the pride of Africa's women entrepreneurs
Podcast
The new podcast series, Business Funding Journeys, a co-hosted initiative by African Development Bank Group’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) and Lionesses of Africa, shines a spotlight on how women entrepreneurs in Africa are approaching one of the most significant challenges - access to growth finance - and how they are successfully securing the funding they need to scale their businesses and drive economic growth.
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Feature
In Africa’s dynamic entrepreneurship landscape, the conversation around access to finance for women-led enterprises has never been more critical. At the Lionesses of Africa Start-Up Night Africa 2025 in The Hague, leading women entrepreneurs and investors came together to explore how capital, when thoughtfully structured, can unlock exponential growth. The event, supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, showcased real-world success stories of African women founders scaling beyond borders and redefining the continent’s investment narrative.
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Lioness Playbook Launch
Maintaining a strong cash flow is key to business success - it’s the oxygen that keeps it alive. However, many entrepreneurs find it harder to achieve good cash flow management in practice. That’s why Lionesses of Africa, a social impact innovation business with a fast-growing community of 1.8 million women entrepreneurs across the African continent, has responded to the challenge with the launch of a new Managing Your Cashflow Playbook. The new Playbook, sponsored by Absa, is the latest in a series of digital publications produced by Lionesses of Africa, providing practical business advice and insights delivered directly by leading African women entrepreneurs selected from the Lionesses of Africa community.
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Impact Partner
An interview with Khanya Matshikwe, Head: Proposition Enablement - SME Relationship Banking – Strategy & Customer Value Management, Absa
In this week’s edition of Lioness Weekender, we are focusing on how women entrepreneurs can get access to better financial advice and support for their businesses, to help them to grow and thrive. So to learn more, who better to speak to than Khanya Matshikwe, Head: Proposition Enablement - SME Relationship Banking – Strategy & Customer Value Management at Absa. Khanya will be a familiar face and name if you have attended one of the popular Lioness Business Agility webinars over the past year, where she provides great insight and information on what Absa is practically doing to support women-led SMEs.
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Award Winner
Absa Bank has been recognised by the prestigious Euromoney Awards for Excellence 2024, and awarded the accolade of South Africa's Best Bank for SMEs. The Euromoney Awards are the definitive annual awards programme for the banking industry, celebrating the achievements of banks and bankers from across the globe. Over 600 banks from over 100 countries enter the Awards for Excellence every year, making it the most comprehensive awards programme in the industry.
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Jules Ngankam, Group Chief Executive Officer, African Guarantee Fund
Feature Interview
In Conversation with Jules Ngankam, Group Chief Executive Officer, African Guarantee Fund
The 2nd Start-Up Night Africa event on 11 June 2024, in The Hague, The Netherlands, provided the opportunity to highlight the critical role of investment and the power of partnerships to address the gender finance gap for high-growth women entrepreneurs in Africa. Continuing the conversations on this important subject, Lionesses of Africa spoke to Jules Ngankam, Group Chief Executive Officer of the African Guarantee Fund, a real champion of empowering women entrepreneurs and fostering inclusive financial practices to drive sustainable economic growth across Africa.
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Feature
Over the past eight years, Start-Up Night Africa events have aimed to stimulate real change by bringing together women entrepreneurs, with decision-makers and policy-makers, to discuss the challenges and real solutions needed to close the funding gap. At this year’s event on 11 June 2024, in The Hague, The Netherlands, a highlight of the programme was the panel discussion, where invited guest experts shared their insights and knowledge on the challenges women entrepreneurs face in getting access to finance and growth market opportunities. The focus was on discussing what progress has been made over the last twelve months, and also what new initiatives have been launched to practically shift the dial for women entrepreneurs in getting access to the growth funding they need. Chairing the panel discussion was Lionesses of Africa founder and ceo, Melanie Hawken, who was joined live on stage by Chiinga Musonda, co-founder of Savanna Premium Chocolate from Zambia. Joining via Zoom link were Patrick Lumumba, Group Director: Capacity Development at the African Guarantee Fund, and Vignesh Subramani, Head: Sales & Distribution, SME Business at Absa Bank, South Africa.
