo came to me with the opportunity to start a sunglass business,” Neo says. “I considered it for some time but after she showed me the research she had done, I was convinced. I had a love for sunglasses and as we delved deeper into our research, my love for the business opportunity grew.”



“What inspired La Shadie is our passion for fashion. I was always questioned about my unique sense of style and the choice of sunglasses when pairing my outfits, which led me to want to bring a vision to people in the market place that’s so unique that they cannot be found in retail stores,” Boitumelo adds.



The main marketing tool the Moshugi sisters use is social media which has allowed them to see great demand for their products. More than that, starting a business during Covid has surprisingly helped them in their growth trajectory.



“Having a business during the pandemic has been an incredible experience because of the creativity it has brought to growing our business. Although it was daunting at first, we dove in head first and kept the momentum going.”



(The List is in No particular Order)

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