<h4 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center" id="h-nomhle-mliswafounder-and-ceo-summerhill-farmzimbabwe">Nomhle Mliswa Founder and CEO, Summerhill Farm Zimbabwe</h4>



Farming is not for the fainthearted,” Nomhle Mliswa says to FORBES AFRICA in the middle of her harvesting season. Mliswa founded Summerhill Farm in 2007, a 345-hectare farm located in Doma, Mhangura, in the Mashonaland West Province of Zimbabwe. She employs 350 people, two-thirds of which are women. She offers one of the few tillage services in Zimbabwe providing tilling for other farmers.



The mixed farming includes small grain crops, maize, soya beans, potatoes, wheat, cattle, chicken, and goats. Mliswa uses smart agriculture practices: precision farming, a zero-waste policy based on a Just in Time strategy that ensures the swift delivery of goods and land profiling to ensure mitigation and adaption, water harvesting, storage and drilled boreholes.



Summerhill Farm adheres to Sustainable Development Goals, namely SDG 13 on Climate Action, Environmental Management and Conservation, as well as employment structure informed by SDG 5 on gender equality, offering equitable practices for both male and female employees.



Employees also get sanitation and decent housing, informed by SDG 6.



Mliswa has established a local school for young children and a clinic within Summerhill Farm, in line with SDGs 3 and 4. This allows the women to work and maintain their families. The farm also has a shop for employees, sponsored ball games for the community, and employees are given potato and chicken rations, in line with SDG 1 and 3.



There is a Climate Desk, assisting local farmers with critical weather information. And Mliswa does not shy away from further CSR–the farm assists with repairing local road networks and bridges.



Summerhill Farm is run by a single mother with a spinal injury–but neither of these things has held Mliswa back in creating a successful diversified farm using smart agriculture. She wants to do more for preserving the environment, implementing mitigation measures, creating awareness with women on global warming, and hosting more educational tours for schoolchildren.

Nomhle Mliswa

‘Not For The Fainthearted’: A Zimbabwean Agriculturalist’s Journey

Old woman walking with her dog and her wares through the streets of Makhanda, Eastern Cape, in 2021

Cityscapes: Snapshots Of South Africa’s Thriving Informal Economy

Gugulethu Mahlangu Founder and CEO, House Harvest South Africa



In 2018, Gugulethu Mahlangu went home to the rolling plains of the Highveld in South Africa. In a landscape dominated by livestock farmers, she planted cabbages, only to soon find them waterlogged.



Counterintuitively, this first failure was the moment she realized she was going to be a farmer.



“I found that there&#8217;s just so many numerous opportunities, especially for young African women. That&#8217;s just what made me cultivate the love for agriculture, because before I really felt like it was roses and sunsets, but when you get in the industry itself, you realize that it&#8217;s a lot of work. It&#8217;s patience, it&#8217;s money, it&#8217;s time, it&#8217;s investing in trying, learning, and picking yourself up back again.”



Mahlangu describes aquaponics as a soilless farming method.



She uses the Deep Water Culture (DWC) method.



In DWC, the nutrient-rich water is circulated through long canals while rafts float on top, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The plant roots hang through holes, absorbing nutrients and oxygen. According to the FAO, this method is commonly used for commercial aquaponics with a high stocking density of fish.



Mahlangu explains that fish provide 10 out of 13 nutrients plants need.



“It&#8217;s economical once it starts, and can provide you with a system that can employ people all year round, because it runs all year round.”



Mahlangu says aquaponics is a climate smart-solution to agriculture. Unlike traditional agriculture that is seasonal and based on economies of scale, aquaponics requires limited space.



“Global warming isn&#8217;t a regional issue. It&#8217;s not an African problem. It&#8217;s a planet problem. So, we are contributing to that positively.”



Technology like aquaponics can be a method of alleviating food insecurity in densely-populated and urban areas.



“Apparently, they say in South Africa, we are food secure. But we are insecure in the way that food gets accessed. Here comes a solution like aquaponics or vertical farming saying ‘I can meet you where you are, I can meet you on your balcony, I can meet you in your township, in your limited space’.”



She has worked as an aquaponics horticulturist at Finleaf Farms. Now, Mahlangu has returned to her hometown of Witbank in the Highveld of Mpumalanga, South Africa, to build her own facility, named House Harvest, in an urban setting.



Focused on trial and error, she’s going to gather her own data in the South African context before acquiring an investor and scaling. Since aquaponics is a high investment, she wants to produce high value crops to get an ROI as quickly as possible, focusing on restaurants.



As a 29-year-old emerging farmer, she understands the challenges in this sector.



“I think the first thing is because aquaponics is so new, the government doesn&#8217;t know what you&#8217;re talking about. They know aquaculture, they know about tilapia and all sorts of freshwater fish…So, it sometimes feels like I&#8217;m on a tangent on my own.” Mahlangu feels like a pioneer—on a stressful but exciting journey, she concludes.

Gugu (3)

Africa’s Green Economy: ‘THERE’S JUST SO MANY NUMEROUS OPPORTUNITIES, ESPECIALLY FOR YOUNG AFRICAN WOMEN’

Salima Mukansanga boasts many historic firsts.



We look back at our interview with Salima Mukansanga, the international football referee from Rwanda who is also a listed referee for FIFA since 2012 and continues to make waves. In 2019, she was an official at the FIFA Women&#8217;s World Cup in France.



In 2022, Mukansanga became the first woman to referee at the African Cup of Nations. She was also a referee at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar last year.



A winner in the sports category at the FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Awards on March 8 this year, she was also a spotlight speaker at the FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit on the same day, as she dwelt on how she kick-started her career, and how it was a rough journey to stardom.



