In April, I published a blogpost about the World Economic Forum on Africa, an event that took place from May 11th to 13th in Kigali, Rwanda.
In this context, the WEF was looking for Africa’s top five female innovators. The necessity to highlight female innovators stems from the fact that Africa currently has the youngest population in the world. Thus, the future of innovation in Africa will be greatly determined by these young people. At the same time, it is still difficult for women to pursue their innovation goals. Therefore, the WEF decided to put female innovators into the spotlight.
Since I have published a blogpost about this topic before, I was happy to find out that the WEF’s top five female innovators have finally been chosen. According to an article on venturesafrica.com, the winners are innovators working in the fields of mobile health insurance, solar powered vending, bio medical materials, IT training and food processing.
Amongst the winners are for example Natalie Bitature from Kampala, Uganda, whose company Musana Carts produces solar powered vending carts, each cart saving 3’000 tons of carbon emissions, or Lilian Makoi Rabi from Tanzania. She invented a completely paperless mobile healthcare solution that reduces costs and benefits the low income and informal sector. On the other hand, Nneile Nkholise, a winner from South Africa, has a company that designs breast and facial prostheses for cancer and burn patients.
What particularly struck me when I browsed the list of the 5 winners was the diversity of fields that they are working in. This underlines the plurality of African innovation, something that I have been trying to advocate with this blog for a long time now.
Do you want to know more about the WEFs top five female innovators? Check out the following article on venturesafrica.
inventiveafrica.com 