the pride of Africa's women entrepreneurs
Jazeera Suwani, co-founder, Drunken Elephant Mara (Kenya)
Startup Story
Jazeera Suwani, a serial entrepreneur and previously the founder of Say it with Chocolate, is now the co-founder of Drunken Elephant Mara in Kenya. She has been featured in Africa's Top 40 under 40 in 2018. The concept behind Drunken Elephant Mara, is to provide a complete vacation for the individual looking to disconnect from the world of technology and immerse themselves in Nature. The business was launched in 2021 and today employs 7 people.
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Mendy Lerato Lusaba
Startup Story
Mendy Lerato Lusaba is a social entrepreneur and a decent work advocate with special interest in the domestic work sector. She is the founder of Chris and Geo Placements a domestic placement agency based in Zimbabwe. Chris and Geo recruits and places marginalised and economically disadvantaged persons as domestic workers. To date, she has placed over 2000 workers whilst impacting over 4000 families. Mendy also runs a team of 19 contract domestic workers. She is also the founder of the Domestic Workers Association of Zimbabwe a network of Zimbabwean domestic workers working in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and United Arab Emirates. DWAZ runs the first domestic worker training centre in Zimbabwe offering trainings in housekeeping, cooking and baking, gardening and care work. They also have a domestic worker netball team for the mental health of domestic workers.
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Joy Ezeka and Rosie Bradshaw
Lioness CoLab
New UNafraid limited edition rug collection launched to celebrate Women’s Month in South Africa
A collaboration between South Africa’s ZURI and IMANI, a passion-driven surface and textile design studio, and decorative flooring specialist, Airloom Decor, has resulted in the launch of a limited edition rug collection. The 'UNafraid' limited edition rug collection is a collaboration between ZURI and IMANI founder, Joy Ezeka and the founders of Airloom Decor, Rosie and David Bradshaw. This collaboration was launched on 1 August 2022, in honour of South Africa Women's Month, a celebration of resilience - as communities, as individuals, and particularly as women.
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Maureen Ntsane
Impact Partner Content / Absa / Relationship Banker Profile - Maureen Ntsane
In this week’s edition of Lioness Weekender, we are publishing the fourth in a series of regular profiles featuring Absa Relationship Bankers whose role it is to support entrepreneurs. The fourth of our profiles introduces Maureen Ntsane, Regional Head: Sales & Service Enablement - Central Region.
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Book Review
Rachel E Turner, serial entrepreneur and author of the new book, The Founder's Survival Guide: Lead your business from start-up to scale-up to grown-up, understands all too well that start-up leadership skills and experience will only get you so far. The founder path is isolating, stressful and overwhelming, and few founders survive the scale-up journey unscathed. If you don’t scale your leadership as you scale your company, you’re unlikely to survive.
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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
We were in London this week, the global centre for Insurance, in discussions with a seriously senior insurance guru in charge of major Financial and Professional Lines. What that means is that he insures major financial and corporate customers (the Fortune 500/FTSE100 types) for (amongst other things), securities lawsuits (those bought by shareholders) and external class action suits. Heavy duty stuff.
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by Tapiwa Matsinde
Busyness and working hard are often aligned with an assumption of making progress. That, however, isn’t always the case. In fact, they could be doing just the opposite by lulling you into a false sense of productivity and distracting you from nurturing the specific tasks that are moving your business forward.
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by Kathy Mann
In my book Harnessing Stress, I wrote about how expectations can be a source of stress. What we expect of others can lead to disappointment, what others expect from us can lead to stress and what we expect of ourselves can lead to a great deal of unhappiness if we don’t manage it.
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by Carla Wasserfall
The power of a personal vision is it helps you direct your energy to what you want, it gives you focus, and clarity and it helps you make wiser decisions when you reach a conflict of priorities. You go in the direction of your vision instead of being misaligned to who you really want to be. What do you see and how far do you see? Both questions relate to your personal vision. Every great founder, leader and entrepreneur who has made a difference started with a personal vision.
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by Marjon Meyer
Procrastination can become a lifestyle. A very unsatisfactory one, in fact. It makes us feel guilty and unaccomplished. Are you a last-minute.com expert? To be honest, I have been delaying – thus procrastinating – writing this article. My life has a renewed sense of busyness after living slow during the pandemic. There are several tasks on my to-do list that evade getting done … they even haunt me at times.