The trailblazing referee said to FORBES AFRICA after the awards win: “Actually, the inspiration [came] from my mentor, he was a FIFA World Cup referee in 2010 and 2014. So this man, I consider him the one who opens dreams for me, because without him I couldn’t be here…


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“Because, remember the women–in Africa, where we concede that in a field dominated by men there’s no chance–but this man gave me a lot of inspiration, along with my brother and my dad who always tell me ‘you are going to reach higher, just keep following your dreams’.”



When asked if the future holds more refereeing for Mukansanga, she says she is going to do more.



“No, it&#8217;s about the performance. And then, if I&#8217;m not going to be a referee, I&#8217;m going to be part of the refereeing family. Like being an instructor, being a coach, all those things are part of the refereeing career. So, I want to stick with it.”



“Ninety-nine percent of the people sending me messages were women. They supported me…Even if she doesn’t know me, it doesn’t matter. It’s each and every woman, especially African women, who want to reach higher, like me,” she also said on receiving the FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Sports Award.

FIFA World Cup 2022 – Referees Media Day – Friday 18th November

The Rwandan Football Referee Shooting For The Stars

Reitumetse Kholumo, the 25-year-old founder of Kwela Brews, is working to ensure that indigenous knowledge systems and makers of homegrown alcohol (umqombothi) earn their rightful place in South Africa’s formal economy.



In apartheid-era South Africa, it was popularly known that if women could not find domestic work, they would turn to brewing beer in their backyard – even though it was illegal– as a means of making ends meet. Eventually, alcohol was supplied at scale that largely supplanted these traditional brewers.



While women from all walks of life are no longer excluded from working in the formal alcohol market, monopolies such as pay disparities continue to reign.



This is something 25-year-old Reitumetse Kholumo hopes to change.



She was in her second year of chemical engineering at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, when on a field trip to one of the top brewers in the country, what stood out for her was the lack of representation.



She was studying bioprocessing and curious about indigenous African beverages, sought lessons in brewing from her grandmother.



Later on, she did a humanities elective about how engineering affects the broader public, specifically with a lens on how the profession was used to engineer apartheid. “I then looked at things a bit differently, being conscious of the fact that if I become a brewer, I’m just one brewer, but there are so many African women who are brewing on the ground, and the engineering solutions that exist do not address their problems,” she says to FORBES AFRICA.



Kholumo entered the informal industry from a bio-engineering perspective, believing the challenges to be efficiency and safety. 



While these are valid concerns, once she met the women making beer, she found other more pressing issues.



“When I met more women, their issues were more related to the market itself – they don’t have consistent buyers.”



Part of the reason was the prevalence of low-cost tier beers competing with traditionally-brewed beer.



“The women that brew authentic traditional African beer, they know how to brew safely. Efficiency is something that we are building on in a way that will complement their indigenous knowledge and how they usually brew.”



As the founder of Kwela Brews, Kholumo isn’t going to impose her ideas but rather collaborate with the women to assess the process, and see what they can adopt in their daily practices.



Kwela Brews became a distributor to solve the main problem: finding regular buyers in their relevant low-income communities.



“So, what we do is we pay the women for the brews, and we also supply them with the ingredients that they like. They’re my bosses, if anything,” she laughs.



In 2022, Kwela Brews began testing the market with products – going to Jazz in the Native Yards, a concert hosting South African musicians, primarily held in the Gugulethu township of Cape Town.



They have also now partnered with a local restaurant in Stellenbosch that sees traffic from international students and tourists, so they are widening their reach. 



“In the near future, we’re going to be doing tastings and collaborating on events just to de-risk it for them, but also so that we can learn what the market requires.”



Still completing her master’s degree in chemical engineering at Stellenbosch in the Western Cape, Kholumo’s broader interests are the beneficiation of indigenous bio-products when it comes to nutraceuticals and therapeutics. “What I want more than anything is to create a space where indigenous brews are appreciated, as they come from the indigenous knowledge-holders.” 



She says each batch of her brew tastes different because it will have different micro-organisms, which are good for people’s gut microbiomes. 



“Different women from different tribes will have different ways of brewing, and this is all over sub-Saharan Africa. So I feel like there’s a lot of potential there.”



While she received R20,000 ($1,100) in funding from the University of Cape Town’s student pitch competition, hosted by Akro, along with UCT InvestSoc and UCT Entrepreneurs Society in 2021, she quickly used the startup money. In 2022, she was on the Mastercard Foundation program that gave her another R120,000 ($6,500). And even though it’s an alcoholic product, she wants to eventually get certification about benefits for gut microbiome. She’s raising the bar for homegrown alcohol to be distributed and sold at scale. After all, as they say in South Africa, local is lekker (good).

Kholumo hopes to change the landscape for indigenous brew-masters1

Stirring It Up: The 25-Year-Old Entrepreneur Who Wants to Put South African Traditional Beer Makers On The Map

An armed conflict headed by the armed forces chief, General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the head of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, began on April 15 in Sudan. The conflict rages on in the capital city of Khartoum and the Darfur region, where at least 460 people have been killed and 4,063 people have been injured, reports the country’s Health Ministry. Foreign states are fast evacuating their citizens from Sudan.



Noon Abdelbassit Ibhrahim, a 21-year-old medical student at Ibn Sina University in Khartoum, Sudan, was living in Burri before a missile struck outside her family home on day four of the conflict gripping Sudan.



“It hit right outside our door, all our glass windows and doors shattered, our house was basically destroyed and we left it in a state where it&#8217;s open and anyone can get inside. All our belongings, all our life is there. And we left everything behind to try and get to safety,” a distraught Abdelbassit Ibhrahim says to FORBES AFRICA on a WhatsApp call.



The family left the house in Burri on Friday, April 21, arriving in the Egyptian capital of Cairo two days later.