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Speech by Peter Derrek Hof, Ambassador Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, Director Social Development, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at Start-Up Night Africa on Tuesday 11 June 2024
Excellencies, representatives from the African Development Bank, the African Guarantee Fund, the ABSA Bank, the private sector, civil society, government, dear and esteemed guests, Welcome!
Welcome, on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, represented tonight by yours truly and by my colleague Wampie Libon, whom you will see later.
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L-R: Melissa Basque-Roux, Ag. Coordinator, AFAWA (Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa), African Development Bank; Melanie Hawken, Founder & CEO, Lionesses of Africa; Farshida Zafar, Director, Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship
Launch Announcement
The 2nd Start-Up Night Africa event held on 11 June 2024 in The Hague, The Netherlands, was the launchpad for an important new research project announcement by Lionesses of Africa, in partnership with AFAWA (Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa), and with the technical support of Lionesses of Africa’s research partner, Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship. The research aims to address identified gendered gaps in data and insights that are barriers to achieving greater, more equitable, funding and support for women entrepreneurs in Africa. The project aims to deliver better insights into Africa’s women entrepreneurs who have launched high-growth ventures ambitiously going after double-digit growth and creating scalable business models to significantly impact the market, and their communities.
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Media Release
Highlighting the critical role of investment and the power of partnerships to address the gender finance gap for high-growth women entrepreneurs in Africa and the Netherlands, were the key focus of discussion at the 2nd Start-Up Night Africa event on 11 June 2024, in The Hague, The Netherlands. The event was once again hosted by Lionesses of Africa, a fast-growing social impact organization with 1.8 million women entrepreneurs across the African continent, in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Netherlands, African Guarantee Fund, AFAWA, and Absa. Opening remarks were delivered by Lionesses of Africa founder & ceo, Melanie Hawken; Peter Derrek Hof, Ambassador Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, Director Social Development, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Nishdeep Sethi, Group Director, Structured Finance, African Guarantee Fund. Also providing a welcome address was Erik Parigger, Programme Coordinator Orange Corners.
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Startup Night Africa, The Hague 2024
As a key driver of Lionesses of Africa’s ‘Access to Markets and Investment Programme,’ Start-Up Night Africa in The Hague aimed to connect Africa’s high-growth women entrepreneurs to European investment opportunities, and women entrepreneurs in The Netherlands looking to access African markets and partnerships. We showcased 10 inspirational women entrepreneurs in growth-mode at the event on 11 June 2024, all looking for new investment, markets, and collaboration opportunities. If you didn’t get to meet each of them on the evening, then take a look at their pitch videos below, which have all been published on the Lionesses of Africa website, and make those all important connections now.
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Event Report
Lionesses of Africa’s latest Lioness Business Agility Webinar of 2024, took place on 17 April 2024, with 148 women entrepreneurs predominantly from South Africa joining the event online. Once again hosted in partnership with Absa, the webinar focused on the theme of “Women in manufacturing, creating jobs and local impact”. It’s an important topic and Lionesses of Africa believes in the need to recognise and support the work and commitment of women entrepreneurs who are building sustainable manufacturing businesses that are creating much-needed jobs and driving economic growth.
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Book Review
In her new book, Thinking Bigger: A Pitch-Deck Formula for Women Who Want to Change the World, serial entrepreneur and investor, Sarah Dusek, tackles head-on a key challenge for women business and brand builders. The lack of female representation among top-earning business founders is surprising when compared with the number of women who start businesses. Fewer than thirty women in history have taken companies they founded public on leading stock exchanges. Although consistent references to “women and small business” dominate global development strategies and influence public policy, women are granted less than 2 percent of all venture capital investments annually. Things need to change!