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por Josefa Massinga
Eu sou uma mulher empreendedora há cinco anos.
Na minha opinião, acho muito importante que a mulher desenvolva alguma actividade. Não que seja fácil pois até que cada uma de nos tenha a certeza de que seja capaz e que vai conseguir.
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Lynette Beer
Book Review
Business coach and author, Lynette Beer, believes we are all born for greatness and success, and in her book Rise Into Your Own Power, she provides her wealth of expertise and insights to show you how to be the person you are meant to be. Importantly, it is a guide that helps you to build great relationships in life and in business by starting with knowing yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, and learning how to be the best version of yourself.
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Impact Partner Content / Absa / Relationship Banker Profile - Nadia Valli
In this week’s edition of Lioness Weekender, we are publishing the third in a series of regular profiles featuring Absa Relationship Bankers whose role it is to support entrepreneurs. The third of our profiles introduces Nadia Valli, Area Coverage Manager managing Commercial Relationship Executives, Private Banking and Small to Medium Enterprises.
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Lilly Alfonso
Lioness Launch
The Lilly Alfonso fashion design label, created by its founder of the same name, has evolved over the years to become one of the top fashion labels in Malawi and is slowly becoming a global fashion brand. Building on its success to date, the Lilly Alfonso brand is introducing an exciting new clothing collection for men and women called the 100 Year Plan collection.
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Narcia Taalumba Walle, co-founder & ceo, Margarida & Rose Beauty Bar (Mozambique)
Startup Story
Narcia Taalumba Walle is the co-founder and ceo of Margarida & Rose Beauty Bar in Mozambique. Margarida & Rose is a nail spa, make-up studio and cosmetics store that provides offers high quality products and services in a relaxed environment. The business was founded through a joint venture in 2021 and employs 4 women from the local Mozambican community. Narcia has 7 years’ experience in the beauty industry as a cosmetics retailer through her company Rose & Rose Store that has been catering to the Mozambican market since 2015. She is also a corporate lawyer, certified SAP consultant, and a humanitarian working for the UN WFP.
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Ellen Tshidi Cooper, Founder & CEO, Conscious Lifestyle Collective (South Africa)
Startup Story
Ellen Tshidi Cooper is the Founder and CEO of Conscious Lifestyle Collective, a South African, eco-friendly marketplace connecting conscious sellers and conscious shoppers. She is a social entrepreneur at heart, her business is more than just about making a profit but takes care of people and the planet. She holds an Honours Degree in business and also works as a Branding and Website Designer for startups and small businesses through her design studio ellecooper.co.
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Yoadan Tilahun
Lioness Weekender Cover Story
Flawless Events, an award-winning market-leader transforming Ethiopia’s events industry
Yoadan Tilahun is the founder and CEO of Flawless Events in Ethiopia, a company specializing in conceptualizing, organizing, and executing corporate and government events. Yoadan is a seasoned entrepreneur and award-winning business leader who has transformed Ethiopia's events industry. She founded the business in Ethiopia in 2008, turning her passion that was ignited in 2004 in Washington, DC into a successful business on the continent. Flawless Events employs 14 staff with the majority of young women. Yoadan has an MBA in International Business, is fluent in three languages, is married to a supportive husband, and is raising three sons.
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By Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
We have been looking back at the incredible Lionesses who have previously graced the cover of our Lioness Weekender Magazine recently, and amongst the many fascinating questions posed to these inspirational leaders by Melanie in their interviews, there is always one asking how they got the entrepreneurial bug. More often than not the answer includes the fact that one or both of their parents were an entrepreneur. This got us wondering - is there any correlation to this or was it just luck (some who enjoy the 9-5 stability and simply do not understand the drive of a late night entrepreneur struggling with cash flow and supply bottlenecks, might argue ‘bad luck’ of course), that creates the entrepreneurial drive.
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by Onyinye Umeokoro – FutureSoft Team
In order to continue to survive, businesses need to continuously reach new consumers and continuously engage these consumers to boost that bottom-line. If you are reading this then you probably own and run your own business or plan to own and run your own business in the near future and want to learn how to attract these consumers that will help you fatten up that bottom line. What you may not know is that you are most likely looking for transformational consumers.
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by Anja van Beek
It is often said that culture is the competitive edge for any organisation. Culture is also referred to as the personality or character of the business. So it leaves us with the question: “Where does emotional intelligence (EQ) fit in?”
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