At first, they stayed with a relative in Soba, a suburb on the outskirts of Khartoum. The family organized a bus to take them to Cairo, traveling with Swedish, American and Irish friends. The whole bus trip cost a total of SDG2,000,000 ($3,322).



Halfway through the journey, at 8PM, they were stopped by officers and told it would be better to turn back and sleep at a nearby city, as there was the imminent threat of hijackers on their way. The group decided to continue and drive through the night.



When they arrived safely at the Egyptian border after many hours of travel, the women, children and elders were allowed in without a visa. The American, Swedish, and Irish citizens were issued a visa on arrival for $25, Abdelbassit Ibhrahim says.



Her brother, Mohamed Abdelbassit Ibrahim, 19, as well as her uncles, Moez Hassan Zain, 40, and Momein Hassan Zain, 34, were turned away at the border because they didn’t have the right paperwork, she says.



Abdelbassit Ibhrahim has not been in contact with her brother or uncles since Sunday and is worried about them.



Internet outages have been reported across the country.



“The situation in Sudan is escalating by the minute. It&#8217;s completely unsafe, and they still haven&#8217;t declared a state of emergency. People are running out of food, water. People can’t get to the hospital to get emergency services and those that can – all these hospitals are going out of service because they have no staff and no equipment. We&#8217;re very slowly losing contact with everyone.”



The death toll is believed to be higher because people are struggling to get healthcare, as most of the city&#8217;s hospitals have been forced to close. The World Health Organization (WHO) has so far recorded 11 attacks on health facilities in the country.



“Hundreds and apparently now thousands of people are stuck at the border and can&#8217;t cross over –people who don&#8217;t have passports, people whose passports have expired, men aged 16 to 49 who can’t get their visas issued. The situation is just very chaotic and not enough light is being shone onto this.



People still don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s going on. This is a point in time where we really do need food, water and medical supplies,” says Adbelbassit Ibhrahim to FORBES AFRICA.



The armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces seemingly agreed upon several ceasefires, the latest being a three-day break in fighting over the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which started on Friday. The ceasefires have largely been ignored.



The UN reports that up to 20,000 people, predominantly women and children, have escaped from Sudan to Chad.



A total of 77 South African citizens were trapped in Sudan, according to South Africa’s Head of Public Diplomacy, Clayson Monyela.



“Our nationals and embassy staff are on their way out of Khartoum. I can&#8217;t disclose the security and logistics of the operation. But they are moving out. We are in constant contact with them,” says Monyela on Twitter, on April 24.



Forty one South Africans have been bussed out of Sudan through the Egypt border along with seven Angolans, as part of a multi-South African government department effort on Monday, reports The Gift of the Givers. The organization, along with the South African government, organized the evacuations, but cell phone networks are down and hindering efforts.



The remainder of the South Africans were evacuated on Tuesday, April 26, reports The Gift of The Givers.



An increasing number of countries have evacuated diplomats and citizens from Sudan&#8217;s capital as the conflict continues. The United States, United Kingdom and Canada have flown diplomats out, reports the BBC. France, Germany, Italy, Spain and India have also been removing diplomats and other nationals.



Turkey began evacuation efforts by road on Sunday, with plans halted due to a nearby “explosion”. The citizens of Gulf countries, as well as of Egypt and Pakistan were evacuated, reports the BBC.



On Sunday, lines of UN vehicles were seen leaving Khartoum heading towards Port Sudan on the Red Sea, carrying &#8220;citizens from all over the world&#8221;, a Sierra Leonean refugee told AFP.



In recent months, Sudan had been attempting to transition towards democracy, after the 2019 coup of autocrat Omar al-Bashir. The Rapid Support Forces and the armed forces were both held responsible for the military coup.



If the conflict continues without aid or a ceasefire, it will have ramifications for the horn of Africa as the region enters yet another year of drought.

UK Government Continues Efforts To Evacuate British Nationals From Sudan

‘Left Everything Behind… Very Chaotic’: Account From Citizen Fleeing Sudan Conflict

Nomcebo Zikode, the multi platinum-selling South African singer-songwriter who won the Grammy in February for Global Music Performance with Wouter Kellerman and Zakes Bantwini, will be performing at the pan-African welcome celebration of the Forbes Under 30 Summit Africa in Gaborone, Botswana, on April 23.



The artist, who is the founder of the Nomcebo Zikode Foundation, was also at the eighth annual FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit on March 8 in Pretoria, South Africa, where she spoke on stage about her tough journey to becoming a successful singer.



She outlined her trials and triumphs before performing the foot-tapping hit song Jerusalema and evoking tumultuous applause and cheers from the audience at the SunBet Arena.



She also won the 2023 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Entertainer Award at a glittering ceremony in the evening on the same day.



Speaking to FORBES AFRICA after the win, she said: “You know, people have read everywhere about my struggles. But I did not focus on my struggles – I kept on pushing. That is why today, [I am] the woman who is a Grammy winner, because I didn’t give up. I kept on pushing. I am so happy as an African woman.”



From being a backing singer to an artist receiving recognition, Zikode is a part of South Africa’s burgeoning music landscape.



“There’s so much that is happening in this industry – when I say so much I mean going through so much. So, for me as a woman, to be recognized by FORBES AFRICA is great,” Zikode added in March.



Zikode worked with Master KG on the 2019 hit single Jerusalema and later remixed with Burna Boy, the song debuted at Number 1 on Billboard Music Charts. It became an anthem in South Africa and across the world as “a feel-good” song during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nomcebo Zikode, image supplied

‘I Didn’t Focus On My Struggles, I Didn’t Give Up’: South Africa’s Grammy Winner Nomcebo Zikode

Angélique Kidjo, five-time Grammy award-winning Beninese artist and songwriter, has been announced as one of the three winners of the 2023 Polar Music Prize.