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Event Report - Lioness Lean In Mozambique 3 April 2024
The first in the annual series of popular Mozambique Lioness Lean In Webinars for 2024 took place on Wednesday 3 April. Hosted by Lionesses of Africa in partnership once again with Standard Bank, the theme of growth and job creation was firmly at the forefront of women entrepreneurs’ minds. With 140 attendees to kickstart the conversation, including a speaker panel of 7 highly experienced women entrepreneurs from the Lionesses of Africa community in Mozambique, the focus was on sharing experiences and learnings. Specialist insights and advice also came from Crescênia Matsinhe, Head of Consumer, Industrial and Infrastructure Sector, Commercial Banking, Standard Bank Mozambique, who shared how the bank is supporting women entrepreneurs and their growth this year.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Dept
“…give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” — Plato
As we continue our journey through the investment and finance world in our articles, making sense of the iniquities as we go, whilst creating some kind of ‘AH-HA!’ moment which will brighten the road ahead as we try to navigate our growth and cash flow needs vs our larger long term projects, we somehow need to also find the time to improve and turbocharge our approach to investors.
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Lioness Business Agility Report
Lionesses of Africa’s new event year started with a bang as the first Lioness Business Agility Webinar of 2024, took place on 14 February, with 120 women entrepreneurs predominantly from South Africa joining the event online. Once again hosted in partnership with Absa, the webinar focused on the theme of “New Year, New Green Business Growth”. It’s an important topic and Lionesses of Africa believes in the need to recognise and support the work and commitment of women entrepreneurs who are building green, sustainable businesses and driving economic growth. They are creating much-needed jobs with their businesses, whilst also creating sustainable impact too.
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Divine Simbi-Ndhlukula (PhD)
Book Review
In her debut as an author, Divine Simbi-Ndhlukula (PhD) in her new book, Entrepreneurial Success: Growing Business in a Fluid Economy, provides ten powerful success insights for budding and established entrepreneurs alike. Zeroing in on her life’s work in her business enterprises at SECURICO and Zvikomborero Farms, she distills business administration concepts into everyday life principles that we all can admit we already know but fail to leverage.
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Nomalanga Sitole, Lioness Enterprise Ambassador, Lionesses of Africa
by Nomalanga Sitole, Lioness Enterprise Ambassador, Lionesses of Africa
It was an honor to be invited to the WE4D Women’s Economic Empowerment For Africa’s Green Transformation Regional Conference, to speak firstly in my role as the Enterprise Ambassador for Lionesses of Africa, the social impact organisation with a rapidly growing community of 1.7 million women entrepreneurs across the African continent; and secondly as an entrepreneur myself who has first-hand experience that when women entrepreneurs in Africa are empowered to fulfill their potential and succeed, then the continent as a whole will succeed.
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Awards & Accolades
The South African sustainable luxury product design brand, The Joinery, based in the Cape Winelands and founded by Natalie and Kim Ellis, has just been recognised as a gold award winner at the Eco-Logical Awards. The brand picked up the Gold Eco-Logic Award in the Eco-Fashion and Lifestyle category, sponsored by Pick n’ Pay Clothing. This latest accolade is a testament to the Joinery team’s unwavering commitment to sustainability. Renowned for its beautifully designed range of sustainable products, use of responsible fabrics, and ethical production, The Joinery has won fans around the world for many years for its passionate belief in being kind to our planet and fair to our people, one plastic bottle at a time.
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Event Report
The final Lioness Business Agility Webinar of the year in South Africa, as always hosted in partnership with Absa, took place on Friday 17 November, with a special focus on the theme of “Celebrating Women Entrepreneurs as Job Creators”. The event, which brought together 150 women entrepreneurs from across the country, aimed to recognise and support the work and commitment of women entrepreneurs who are helping to drive economic growth. Not only are these inspirational women entrepreneurs creating much-needed jobs in South Africa with their businesses, they are also creating sustainable impact too.
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