The Polar Music Prize, often called the Nobel Prize of Music, is a Swedish international award founded in 1989 by Stig Anderson, the manager of the band ABBA. The award ceremony will take place on Tuesday, May 23, in Stockholm.



“My passion for music has always been unwavering. Being on stage for me is like being in paradise – it’s my sanctuary. It’s my place to link and to connect with my fellow human beings. That is something that I’m grateful for every day,” said Angélique Kidjo in a statement on being awarded the prize.



“To be awarded the Polar Music Prize is humbling. I have no words to say how important this is for me. It comes with a sense of responsibility that is bestowed upon me as an artist to continue to do great work. I will do my best to be a proud recipient of the Prize through my work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, on behalf of the children, and as an ambassador of music, to help create a world in which we can all live in peace.Thank you so much for making me part of this prestigious Prize, in such prestigious company.”



Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records, one of the UK’s greatest independent record labels, and Estonian Arvo Pärt, known as the world’s most performed living composer, also won the award this year.



Previous recipients have included the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Miriam Makeba and Youssou N&#8217;Dour.



Each laureate will receive a prize money of 600,000 Swedish Kroner (approximately $57,384).



Since the inaugural ceremony in 1992, the Polar Music Prize has been renowned as music’s most prestigious honor. The awards committee that selects the laureates is an independent 11-member board. It receives nominations from the public as well as from the International Music Council.



Kidjo created the Batonga Foundation dedicated to supporting the education of young girls in Africa. She also travels the world advocating on behalf of children in her capacity as a UNICEF and OXFAM



Goodwill Ambassador.



She also made the 2023 50 Over 50 list on FORBES AFRICA in the February/March issue of the magazine.



She blends together jazz, hip-hop, zouk, Zairean rumba, samba, salsa, funk, gospel, Cameroonian makossa, and various Beninese traditions.

64th Annual GRAMMY Awards – Arrivals

African Sounds Reign: Angélique Kidjo Takes Home The 2023 Polar Music Prize

Désire De Oliveira, a pioneering Civil Blaster and Managing Director of Laduma Blasting in South Africa, has worked in one of the most male-dominated industries of all – construction and mining. And all she wanted to really do was hone her skills as a French pastry chef.



In her 65 years, Désire De Oliveira has never stopped moving, running her own financial accountancy business for 30 years, raising four kids, qualifying as a French pastry chef, and starting the Seaside Lodge B&amp;B in Salt Rock in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province in 2006.



Seaside Lodge B&amp;B remains consistently booked and was one of the accommodation businesses that survived Covid-19.



She’s also the first woman of color in KwaZulu-Natal to be a certified Opencast blaster (mining) and a certified Civil blaster. To put it simply: blasting is where rock gets blown into pieces with small amounts of explosive – a trickier process than one might think.



“Every accountant will tell you, the smaller the gross profit, the bigger the margin – that’s the business you’re looking for,” De Oliveira says to FORBES AFRICA. So when the owner of Laduma Blasting wanted her to partner in the business, due to her knowledge of its operations after doing its books, she agreed to make it her sole focus for one year.



She intended to return to her first passion – baking – after the year was up.



She put up the capital and he put up the blasting knowledge. In her first six months, she brought in significant business. Eventually, De Oliveira took over the company entirely and decided to get qualified as a blaster, while having a licensed blaster on hand to learn from.



It was not an easy road, as industry professionals told her she would need at least 10 years’ experience to find jobs in the sector. In 2015, she received her Learner Civil blaster, by 2016, her Opencast blaster certificate for mining, and in 2021 she finished her Civil blaster requirements.



And she’s managed to get the jobs they said she could not.



“Though everything I have succeeded at seems a walk in the park, that is because I embrace life for what it is. I have no regrets. Every hardship seems to have been used as a challenge. Looking back now and joining the dots, because of my belligerent attitude to life, I’m a non-conformer, not a follower, am also not a pushover, and certainly not a dreamer. Everything I have done, has been done my way – there’s been no mentors. I also do not carry baggage, none at all, life is too short,” De Oliveira explains.



Three of her family members contracted Covid-19 in December 2020, including herself. Her husband Peter Rutsch died due to Covid-19 in January 2021.



“It was a big shock. I missed him because as much as we didn&#8217;t see each other, we were good. He encouraged me. He let me do my thing. He did his thing. Nobody pulled each other back.”



She battled for four months with long Covid. Laduma Blasting was closed for that time too, and she had to pick up the pieces and start work again.



De Oliveira has spent the last 40 years working on average 19 hours a day, 360 days a year, including seeing to the children, cooking and caring for the home.



Home maintenance and childcare is called ‘invisible labor’, and something an Oxfam analysis valued at $10.9 trillion per year globally.



De Oliveira did not have an easy life as a woman of color in apartheid South Africa; facing the double blow of racial discrimination in all sectors including work and patriarchal attitudes, as well as surviving sexual abuse at a young age.



“Like most previously disadvantaged South Africans having lived through apartheid, we came with no capital, were not properly educated, worked hard, but could not command decent salaries – the old adage still prevailed, black people being paid far less than their white counterparts – that’s only starting to change now,” she says.



She thinks every mother in her situation wished for a better education for their children. After the 1994 elections in South Africa, the possibility of a good education started to be a reality, except she and other people did not have the finances to access it.



Now, she has managed to give her children a good education.



“I think I&#8217;ve done that my whole life, working on my own and steering my own ship so I don&#8217;t live off other people. I&#8217;m independent. So, it worked well for me that I didn&#8217;t have anything.”



Despite having long Covid and asthma, De Oliveira is preparing to run the Comrades Marathon for the 13th time this year. And she’s even thinking of opening another business.

Desire De Oliveira, first women in KZN to have a blasting license

Blasting Through The Glass Ceiling In South Africa’s Mining and Construction Sectors

Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, published in 1988, was the first English novel in print by a black woman from Zimbabwe. She is a playwright, novelist, and filmmaker. Her novel in 2018, This Mournable Body, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.



“I would like people to know that personal redemption is possible, even under the worst circumstances,” she says about her latest novel to FORBES AFRICA. She says there’s a feeling that poverty dehumanizes in a way that is unrecoverable, but she believes that the “human thing is not given by the world, it is something we bring into the world when we are born”.



Dangarembga was arrested in Harare in 2021 for protesting against corruption – the same year in which she was awarded the PEN International Award for Freedom of Expression. In 2021, she was also the recipient of the Peace Prize – the first black woman to receive it. In 2022, after an arduous legal process, she was convicted in a Zimbabwean court of inciting public violence, as she and one other person displayed a placard asking for reform on a public road.



Dangerembga has done more than write: she has made a successful, if difficult, foray into filmmaking. After completing her degree, she found a job as a researcher at a video unity in the mid-1980s. She enjoyed the process, and after the unit closed, applied to film school.



She eventually founded Nyerai Films in 1992, the International Images Film Festival for Women (IIFF) in the Director of the Women Filmmakers in Zimbabwe, set up and became the Director of the Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa (ICAPA) Trust in 2009. Dangarembga noticed that funding was given for films that problematize Africans rather than seeing Africans as agents with aspirations. She says this is self-defeating, and something she is concerned about.



The ICAPA Trust does content, training, exhibition and networking events. Dangarembga says they’ve had their ups and downs with funding. She is still looking, and still hoping Zimbabwe’s film industry will grow. She has made 21 short films, shown them internationally and locally, and received awards.



In 2020, she was announced as the University of East Anglia’s inaugural International Chair of Creative Writing, received an honorary fellowship of Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, and in 2022, was selected to receive a Windham-Campbell literary prize for fiction.



Her advice to young filmmakers and writers? “Persevere, you simply have to find a way to persevere.”

Screenshot 2023-02-18 at 11.13.51

Tsitsi Dangarembga: ‘I Would Like People To Know That Personal Redemption Is Possible’

Two earthquakes struck 12 hours apart near Turkey&#8217;s border with Syria on Monday, with the death toll rising to 11,000 as of Wednesday, as rescuers continue to dig through thousands of collapsed buildings.



At around 4AM, the first earthquake of 7.8 in magnitude shook the city of Gaziantep, while 80 miles north in the Kahramanaras province, the second measured 7.7, according the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre’s (EMSC) preliminary data.



With rescuers searching in the bitter cold of winter, this humanitarian crisis is putting pressure on an area already burdened with economic adversity and displacement due to the war in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in Turkey lived in areas now destroyed by the earthquake.



A citadel in Aleppo, Syria – which has stood for centuries – has sustained serious damage, indicating the intensity of seismic activity. Aleppo is one of the worst-hit areas in north-western Syria.



The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has called for the lifting of sanctions, stating: “Lifting of sanctions will open the doors for additional and supplemental aid that will provide immediate relief to those in need.”



The International Rescue Committee has called for increased funding for humanitarian aid, saying that many people have already been displaced up to 20 times, and health facilities were already “stretched beyond capacity, not just because of conflict, but also as a result of a recent cholera outbreak.”



President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan says that Turkey has been offered international aid by NATO, the EU, and 45 other countries following the quake.


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<figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GettyImages-1246862294.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-57476" width="577" height="385" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GettyImages-1246862294.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GettyImages-1246862294-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GettyImages-1246862294-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 577px) 100vw, 577px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"> Photo: Anas Alkharboutli/dpa (Photo by Anas Alkharboutli/picture alliance via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>


The Gift of The Givers has a presence in Syria and Turkey, and awoke to a “terrifying tremor at 04h10” on Monday morning, rapidly evacuating the children from their Bayt Kareem Child Care Centre in Gaziantep.



“The casualties in both countries are expected to increase exponentially. Freezing cold, rain, and snow are hampering search and rescue efforts,” reports the Gift of The Givers.



The organization only responds if a call is made by the affected country for international assistance. They have reportedly been contacted by the Turkish Ambassador to South Africa, Aysegul Kandas, and by the Consul General in Cape Town, Sinan Yesildag, as well as the South African Ambassador to Turkey, Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba, requesting intervention. The Turkish government made a level 4 call for international community aid.



Further assistance of search and rescue and medical teams with specialized equipment flew out on Tuesday evening, with Turkish Airlines facilitating the transport.



Medical supplies, equipment, consumables, tents, blankets, food and other humanitarian aid will be purchased in Turkey by Gift of The Givers.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="763" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GettyImages-1246862587.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-57478" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GettyImages-1246862587.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GettyImages-1246862587-300x224.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GettyImages-1246862587-768x572.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A man stands still in the snow in Malatya, Turkey on Feb. 7, 2023, a day after a powerful earthquake hit southern Turkey and neighboring Syria. (Photo by Kyodo News via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>


“The scale of this disaster as you already know is unprecedented and requires all of us to play whatever role in trying to assist the people of Turkey,” says South Africa’s Ambassador to Turkey, Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba to FORBES AFRICA.



Letsatsi-Duba says knowing their professionalism, capacity and experience, she thought the Gift of The Givers could represent South Africa in helping them, while following protocols regarding assistance from the government.



“We hope that their participation in this mammoth task will go a long way in saving lives and providing much more needed relief aid to the people who are badly affected,” Letsatsi-Duba concludes.



In 1999, an earthquake of similar magnitude in Izmit, Turkey, killed more than 17,000. Turkey sits on the Anatolian tectonic plate, where the North Anatolian fault line and the East Anatolian fault line create an extremely seismically active zone. The North Anatolian fault line borders the Eurasia tectonic plate, and the East Anatolian fault line borders the Arabian plate – where Syria is located.



The 1939 earthquake of similar magnitude killed around 30,000 people, and the population then was



17 million. Now, Turkey has a population of almost 87 million.



As search and rescue continues to dig through rubble and many places remain inaccessible due to damaged roads, the number of deceased will continue to rise. In the first 24 hours, rescuers have found nearly 8,000 people alive, reports AlJazeera.

Turkey-Syria quake

Turkey-Syria Earthquake Death Toll Rises: ‘Scale Of Disaster Unprecedented’, Says South Africa’s Ambassador To Turkey

The negatives of the 1988 anti-apartheid South African film, Mapantsula, lying in a basement for 35 years, have now been restored, to be unveiled at the Berlin International Film Festival next month. FORBES AFRICA speaks to director Oliver Schmitz about the technical process, its enduring relevance and bringing the film back to social memory.



Cut to the 1980s apartheid South Africa and a film released during that time.



Written by Oliver Schmitz and Thomas Mogotlane, Mapantsula debuted originally at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988, amassing worldwide acclaim.



Now, the 35mm negatives of the film have been restored to a 4k resolution by R3store Studios in London.



In 1988, the film-makers had registered it as an apolitical gangster movie in order to get it past the censor board. The apartheid regime’s Directorate of Publications made 17 cuts of 40 seconds before the film was publicized in South Africa.



“I never cut the film. And we were completely against those cuts. I never approved or saw any version of the film in a cut form,” says Schmitz to FORBES AFRICA.



Key cast and crew members agreed to let the film be pirated on VHS, never earning anything on the African release, but the film was pirated and seen endlessly, he explains.



Recently, Schmitz decided that if he didn’t restore the film, it would either disappear or end up as a bad copy on YouTube. He invested his own money with Aaryan Trivedi, his partner at What The Hero Wants (WTHW).



Color correction, picture and sound processing were done at PurpleDOG Post, a post-production house in Canada, and original analogue audio tracks were enhanced and re-mastered. Final adjustments were made at Studio Mitte.



Schmitz spent a lot of time bringing the vibrancy of the color back from the faded film.



“So now with hindsight and a firmer grasp of the technique – and not changing it because it&#8217;s very important that the same film comes to life again – the color is much more intense. So I&#8217;m very happy about that.”



Arguably, the themes of the film remain relevant today; South Africa has a high crime rate, stark economic inequality, a legacy of enduring violence, employer-employee power imbalances in informal work, and police brutality.



Some would contend that poor black people remain second class citizens, and the film’s representation of how structural racism affects both the criminal and law-abiding person remains pertinent.



Out of interest, Schmitz has been asking South Africans of all ages to comment on how the film impacts them.



“What affirms my opinions in a way is that a lot of young South Africans watch the film, and it feels as relevant to them as it did to another generation back then… And publicizing some of that now, I think a lot of those issues are as valid as they were before, and [while] it is about this very specific time in South African history, the socioeconomic conditions – a lot of them are still very much there.”



Regardless of a change of system, he adds that the system the film explored remains in South Africa in many ways.



“We commented on this at the time, about these characters being agents in their own story; it was very important for us that this film is a celebration in a weird way, because it&#8217;s about resilience and about empowerment, and the characters are not an object, or pawn pieces on a chessboard to show how bad things are, in a sense of suffering.”



The main character Panic is an opportunistic, petty criminal who is caught between individual advancement and the social drive to revolt against apartheid’s injustices.



Schmitz says that while he’s not going to go into a justification of criminality, there’s always been an element where crime is a rebellion against a system and structure, and out of need as well.



The subculture of AmaPantsula developed in the 1950s, considered then in some quarters to be well-dressed “gangsters”. That idea has been debated, as the subculture has also been documented as a response to forced removals by the apartheid regime, according to Unlabelled Magazine in a 2019 article on The Evolution of The Pantsula Subculture.



“I think what it was then was very individualistic, and a kind of way of being a rebel. And what it&#8217;s now as a subculture of music and dance is something more communal,” muses Schmitz.



He says you can draw a thread through time in terms of music and style, with present Pantsula culture paying homage to the past, but he believes as a style and dance, it’s morphed into something else.



In terms of the technical process, he says he never would’ve imagined how much work it would be – with a negative in a basement for 35 years, and chemicals in film that are not static through time.



“There’s blotches, there’s streaking, scratching, there&#8217;s dust, there’s fading. The focus, which kind of disappears, it&#8217;s almost like memories fading, and you have to try and get all of it back,” he explains.



Schmitz recalls how Kodak film had pulled out of South Africa because of the sanctions, so the only stock left was a German high-speed stock, which was more light-sensitive but grainier. Pushing the film material resulted in more grain.



The restoration process made him want to cry, and alternately, sometimes he thought the product looked great. Along the way, there were several committed people who helped bring it back to life, he says.



“Maybe there&#8217;s lessons to learn for other films, and maybe for other South African films so that they don&#8217;t disappear. Because we live in a culture where anything that’s pre-digital, unless it’s pulled into the digital age, it will be out of the communal memory, it will stop existing because it&#8217;s not in our current world.”



The newly-restored film is set to be unveiled at the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) next month.

Still from Mapantsula (1988) film restored 1

From Memory To Technicolor: South African Apartheid-Era Film To See New Life In Digital Age

The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) decided on Thursday to hike electricity prices by 18.65%, taking effect by April 1.



This comes as South Africans face Stage 6 rolling blackouts for the foreseeable future, with most citizens sitting in the dark for more than six hours a day.



Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis took to Twitter to say: “Eskom’s NERSA-approved 18,6% electricity price hike is unfair, unaffordable, and unjust. The City is planning to lessen reliance on Eskom’s increasingly unaffordable electricity by buying power on the open market.”



In the submission to NERSA in September 2022, Eskom wanted South Africans to pay 32% more for electricity in the new financial year.



While the 18.65% tariff hike is less than the 32% requested, Eskom gets another 12.74% hike in April 2024.



The state-owned enterprise is aiming to recover R351 billion ($21 billion) with the tariff hike for 2023/2024, and R381 billion ($22.7 billion) in 2024/2025.



In Eskom’s financial results released last month, the 2021/2022 financial year’s losses were R12.3 billion ($734 million) as opposed to R25 billion ($1.5 billion) the year before, according to BusinessTech. The reduction in loss was reportedly due to higher sales revenue driven by a 15% tariff increase.



“How much of Eskom’s problem is having to be shouldered by customers – rather than finding a broader solution that would deal with things like debt – and not have to give its customers the result of its mismanagement and the financial burden of continuing its system?” says David Fig, a South African political economist and environmental sociologist, to FORBES AFRICA.



Fig goes onto say that the financial problems of Eskom need to be resolved in a different way, as not just the domestic arena has been affected by interrupted power availability, but industry too.



The state-owned enterprise reports that in 2023, the debt is likely to be R20.1 billion ($1.2 billion), without taking into account the price increase.



Fig posits that we are in a global situation where power is becoming more expensive for most people on the planet, as a result of shortages, and the war in Europe disrupting the supply chain. The situation in South Africa, he says, is partly a response to the global rise in energy costs.



Eskom has invested in a range of renewables. A criticism of solar is often that the sun isn’t always shining – but there are ways of capturing, storing and reusing solar.



With all sources of energy, Fig says there are problems of intermittency.



“So, for example, if you invest in more nuclear you also have periods when the reactors have to be stopped for 18 months – periods of fuel change, for example.”



When things go wrong at power stations, he says, this also creates a situation of intermittency. Something he doesn’t think is an excuse.



“I think every technology should be evaluated for a whole range of criteria, including costs, including appropriateness for our developing country, our economy, and not burdening us with huge debt, and the cost of poor decision-making.”



He concludes by saying that at the moment, the costs to the nation of solar and wind are far below all other costs of different energy technology.



“So, we have to consider it, and even if there are some challenges, we have to go ahead with them.”



With small and medium businesses, as well as working class families and those living below the poverty line likely to struggle to keep the lights on and the food from going off this year, we may have to collectively come up with sustainable alternatives – now, rather than later.

Silhouette Skyscrapers Against Orange Sky

18.65% Electricity Tariff Hike In South Africa: What Are The Current Options?

A persistent acne problem led Botswana’s Didintle Moreki to look for indigenous solutions in her backyard, and grow her skincare range into a successful business.



Didintle Moreki’s entrepreneurial story literally took root in her past.



In Botswana’s vast semi-arid shrub, grass and tree landscape, Mowana, Morula and Moringa grow naturally in the wild. The image of her grandmother and mother tending to them – as they knew the plants’ true benefits – and using them for the family is well-etched in her mind.



This is the imagery Moreki has carried forward as the founder of Organic Naturals Skincare, a Botswana-based beauty brand she launched in 2019 using ingredients indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa.



The ingredients are widely available but not many know their health benefits, and that is what 26-year-old Moreki wants to spread as ubiquitously as the plants.



There is also a key staple in her products – the will to work with local businesses to sustain families. The company works with women-led cooperatives who farm and supply or simply collect the plants from the wild.



“I found out about the potency of Morula, and then the potency of Moringa; it is in every single household in Botswana, and I never understood why. It’s [called] the tree of life for a reason. Its properties are your vitamin C and vitamin A,” says Moreki to FORBES AFRICA.



Mowana, high in omega-3 fatty acids with anti-inflammatory properties, is considered a treatment for acne. Marula, often used as a moisturizer, is high on vitamin C that can reduce hyperpigmentation caused by acne.



Once picked, the plants are processed into oils – and they are all chemical-free. The supply chain creates economic opportunities in local economies such as Maun, Botswana’s fifth-largest town.



According to Moreki’s website, three out of five women in Maun are breadwinners for their families, so her work is imperative.



“I was always an early bloomer,” smiles Moreki, who started school at the age of three and entered university to study accounting at the age of 16.



Recalling her early years, Moreki speaks of how she struggled with acne, and used western medicine to little avail and often adverse physical reactions.



“Nobody knows you, but everyone feels the right to talk about your situation,” she explains, remembering the one time someone suggested toothpaste and lemon juice as remedy for a breakout.



While everyone had an unsolicited comment about something she had little control over, Moreki’s confidence dropped. Then, her grandmother introduced her to the virtues of the local plants while she was on a break from university. And her skin improved.



From 2015, the idea was born; a face care range using locally-sourced and easily-available plants, which could in turn, help financially empower families.



“I was intrigued by why Moringa was in every single home, especially in my village, Kanye. When we were young, if you had back pain, or period pains, we would drink these leaves in tea.”



Kanye is a town in the southeast region of Botswana, 83 kilometers from the capital Gaborone, near the border with South Africa.



Marula grows in the south and north of Botswana. At the beginning of the year, it blooms in the south.



Organic Naturals Skincare works with a cooperative, BLG, comprising 1,800 women and men who go out and pick the Morula. They get paid for every bag.



“Before, we would just go out and gather Moringa in the wild. But instead, we have decided that unlike Marula…Moringa can actually be farmed,” says Moreki.



Organic Naturals Skincare faced a number of challenges.



“The first was finding a distribution partner, showing the legitimacy of what we’re doing, gathering the funds for testing, and most importantly ensuring the sustainability of our products on the shelves. So, going into retail was not easy… it required us to build a strong distribution.”



She adds that building the team was also a challenge.



Found in 17 stores across Botswana, Organic Naturals Skincare boasts 12 products including bar soaps, facial toners, clay masks, a facial serum, body butter, body oil and hand sanitizers.



The brand launched another product in October, a Niacinamide serum, which is a form of Vitamin B3 that helps protect cells from pollution and sunlight.



2022 has been significant as Moreki expanded to three more countries – South Africa, Zambia, and Lesotho. It has widened the scope of her work.



“Expansion means a lot of things for us, particularly in the sense that it gives us more local opportunities in terms of employment, and it also gives us the opportunity to accelerate or catalyse support in regards to our suppliers, and lastly, it means more of a footprint, it means vocalizing the power of indigenous plants on the skin and how they help people.”



Moreki is set to expand to other markets disseminating the fact that it’s time the rest of the world understood the benefits of indigenous knowledge systems.

Screenshot 2023-01-02 at 16.40.53

Business-Savvy In Botswana: From Plants To Profits

<h2 class="has-text-align-center wp-block-heading" id="h-wemimo-abbey-co-founder-esusu">Wemimo Abbey Co-Founder, Esusu</h2>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“We like to call ourselves [social] justice capitalists.”</blockquote>



Wemimo Abbey, co-founder of Esusu, a company which reports rent payments to major credit bureaus helping renters establish their credit scores and owners maximize returns, says the company was born out of personal struggles.



Abbey grew up in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria, and was raised by his mother, along with two sisters, after his father passed away when he was just two years old. Despite having less than a secondary school education, his mother ensured he went to one of the best high schools they could find. This took the family from the lush tropical climate of Lagos to the freezing climes of Minnesota in the US.



“During that transition, something important happened. We didn&#8217;t have a credit score. We walked into one of the largest financial institutions to borrow money [and] were turned away. We had to go borrow money from a predatory lender at over 400% interest rate.”



His mother pawned his father’s ring and borrowed money from church members to make payments. This led Abbey and his co-founder, Samir Goel, to start a company premised on the idea that no matter where you come from or the color of your skin, your financial identity shouldn’t ring fence your path in life.



Aside from establishing credit scores, Esusu gives zero-interest rent relief paid directly to landlords when people cannot pay, so people are not evicted.



Abbey says they’re not solving homelessness backwards, adding that they operate on the social aspect of ESG – to give data-driven improved credit scores.



After university, both Abbey and Goel quit their corporate jobs, combining savings and $100,000 in credit card debt to fund the startup. After being rejected by almost 326 potential investors at the time, Abbey says it’s a scrappy story of realizing potential. Today, Esusu covers three million rental units in 50 US states, across real estate asset classes including affordable public housing, luxury student housing, military, and everything in between. They’ve grown from a staff of 20 to 200 in under two years. Not to mention, they’re making an impact despite their youth; Goel is 28, Abbey is 30.



“At Esusu we like to call ourselves [social] justice capitalists. Doing good and doing well isn&#8217;t mutually exclusive,” Goel says. He argues they are in the best position to create solutions for the demographic that not only looks like them but also are going through similar challenges.



They started with a savings model, digitizing age-old collective community savings techniques. However, they soon learned people already knew how to save, so they pivoted their model after realizing most consumers didn’t have access to affordable financing in an emergency.



“It&#8217;s quite obvious that we don&#8217;t look like everyone else in Silicon Valley. But I think beyond that, one of the things we realized is a lot of the people we were talking to lacked proximity to the issues that we were trying to solve,” says Goel. He says that, from their perspective, they’re serving the majority, as there are more people who are credit invisible like immigrants, minorities, and low-income households. Within these brackets, there are more people living paycheck-to-paycheck than those who are not.



Abbey reflects that a mobile phone is a powerful tool for digitizing African economies and unlocking opportunities. “We&#8217;re very excited that on the African continent with the emergence of new technologies, borrowing money doesn&#8217;t have to be a derivative of your father&#8217;s last name anymore.” He adds that it has become more about credit risk and financial profiles. These innovations, he notes, means the world is seeing Africans create solutions for Africans.



“So this is the movement of the African continent from this aid-based, poverty-ridden continent to a new era of innovation, technology, championed by its youth population. We think the movement is just getting started. So, it&#8217;s common business sense [for] the folks in Silicon Valley making these investments on the continent. My opinion – the best is still yet to come.”



Goel says Esusu does not look like other unicorns in the US, as their capitalization table is 75% black and brown women, the management team is 93% people of color, first- or second-generation immigrants and women. The company as a whole is composed of people of color.



Abbey says when they were declared a unicorn, they were immensely grateful. The company tells the story that it’s possible to invest in a minority-owned business and outperform other companies. Overall, Esusu tells a story of the impact and effect capital can have in the lives of many.



Abbey observes that a lot of African countries are young with the oldest around 60 years old, unlike the US which is over 300 years old. “If you look at the rate of growth, it&#8217;s actually accelerating compared to where places like the United States were when they were at this age,” he says.



It’s a renaissance that technology is going to revolutionize the way the continent thinks, and the way other places think about Africa. The narrative is changing from tourism and wildlife to which high-growth startups to invest in.



“We need to do more of the showing and stop telling people. Let the record speak for itself! Relegate the rhetoric, consider there’s something genius and there&#8217;s something special about the folks that come from the continent. And we&#8217;re just getting started. Because we&#8217;re young, we&#8217;re vibrant, we have ideas that can really change the world,” Abbey concludes.

Author: Lillian Roberts

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA