Depression and anxiety are highly stigmatized in the boardroom and top executives have become masters at keeping it locked down, going to extreme lengths to hide such problems.
In the fast-paced corporate world, if you are falling apart, you dare not show it. But is that a good thing?
Recent research has shown many successful women are victims of stress as they strive to balance work and family. But even as children and careers collide, women need to prioritize their wellbeing.
Take 40-year-old successful corporate woman and mother of two, Nicci (surname withheld for confidentiality), who says she experienced “a ridiculously heightened sense of anxiety” possibly linked to post-natal depression after the birth of her first child.
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“I was 36, I was trying to run a business, a home and look after my baby. I remember feeling isolated, alone and incompetent, and being an established business woman, that was a terrible feeling,” she says, echoing the thoughts of many like her.
“I have learned there is no such thing as the perfect balance between a career and motherhood. This is a myth propagated by the media and there is no way women are achieving this holy grail. There are times when you have more time for your career, then something happens and bang, you have to pay more attention to your family. It’s also important to note that a man who has a successful wife often simply assumes he will also have the perfect wife and mother and it is our complicity in this which adds to the pressure. We, as women, try and do it all,” says Nicci.
Dr Colinda Linde, Chair of the Advisory Board at the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG), and a practicing clinical psychologist, feels modern working women have no role models when it comes to managing the demands of a career and family life.
“Even if our mothers worked, few had careers which resembled those of today and the demands of parenting have also changed, with children’s schedules often as busy as those of their parents. In a dual income household, it mainly still falls to the woman to run the home. This leads to feeling divided and not really being present in the moment – when you are at a school event, your phone is still beeping and when you are at work, your home or issues with your children may also be on your mind,” says Linde.
Over time, this leads to stress and burnout. She says while women learn to rely on other women such as housekeepers or mothers to help with child-rearing, they tend not to expect their partners to take on domestic responsibilities.
“There is a trend emerging where men are doing more to help in the home than their fathers did, by a significant amount, but it is still a relatively small part compared to the typical female portfolio of duties,” says Linde.
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Falling Off The Cliff
Richard Hawkey from Equilibrium Solutions, who has worked with Linde and has conducted substantial research, reveals findings where anxiety, depression or burnout, while highly stigmatized as a sign of weakness, are more than common, with women more affected than men.
Hawkey, who calls himself ‘the recovering banker’, says he slipped into severe clinical depression in 2010 after 15 years in a top position in the finance sector.
“As a senior manager, I had no idea how damaging stress was, or that if you are a Type-A personality (achiever, driver, controller), there isn’t necessarily a slow decline to warn you the cliff is approaching – you simply fall off the end one day. I was happily married, with great children and a house in the suburbs, along with all the trappings of success, so how could I have a breakdown and become depressed?”
Since then, he has recovered and is finishing a Master’s degree in Applied Psychology, and also set up his company Equilibrium Solutions, which in partnership with several doctors, has designed Vitals Software, a confidential online stress self-awareness and management tool.
He gathered and analyzed data from 2,500 respondents surveyed via this online resource. Most were white-collar workers, 98% from South Africa.
Hawkey says key findings, such as 37% complaining of unexplained chest pains were “worryingly high”, as was the 50% of respondents ‘living for Fridays’, highlighting high levels of apathy
and demotivation.
He adds women consistently scored higher than men in the manifestation of various symptoms.
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Hawkey says the situation may well be worse than indicated by the findings, as anecdotal evidence reveals executives are self-medicating, won’t use Employee Assistance Programs and will take two weeks of leave pretending they are ‘going on holiday’, but in fact are booking into a psychiatric unit.
“This anecdotal evidence is quite terrifying. Executives will pay for such treatment with cash and will not use their medical aid in order to keep the problem hidden,” he says.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 350 million people across the globe suffer from depression, with less than half receiving treatment due to a number of barriers, a prime one being the social stigma attached to mental disorders.
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More Pressure For The Top Brass
While women trying to balance a career and family are expected not to show any weakness, Hawkey adds that women in the upper echelons of management are particularly under pressure, as they have to appear tough and if from a historically-disadvantaged background, have to prove themselves beyond tokenism, while at the same time shoulder the burden of family.
“My advice to women who are feeling overwhelmed is to speak to someone you trust. It’s important to know you are not alone,” he says.

Don’t Worry,  The CEO Gets Depressed Too

It’s hard to believe Danai Gurira wields a sword for a living.
On the small screen, she’s Michonne, a swift zombie slayer in America’s current hit-television series The Walking Dead.
Off-screen however, seeing her perched comfortably in a corner of her hotel room, stirring honey into her tea on a wet Johannesburg morning, is a slightly odd experience.
This is because there’s no trace of that steely aggressiveness her character has in The Walking Dead. Her current choice of outfit, a gleaming fitted white dress and perfectly crimson lipstick, is also a far cry from Michonne’s dirty khakis and dreadlocks.
With a strong track record of stellar roles both on celluloid and television in America, Gurira is channeling her influence into investing in the arts in Zimbabwe. This is in the hope that her home country and the rest of the continent will start to do the same, with the African woman as the main beneficiary.
“The idea of telling African women stories was [me] responding to a call I felt needed to be done, that I had to do in the course of my life,” says Gurira.
“I had to do it in a way that was excellent and facilitated other people’s talents, gave stories to women who often don’t get to tell stories, and don’t get to be the lead in a story.”
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Despite being born in Iowa in the United States, Gurira calls Zimbabwe home, where she spent much of her younger life with her family until the age of 19. She then returned to America and enrolled at the Macalester College in Minnesota. Since graduating and now, at 36, Gurira has received critical acclaim for her acting, but what stands out is her playwriting. Her play In the Continuum alone garnered the Helen Hayes, Obie and Outer Critics Circle awards. Her 2012 play, The Convert, also scored her a nomination from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Writing.
“I always wanted to tell really powerful stories as an actor, but I will say there was something very powerful and interesting to me about being the creator of a story. When I get acting work, I go in, do it and it’s something I have been trained in. When I get a job I embrace it, but the thing that burdens me is getting the stories out,” she says.
It’s no surprise then that all of Gurira’s plays have the woman as the central character. This is from two women dealing with HIV in In the Continuum to abduction and sexual exploitation of women during wartime in Eclipsed.  These are harrowing and poignant women’s stories, intermingled with uncomfortable truths rarely talked about. Gurira nonetheless exposes them on stage.
“I have to get uncomfortable when I tell a story, and then I have to allow other people to get uncomfortable too. As a child growing up on the [African] continent, I will say I was raised in a home where I was allowed to be rather outspoken. I’m thankful I grew up in that environment,” says Gurira.
“I think that that sort of discomfort of letting girls be front and center in the stories I tell is a discomfort I want people to have. There are some discomforts I pursue, because I want that story to be told. That allows for people to start to really grapple with things, and then perchance progress towards healing. So I definitely pursue discomfort in the stories I tell.”
Investment in the arts is therefore crucial for the continent, where women dominate the informal sector.  According to a United Nations report, 84% of women nonagricultural workers were informally employed between 1999 and 2000 in sub-Saharan Africa, as opposed to 63% of nonagricultural male workers.
While women are at a clear disadvantage, the silver lining, according to the report, was that the lack of permanent employment pushed women towards self-employment.
Almasi, Gurira’s dramatic arts training organization in Zimbabwe, could be another platform that encourages self-investment.
It is however a fairly young organization, and will need more than just Gurira’s founding name to build its theater foundations.
“I felt there was stagnancy in [Zimbabwe’s] progress in this particular art form. Not music, not literature, just the dramatic arts.”
Arts funding in Zimbabwe, according to Gurira, has only been trickling in despite the country’s prolific literary works, from the likes of Shimmer Chinodya, Tsitsi Dangarembga and Cont Mhlanga.
With a new play on the cards, and her existing plays in the process of being dramatized in Malawi and Zambia, Gurira expects an interesting diasporic language to begin unfolding in the name of theater.
“I want Zimbabwe to have great literary work. Just like we have NoViolet Bulawayo and Tsitsi Dangarembga, we need more literary artists in the dramatic realm. I think the world is almost ready to hear our stories, and it’s a fertile moment for the African and the African woman to start taking the helm in terms of being a storyteller,” she says.

A Sword as mighty as the pen

Every country in Africa seems to want its share of the fashion business, and forge its own style identity. What better way to do so than with glitzy week-long fashion extravaganzas?
South Africa has always enjoyed a lead in this department. Three of the most popular annual fashion fiestas here are the fashion weeks organized by African Fashion International (AFI), recognized for their association with the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Weeks of New York, Berlin and Miami. AFI puts together three events in Johannesburg and Cape Town, linking a luxury car brand with top fashion.
In addition, the country also hosts the South African Fashion Week, yet another showing of superlative design and talent. With as many fashion-forward events through the year, it is clear they are viable business platforms, particularly for the local designers who get to showcase their collections and be noticed by media and discerning buyers.
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“Once the show is over, the buyers, the press and couture clients move on to the next show on their list. The designer goes back to his or her showroom to get ready for the onslaught of buyers,” says AFI spokesperson Nicholas Maweni.  One of the designers who has benefitted from these fashion weeks is Abigail Betz. Her three-dimensional opening sequence raised the stakes at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Joburg held in March when South African model Lalla Hirayama appeared dressed like a geisha, complete with milk-white face, bold eyeshadow and pink lips. Her collection had elements of lace, some tartan and dogstooth for the winter jackets. Betz had sold two garments at a special preview for clients even before her collection had graced the catwalk.
“I don’t just send things down the ramp that are crazy and ridiculous that I know I can’t sell. Every single piece of fabric that I buy, every month of work, detailing, beading is very carefully thought through. It’s thought through for a very particular client base,” says Betz, who also has clients in Angola, Botswana, Namibia, and overseas. Other designers like Shana Morland of Shana, see the fashion weeks as effective marketing platforms.
“Showing at fashion week allows us to bring our customers and the media into an environment purely created by us to launch our latest range. We are also able to give our customers a great experience of the brand,” says Morland. Though Morland hasn’t shown on international ramps yet, she has overseas clients who visit her stores in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
The fashion industry is indeed a competitive, challenging market. Over the past year, South Africa has seen numerous international brands making their way into the market, raising the competition. Morland says international brands are a threat when it comes to pricing.
“Maintaining a locally-manufactured label adds a lot to the cost, whereas international labels are getting the garments at extremely small costs. Our customers are people who value firstly local design but also the experience they get when walking into our store and having a one-on-one relationship,” says Morland.
Betz says the influx of international brands is actually welcome.
“It’s good for everybody. If we’re not exposed to what other people are doing, we’re just going to become stagnant and get left behind. It’s very important for us to have the stimulation to want to push and move forward. If other big brands are coming in, that’s good,” she says.
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Fashion weeks not only benefit organizers and designers. Every show generates its share of part-time jobs for the models, the interns and production companies working directly and indirectly with the event.
“At any stage during the fashion week, there are over 200 people employed and many SMEs supported through the AFI supply chain management,” says Maweni.
Through the partnership with Mercedes-Benz, AFI sends, through an exchange program, some of the designers to other global Mercedes-Benz Fashion Weeks.
Fashion designer David Tlale was the first South African to have a solo show at this year’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week New York, Autumn/Winter, after three seasons of installations. Maweni says the global collaboration is a great benefit to the business of fashion and supports a rich territory for brands wishing to associate with luxury, style and design.

A geisha In Africa

Beauty queens are tall, slender 20-somethings with wavy hair and porcelain skin pledging for world peace. While that is the widely-held perception, older women will also get to do their turn on the ramp as the contestants of Mrs South Africa on August 8 at the Emperor’s Palace
in Johannesburg.
This year, the event will see 41-year-old South African Riana Mooi try her best to win the crown; she is the oldest finalist to participate in the pageant’s history. As its name implies, Mrs South Africa is aimed at married women between ages 25 and 50. For Mooi, age is no deterrent as she hopes to inspire others like her.
“Your life does not end when you get married and have kids. You don’t need to let your age define you or limit you from opportunities,” says Mooi, who is a mother of two and works for Nedbank
in Johannesburg.
For some like Joani Johnson, who won Mrs South Africa in 2009, the contest was a stepping stone for a full-time career as a businesswoman. Two years after she won the crown, she bought the pageant for R500,000 ($47,600) from its previous owner. Since then, Johnson has been working hard on the image of the contest, and is now readying for the 2014 event. Johnson is also trying to shake off her beauty queen persona as she wants to be seen as more than just a pretty face.
“Being in the pageant industry, a lot of people assume that you’re this beauty queen, this ‘poppy’ with no brain. Sometimes you can actually use that to your advantage; I’ve walked into a lot of meetings where people have underestimated me.”
Johnson would like to see the pageant gain as much recognition as its better-known counterpart, Miss South Africa, which dates back to 1956, when Norma Vorster became its first winner.
The 2014 edition of the pageant televized to a national audience in March was a glamorous night replete with celebrity judges and special performances by famed South African musicians Mi Casa, Bucie, Matthew Mole and Brendan Jury. This was the night 23-year-old Roulene Strauss was crowned Miss South Africa 2014.
While most competitions stipulate a minimum height and size requirement, Melinda Bam, a former Miss South Africa (2011) and currently Executive Director of the pageant, says the organizers don’t put any pressure on the girls to look a certain way. Bam credits much of the success of this year’s competition to its re-branding through wide television coverage of the run-up to the pageant as well as its publicity on social media.
The pageant has been a great platform to launch careers. Basetsana Makgalemele (now Basetsana Kumalo), arguably its most successful winner, was crowned Miss South Africa in 1994, the year South Africa became a free, democratic country. Later that year, she was also crowned first runner-up at the Miss World pageant in Sun City, South Africa.
Kumalo is today a successful businesswoman in the entertainment industry. Other Miss South Africa winners to have gained fame in the entertainment sector include Jo-Ann Strauss, Cindy Nell, Nicole Flint, Bokang Montjane and Peggy-Sue Khumalo.
Strauss, this year’s winner, put a hold on her medical studies to pursue her dream, and says the win is part of her bigger plan to start a medical business. Mixing medicine and business would be following in the footsteps of her role model Precious Motsepe, a medical doctor and Executive Chairperson of African Fashion International in South Africa.
“I’ve always looked up to her. You see these business couples where the man is the strong one and the woman is the one who supports the husband. But I’ve always seen Dr Precious as someone who is independent and strong in her own way as well,” says Strauss.
While there are many critics of the beauty pageant industry, winners attest such contests lead to empowering careers like any other – only that they have to look beyond the gloss and the glam.

Beyond Lipstick & Luster

To describe Brenda Davies, spiritual guru and faith healer, as an extraordinary person does not begin to do her justice. Even a brief retelling of her life story takes her from a tough upbringing in the North of England during the war, breaking through class barriers and becoming a consultant psychiatrist in the United Kingdom, to life today on a Zambian farm where she lives and supports 112 grown-up orphans.
From a very young age, Davies felt a strong connection with spirits, and she now works as a psychiatrist, faith healer and medium, teaching and writing about such things with amazing success around the world.
Aged in her mid-70s, her work incorporates the structures and rigor of traditional medicine but includes less orthodox skills which she has used to establish the Dr Brenda Davies International School of Healing and Spiritual Development.
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The first two years of school is for anybody who wants to sign up.
“It’s quite emotionally demanding, and at the end they are presented with a Diploma in Spiritual Development,” says Davies. By invitation, students then progress to healing techniques which involve reading and using energy.
“In the here and now, I marry together my medical career, my natural gift as what people call a healer, and all the other things that I love to do,” she says.
For Davies, the ‘here and now’ means running a farm 30 kilometers from Lusaka, milking cows and helping build a wall. Or seeing somebody for psychiatry or with a cut foot where she can do a bit of surgery, or writing her many books, healing or teaching at her worldwide school.
“We don’t run a traditional farm. We grow vegetables and sell those, but rather we tend to farm people. Everyone gets some training and we have nurses, teachers, electricians, even a conservationist.”
Her spiritual and healing work takes her everywhere. In Japan, she has a large following and works at the government level advizing how spirituality can help in the workplace and curb the high suicide rate there. In Zambia, people might come for psychotherapy or marital counseling. She mentors entrepreneurs and politicians. She works with corporates in business and banking worldwide. And she is doing ongoing conflict work in Cyprus and Bosnia, working at grass-roots level helping bring people on both sides of the conflict together.
So to what extent does Davies run her practice as a business?
She has a set rate for work in different countries, but why she works is not about money, it’s about people.
“That said, if someone wants to send me a large sum of money I’m delighted. I don’t need it in my bank, I need it to come through me and I’ll put it where it needs to be.”
For Davies, each monetary transaction is ‘an exchange of energy’. She is happy to take payment in kind if people can’t afford to pay. Money must never stop people getting to see her as she believes there is always a pre-ordained reason why people meet. She loves working with people who are trying to make their way, and one of her ‘joys in life’ is a company called BongoHive, Lusaka’s Technology and Innovation Hub.
BongoHive may be a successful Innovation Hub today, but only recently they were a collection of nine or 10 young people who wanted to make apps – but who had nothing.
In true Davies style, she gave them $15,000, and told them to buy what they needed and to get on with it. She provided structure and leadership, and a couple more ‘exchanges of energy’ along the way. But most importantly, she taught them about spiritual prosperity.
“The very first day I met them, I said here’s the philosophy of spiritual prosperity. You give either before you get or you give immediately after you get, you are always letting it go, so that more can come in – and we always rejoice in everybody else’s success.”
For Davies, those are the principles from which everything grows.
So have BongoHive forgotten their founding principles now that they have won a $50,000 grant from the World Bank and are a big success?
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“When they were going to get some training for 12 people, they asked could they give away some of it by sharing? They have been fantastic!” says Davies.
She is on one of her regular teaching tours which take her around the world. This one is four weeks long, and she is heading to Berlin for seven days for the next leg.
For a woman to become a doctor in post-war Britain, particularly from a poor, working-class background, was exceptional.
“I always had this healer stuff within me, and I used to do it with animals when I was little. No one in my family had ever been to university, let alone done medicine,” she says.
She went on to specialize in psychiatry and work as a consultant in both the National Health Service and in private hospitals. Gradually she began to introduce spirituality and healing into her work in the late 1990s.
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Her other burning life ambition was to go to Africa, having seen pictures of Africa in a book when growing up. So at the age of 27, she set off for Africa.
“Immediately I arrived, I felt that Africa is my spiritual home and where I’m meant to be. And even though I left Africa for a long period in the middle of my life, that has never changed.”
Davies now lives on 100 acres of wonderful land built around two hills and the Kafue River. She describes it as ‘stunning, stunningly beautiful’.
“My dream was to make it into a place of peace and healing, where people with nowhere to go, particularly kids, could come.”
She says that she ‘asked’ for people to come and help her with the project, and that several young orphans were sent to her.
“I arrived there on my own, realized the house had a leaky roof and that I was going to need help. A young man walked up, asked if I needed help. He was a 17-year-old orphan and he’s still with me. He’s now the farm manager”.
Just before we finish, Davies explains what it feels like to communicate with souls.
“Sometimes people want mediumship. A soul has a higher vibrational frequency, and so what I will do is I will raise my frequency levels, the soul will lower theirs until we perceive each other. I’ll sometimes hear them, sometimes feel them, and I’ll speak through my own voice.”
I am not sure I would or could have believed anyone who sat on a sofa and told me about communicating with lost souls. But with Davies, it all seems perfectly normal and eminently believable.

A Healer  Of Souls

She has been listed as one of the ‘12 Names to Change the World’ by the Spanish National Centre for Research on Human Evolution as well as one of the top 10 most influential women in science and technology on the African continent by technology news website IT News Africa.
That’s 62-year-old professor Tebello Nyokong from Rhodes University in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, who is breaking the boundaries of science in cancer research.
Meeting her in her office at the university, one is immediately drawn to her warm personality and the twinkle in her eye. By her own admission, she likes to laugh a lot, and loudly.
Yet, the work she does is no laughing matter.
As Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Nanotechnology at the university, as well as Director of the DST Mintek Nanotechnology Innovation Centre, Nyokong has attracted millions of rands in funding towards her research based on photodynamic therapy (PDT) of cancer.
PDT, which uses dyes and light, is already available for some cancers in the United States (US), Europe and Russia, but currently has strong side effects as the drugs hone in on healthy as well as cancerous tissues.
“Our whole aim is to make molecules that are cancer-specific so that healthy tissue will not be affected,” says Nyokong, going on to detailing the specifics, which any lay person would find hard to understand.
“In our research, PDT is combined with nanoparticles that absorb and re-emit light, thus enabling for visualization in addition to cancer treatment. In cancer therapy, nanoparticles act as delivery agents of the drugs selectively to the cancer tissue. This is due to the fact that cancer has leaky vasculature which allows nanoparticles to enter.”
Simply put, this means the drugs will specifically target cancer cells, which will see cumbersome treatments such as chemotherapy move into the dark ages.
Having overseen several formal collaborations with counterparts across the globe, Nyokong has also been awarded a prestigious Adjunct Professorship by the University of Tromsø in Norway and numerous international scientists have visited her laboratory. She has also hosted many postdoctoral candidates from around the world.
But she is quick to point out that her research is still in the pre-clinical trial phase and many years away from reaching the market.
Considered an icon in the world of science, Nyokong’s state-of-the-art laboratory is a far cry from her primary school days in Lesotho where as a child, she spent alternate days tending sheep and on the weekends, assisted her father who was a construction laborer. These tasks led her to conclude she could do anything a boy could do.
“At the start my father influenced my path. He believed that the apartheid system could only be defeated through education and I was encouraged to excel at a very young age,” she says.
And excel she did, having chosen art subjects for her matric, she changed to science two years before sitting her matric exams.
“The teachers accepted me after this mad move from arts to science and when I entered the University of Lesotho, I was greatly influenced by my lecturer, Dr Gray. After that I was driven by my desire to beat the odds,” she says.
Nyokong went on to obtain her PhD from the University of Western Ontario in 1987 and a Fulbright Fellowship for postdoctoral study at the University of Notre Dame in the US.
“I had academic loneliness, since there were very few women when I started. Now my past students have become professors and are my academic colleagues,” she says.
And she is excited and outspoken about Africa’s potential to excel in science.
On being awarded the National Research Foundation Lifetime Achiever Award last October, she says, “I am driven by being an African, completely, I’m passionate to see us succeed.”
And she is equally passionate when it comes to her students.
“I urge all young people in the country to study to the highest possible level [PhD]. The development of South Africa will depend on highly skilled labor. No country can have lasting economic growth or development without a solid science base. Science is thought to be hard, no, it’s not difficult,” she says. She wishes schools were not judged on their pass rate, but rather on their pupils’ abilities in maths and science.
Her work ethic is phenomenal and her research output has been described as simply extraordinary. In 2012, she published 51 articles, all of them internationally peer-reviewed; in 2013, she released 52 publications and 17 so far this year.
Nyokong admits she has a hectic schedule, between supervising students and attending scientific conferences around the world, which includes going to Oman this year for the World Academy of Sciences conference, where she will be the global representative in chemistry.
And when she’s not in the lab or traveling, Nyokong loves walking, as well as gardening, which she describes as “physical activity with a purpose”. She confesses a great weakness when it comes to beautiful bags and shoes and her ‘must reads’ are Malcolm Gladwell’s  David and Goliath
and Outliers.
A grandmother of two, her favorite holiday destination is Mauritius. As we end the interview,
3I ask her what it’s like to have come from a shepherd girl to a leading woman of science.
“Sometimes I think gosh, that is not me. I’m just doing my work, that’s all it is. I love my students and I embarrass them a lot sometimes.”
When she laughs, it’s from the core of her being. And with the list of honors and accomplishments she has garnered, no wonder she smiles – and the world of science with her.

From Shepherd  To scientist

When you meet her, you are immediately struck by the assertive, determined woman she is. But beneath the tough exterior is a woman with a story, a story of adversity and abuse that has led to her becoming one of Uganda’s top travel and tour operators.
Jackie Kemirembe Rubuubi, the Founder and Managing Director of Platinum Safaris, started small. She began her career in the airline industry as a security officer with Sabena Airways, now known as Brussels Airlines. She worked there until the company, which she calls “a very professional workplace”, ran into operational troubles. It was forced to temporarily close down and change names. She had to make ends meet so she found a temporary job at the Kenya Airways office in Uganda’s capital Kampala.
Soon, a new airline, Africa One, made an entry in the Ugandan airspace. And Rubuubi was headhunted for a top managerial position. The offer came with many promises including tempting bonuses. This made her give it her best, but after some time on the job, Rubuubi started noticing the cracks.
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“Suddenly, I had multiple directors to report to instead of the one that was indicated in my appointment letter. I also never got the bonuses despite signing lucrative deals,” she says. One of the male directors particularly got meddlesome in her duties, unilaterally issuing holiday breaks to members of her team. This upset operations in the section that Rubuubi headed. Frustration set in.
“It was pure harassment and lack of professionalism,” she says.
At the height of it, she decided to have a one-on-one with the female director about the state of affairs. It was going to be a conversation she would never forget – for a long time.
“The director I sought to confide in and the one I was actually supposed to be reporting to told me that as long as I remained employed with them, it wouldn’t be strange if she asked me to go and make their beds! In her view, I was to do anything they wanted me to do despite being a manager. I immediately made up my mind to resign, bringing an end to two daunting years. It turned out to be the worst job I ever had.”
That conversation gave Rubuubi enough reason to leave – and consider starting something on her own. She retreated to London where she found a job as an accountant in a retail food chain.
Within a year, she returned to Uganda on maternity leave. She never returned to London though she kept being paid her salary. She used the money to open a garment shop. The new venture wasn’t doing well but she wanted to avoid being employed again.
It was not easy.
At one point, when she traveled to Dubai to source garments for her shop, she met a Turkish couple who convinced her to open an employment agency to recruit people in Kampala and connect them to odd jobs in Dubai.
The couple turned out to be imposters when they vanished with the $27,000 Rubuubi had given them to process visas for the 230 recruits that had registered.
Her attempts to involve Interpol in tracing them were met with numerous death threats from the couple. She finally gave up and devised a new plan.
With an International Air Transport Association (IATA) qualification under her belt, Rubuubi decided to open a travel and tour company. She registered Platinum Safaris in 2002, starting operations in a small room.
Her first client was an official from the International Criminal Court who not only became a regular but also brought in other customers. The business prospered and she registered it with professional bodies. This brought more opportunities until she shifted office to a new location.
Today, Platinum Safaris is a leading tour and travel service provider in the East African region known for services such as air-ticketing, safaris across the Great Lakes region, honeymoon packages, visa advisory, conference planning and bookings for white-water rafting and gorilla-tracking.
Last year, Platinum received an accolade from Amadeus, a firm that provides travel software and technology solutions for the global travel industry, for its high adoption of solutions. The company also has a raft of honors from other industry players including airlines.
Rubuubi’s vision is to venture into luxury tourism similar to what is offered in Morocco. She is in the final stages of acquiring speedboats that will introduce a new tourism circuit connecting major islands on Lake Victoria, Africa’s greatest lake and source of the Nile.
She says that what she went through made her realize women surely deserve better at the workplace.
“No one expects women to perform better than men. But the fact is many women are stronger than men,” she says.

No More Suffering The Boss

Bottles of perfume or liquor are standard items in suitcases coming home from a trip to America. But when Juliana Rotich, Co-founder and Executive Director of Ushahidi, heads into customs in Nairobi, immigration officials balk at the circuit boards packed into her bags. Rotich laughs when recalling her explanations to officials about her unusual haul – they  help facilitate prototyping new tech solutions in Africa.
Rotich is part of the vanguard of African techies creating ‘by Africans, for Africans’ solutions that respond to the local context and problems that ambitious coders and ordinary cell phone users alike face on the continent. Rather than innovations and technology made ‘for the developing world’, what they are tending toward, says Rotich, is more collaboration.
“Not so much developing for but developing with, which will result in better products that have more impact,” she says.
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The 36-year-old Kenyan, who studied and worked in the United States (US), says she feels most at home in the MediaLab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (which she calls ‘nerdvana’) where she is a fellow, and also at the iHub (an innovation hub for the technology community) in Nairobi.
The flow of information and new connections in Africa has been tremendous in the past decade: new flight routes allow us to go from country to country without a time-consuming connection through Europe.
Yet the Internet, the defining medium of our age, remains out of regular reach for many Africans because of infrastructure issues with older technology. In addition are electricity failures and surges that wreak havoc with productivity and damage expensive equipment. Even in cities widely electrified and where offices have some sort of backup plan, efficiency is curtailed when every person has to reboot and reconnect on a regular basis.
“Despite leaps of progress, one of the showstoppers is when the electricity goes out,” says Rotich.
Lack of Internet also drives up related costs by forcing people to resort to costly telephone calls and SMSes, when using Skype or WhatsApp is virtually free with online access. Enter BRCK, a high-performance modem with a battery big enough to last a full workday, which can charge multiple devices, and can take power from a wall socket, car battery, or just about
any source.
It’s not the sort of solution that’s wanted or needed in cities where continuous electricity and public Wi-Fi are taken for granted.
BRCK is rugged enough to protect its circuits from dust, as well as from ‘dirty’ voltage that can fry computers during a power surge. Multiple SIMs can be used to search for the fastest connection, and aid travelers using various Internet providers in different countries. Financed in part by a Kickstarter campaign, and retailing at $199, the first batch of BRCKs shipped in May.
“If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere,” says Rotich.
Besides BRCK, Ushahidi is the other product Rotich is part of. Ushahidi, which means ‘testimony’ in Swahili, is the name of both the open source crowdmapping software as well as the not-for-profit tech company that provides it. Last year, Ushahidi won a prestigious MacArthur award as a Creative Organization.
Ushahidi was born out of the problematic 2008 elections in Kenya. With traditional media houses shutting down, it was a website initially developed to map reports of post-election violence in Kenya based on eyewitness reports submitted via the web and mobile phones.
More than 45,000 crowdsourced Ushahidi maps have since appeared all over the world, in more than 30 languages, on topics as diverse as human rights abuse, environmental devastation, and where to find the best burger in town.
Ushahidi is registered as a non-profit in the US (with nodes all over, including the key one in Kenya), making it a bit of an
odd duck.
“The money is not in the code – it’s in the expertise to use that open source code, to provide that personalized experience,” says Rotich.
So while Ushahidi software is open source, the organization offers consulting services to large organizations, including United Nations agencies and large nongovernmental organizations that require expertise for implementation. This work makes Ushahidi more sustainable.
“We do get grants, but the percentage of external income is starting to shift,” says Rotich.
It’s hard to get Rotich to talk specifically about her own role at Ushahidi, as she refers to all their successes from a collective point of view. That said, she is the group’s most public face and voice, speaking at TED (a global set of conferences), Design Indaba (held in March in Cape Town), the World Economic Forum, and other groups of movers and shakers. When asked if she envisioned herself in this role, she opens her eyes wide and shakes her head to say no, momentarily speechless, but says it’s an honor to share her organization’s story with people who haven’t heard of it.
“It’s an opportunity to reach more people with an idea we hope can interest them. We don’t have a media budget; we don’t have ads on TV,” she says.
Last year, both of Rotich’s grandmothers passed away, and when she speaks of the irreplaceable loss, her pain is palpable. But she draws strength in remembering their lessons that she has integrated into her life and work, lessons such as the importance of fixing things and helping others.
“The act of making is something that is intrinsic to African culture,” she says, adding that it’s important not to look at the act of making as something beneath you.

A Face In The  Kenyan Crowd

Archel Bernard sits on a bar stool in the middle of her little boutique in downtown Monrovia as a handful of customers drift in and out. Pieces of West African lapa hang over wooden ladders and colorful African-Western fusion designs sit on either side. A sign beside the counter that is made up of bamboo stakes reads ‘Life is Too Short to Wear Boring Clothes’.
The 25-year-old designer and businesswoman moved from Atlanta in the United States (US) in 2011 to her family’s hometown for a job at the government’s oil corporation, and now moonlights as a fashion designer in her spare time. Bernard established a fashion label called ‘It’s Archel’ and set up a shop called Mango Rags in downtown Monrovia, with her business partner Tania Abraham, who also grew up abroad, mainly in the United Kingdom. The shop celebrated its first anniversary in February and is among a small number of boutiques specializing in contemporary African designs, in a country where small fashion businesses are just beginning to emerge over a decade after the civil war, when shopping for clothes was a luxury many could not afford.
Mango Rags, now a polished little shop located in Bernard’s grandfather’s compound that was formerly a car garage, had less glamorous beginnings. Bernard would chug around the city in a white pickup truck driven by her mother Brenda Bush, a producer and writer for CNN, with a tape measure and notebook into which she would jot down her customers’ measurements. Building up a collection of tailors from the workshops spread throughout the city, she dropped off fabric and sketches of designs in between working her nine to five job producing multimedia for the National Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL). Bernard began to save money to open and fit the shop; now with a steady stream of mainly expatriate customers, she is looking to expand.
Born and raised in the US, but always identifying as Liberian and African, Bernard grew up in Atlanta, one of the few black kids in her community of Marietta.
When her mother did carpooling, she dressed in funky African clothes and head wraps.
“Can you dress like the normal mums do?” she had asked her, but later grew to appreciate her style. Named Archel, after her father Archie (a cultural quirk in Liberia), few of her schoolmates could pronounce her name, and so her label is ‘It’s Archel.’
When she was 16, Bernard returned to Liberia after the war to visit her grandfather, a businessman who had stayed throughout the 14-year civil war, despite the family’s insistence that he leave.
“When we landed you could have fried an egg on the runway because there was nothing. It was just a stretch of huts and then you approach the city and there are more concrete structures, but it’s still not America,” says Bernard.
She says the government offers few incentives for young educated Liberians to return, but chooses to stay because she wants to help change Liberia, and transform from a chronic charity case to a ‘place to be’ in Africa.
Now a Liberian returnee, self-described “third world socialite”, designer and government worker, Bernard has capitalized on her social networks, family connections and sense of style to build up her business in a climate that is challenging for entrepreneurs and where a fashion scene is fledgling. Three fashion weeks have been held within the past five years, with the most recent being Monrovia Fashion Week that was held in December, and only five designers have boutiques throughout the city.
“I still kind of feel like a fraud in this; I never went to fashion school,” says Bernard.
Most of the local designers haven’t studied fashion and draw on West African lapas and traditional fabrics and the flamboyant Liberian style as inspiration.
“Liberians really like to dress, they always want to have the nicest thing on,” she says.
Bernard’s main buyers are expatriates; she wishes she had more Liberian customers, but a strong bargaining culture coupled with a lack of respect for intellectual property make things difficult.
Like many Liberians who lived in exile with their families in the US during the war, Bernard returned to her family’s homeland in search of opportunity. With only one subject left to complete of her Science Technology and Culture degree at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Bernard decided to head home to Liberia to work in the local media. She harbored dreams of being Liberia’s Oprah and wanted to create a lifestyle series that focused on the more positive side of the nation that would air on local television stations.
Liberia wasn’t quite ready for a ‘queen of talk’, so instead Bernard worked for Monrovia’s controversial former mayor Mary Broh, and presented updates about the Monrovia City Corporation’s work through short broadcasts, and dressed up in African-inspired fashion. One day, Bernard went to her tailor to pick up a dress she had designed for a show and found the designer both wearing it and stitching it together for another customer. She decided to go out on her own and founded her label ‘It’s Archel’.
While Bernard says Liberia has offered her great opportunities that wouldn’t be available in America, she must juggle the business and a full-time job and has found it impossible to export her clothes due to the high shipping costs. Expanding her business beyond Liberia’s shores still poses a major challenge as it does for most Liberian businesses.
“We can’t be global if it costs so much. People are not going to see the point in paying so much for a little piece from Liberia. We used to make cigarettes, we used to make cans for the goods we made here. We are so small scale here,” she says.
Chid Liberty, the founder of Liberty and Justice, Africa’s first fair-trade-certified apparel manufacturer says that although the business climate is improving, lack of access to finance and the presence of “small manufacturers that can produce international quality” remain ongoing challenges for Liberian designers and the expansion of clothing manufacturing.
“I’m actually quite proud of the job Liberia is doing to make things better but we have a long way to go,” says Liberty.
Liberia’s economy is a concession-based economy with natural resources such as rubber and iron ore making up the majority of its GDP. Critics argue the government has done little to move the nation’s economy from the old plantation style model that has dominated throughout its history.
While signs of change are visible in Monrovia, new shops and office complexes have been constructed, roads repaired, the city is a shadow of the one Bernard’s parents grew up in. Access to steady electricity and running water comes at a high price and many buildings stand in a state of disrepair.
The Wealth of Liberia, a short film shot in the 1970s during the rule of President William R. Tolbert, depicted an image of modern Monrovia and industrial development – factories manufacturing paint, cigarettes, soap, windows and cement – a place where tourists flocked and the Liberia in which her parents grew up. While Bernard acknowledges the major developmental challenges ahead for one of the world’s poorest nations and is concerned about the capacity of her business to expand beyond Liberia’s borders, she is confident she can play a role in changing the image of the small nation and first independent republic in Africa.
Inspired by Louis Vuitton’s partnership with iconic alcohol brands Moët Hennessy, Bernard hopes to create a small sewing shop and African cane juice bar in the room next door.
She also has aspirations of going global and sending Mango Rags stores to Brooklyn, Cape Town and even Maui and develop a range for Swedish multinational retail giant H&amp;M and take Liberia to the world.
“We’re still dreamin’ and working,” she says.

What Do You Do If You Can’t  Be Oprah?

It is hard to imagine that the regal-looking, Zimbabwe-born Margaret Hirsch, dressed in a power suit and elegantly going about her business, was a shorthand typist 40 years ago.
“I knew when I got fired for being pregnant, I would never work for another boss again and I never have. I had only two assets to my name: my brain and my hands,” says Hirsch.
At about the same time, her husband Allan, who was a refrigeration mechanic, saw an opportunity in selling discounted appliances, and together they started Hirsch’s. Thus began their home appliance empire in South Africa.
Today, this multiple award-winner is the Chief Operations Executive and co-founder, with her husband, of Hirsch’s, the appliance, electronic and airconditioning retail giant – from where many a South African has purchased his first fridge or oven.
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There are 12 Hirsch’s branches in the country’s KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and Western Cape provinces, and five concept stores. Hirsch also runs international businesses and charities like the Johannesburg School for the Blind and three nursery schools in Durban for underprivileged children.
Hirsch says Hirsch’s was built on a philosophy rather than a strategy. Helping others, by giving them the opportunity to be the best they can be and becoming self-sufficient, has paid off as Hirsch has exceeded their R1 billion ($92 million) target in 2012 after starting the business with only R900 ($354).
“It is the people of Hirsch’s that has made my journey worthwhile. Every staff member of Hirsch’s has a story. To see how each one of them has developed, and become the person they are destined to be is one of the most gratifying rewards in my life,” she says, in her Meadowdale store in Johannesburg.
The reins of the company are now in the hands of Hirsch’s son, Richard, who is Managing Director. Hirsch counts it as the highlight of her career when her son and daughter Luci joined the business.
This gives Hirsch more time to spend with her four grandsons in Durban, who she visits every week. It is really important to her that her entire family is involved in the business.
Hirsch, who has been married 43 years, says that in order to stay happily married for so long, you must be sure you really love. And she says it has not been difficult working with her husband as they both have clearly-defined roles.
“Allan is responsible for the buying and marketing and I am responsible for the sales and the staff. We very rarely disagree, and we give each other our required space.”
Hirsch is still integrally involved with all aspects of the business despite her busy schedule. A regular speaker at events, she is best-known for women’s empowerment drives and community upliftment projects.
Her drive to empower women stems from her early childhood memories after her father’s death, when she was witness to her mother’s struggles and experienced being poor. She knew then that one day she would have everything she wanted; she dreamed and envisioned herself being wealthy  and empowered.
The Girls With Dignity project that’s close to her heart came about when Hirsch investigated why girls were not attending school. Hirsch and her team realized school girls were absent during their menstrual cycle. Lack of money to buy sanitary pads made it impossible for these girls to attend school when they had their periods.
“Sue Barnes of Durban developed a re-usable sanitary pad and along with various others, I am distributing these to girls throughout Africa. School attendance has improved vastly, as have the marks and pass rates of these girls,” says Hirsch.
Early in her career, despite the struggle to make ends meet in the business and the challenges, she never gave up. Her resolve just grew stronger with each obstacle. The couple once lost R5 million (about $2 million) in one afternoon after being done in by a businessman, but this could not deter them. The few ventures that did not do as well as expected were shut down and they moved on.
The tipping point for Hirsch’s came with the introduction of microwave ovens, and her training at Panasonic in Japan. This led to the setting up of the first independent microwave cooking school in South Africa by Hirsch; and its effect on the business was enormous.
Hirsch is now working on a television show Look up! that aims to give South Africans hope. She realized early in life that as a person’s self-esteem lifted, his or her ability to earn increased too, and that is what she offers her employees.
She has authored many books, including a recipe book for vegetarians and a compilation cookbook from the cooking school days.
She holidays in Zanzibar to relax, enjoys a good lentil lasagne and cherishes time with her family. She also enjoys photography, especially on their family farm in KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. But retire she never will.
“I love what I do. For me, it’s not work, it’s a way of life. I really enjoy helping staff to improve their lives and customers to choose the right appliances and furniture for their homes and am always available to help any time of the day or night,” she says.
Hirsch’s life did not start as a fairytale, but she is proof you can have a fairytale ending if you are passionate about what you do, do it better than everyone else, give more than is expected and be the change you want to see in the world.

The Typist  Who Became The Appliance-Selling Queen

Virginie Ingabire was still wearing her mother’s shoes when her turn came. The shoes dangled from her 10-year-old feet as the two strangers carried her towards the thick bush behind the house. Everyone who had been taken before her had not returned and Ingabire knew the men with machetes had come for something.
She remembers thinking she had done nothing wrong, and that the men must have wanted money, so she cried, “I know where Mommy stashes her money, I can just go and get it for you.” But the killers ignored the offer. They forced her on the ground and informed her she was going to be killed. The last thing she saw before they spared her was a spiked plank of wood being lifted above her.
Two decades after that harrowing episode, the little Tutsi girl has come a long way.
Ingabire is almost 30 and cuts an effortlessly elegant figure. She’s an administrative assistant at the Rwandan Mission to the United Nations (UN). The eldest of her two children, a daughter, turned seven in May.
But for many years, after those frightening moments with the men in the bush, she couldn’t talk about it.
“I managed to bury my feelings when I was a teenager, but as I grow older, it gets more difficult,” she says.
At one point, Ingabire planned to write a book about those days, but she could never bring herself to do it.
Finally, a year ago, she found the courage and the forum to share her story. She spoke at a small gathering at UN headquarters in New York, the only survivor on a panel commemorating the genocide. It wasn’t fully satisfying, though; Ingabire rushed through her story, and she felt the audience didn’t really get to a chance to understand how she lost her family – and how traumatic it still is, years later, to survive without them.
Still, for her, it was a cathartic experience, and so she agreed to tell her story again, for only the second time, on the eve of the 20th anniversary.
“I don’t think I am ever going to move on, but now I feel like I should face it,” she says.
Ingabire grew up in the capital, Kigali, with her parents and five siblings. As the bitter civil war was ending in 1994, peace negotiations droned on in Tanzania, but Ingabire’s mother began to believe that the city was no longer safe for the children. Then there were the frightening visits from gangs of men, the Hutu militia known as the Interahamwe, or those who work together. In early 1994, they were surveying homes that they would later return to, with murderous intent.
It was after one such unsettling visit that Ingabire’s pregnant mother pulled the children from school and moved with them to rural Gitarama, 23 miles south of Kigali. They stayed with their aunt who had seven older boys of her own. Ingabire’s father, optimistic things in Kigali would change, remained in the capital.
The village was a harsh change for Ingabire and her siblings. There was no electricity, and they passed their days playing with their cousins and helping with the chores.
“I felt safe. The whole family was there.” On April 6, 1994, just as the family was about to go to bed, the radio delivered news to her aunt’s kerosene-lamp lit living room: the president had died in a plane crash.
“Mom screamed and was like ‘We’re gonna die, we are all going to die!’” says Ingabire. Her mother, now nine months pregnant, knew the crash was a sign of worse things to come. For a while, though, Gitarama was calm. People kept going to the market, and Ingabire’s eldest cousin, Kagame, still ran his shop in the center of town. In late April, her mother gave birth to a son, Emmanuel, who became the family’s seventh member.
But the quiet was interrupted by a night-time visit from unknown men. Ingabire’s mother offered them money to leave but they were unmoved. “I heard one of the guys say, ‘You think we are after your money? You inyenzi!’ They called the family cockroaches, or inyenzi, made some threats, then left.”
After that, the family hid in the bush at night; the time when Interahamwe were most likely to come. “In the morning at six, we would come back home and take a shower. People would go to work and go to the market. But then at 6PM, everyone goes inside. Today, we would hide in the trees, tomorrow we would hide in an abandoned house,” she says. It was the rainy season, so often they would spend nights in wet clothes.
Then one day, Ingabire’s cousin, Kagame, didn’t come home from work. In the afternoon, the family heard that “Kagame is killed and they are circulating his body in
Gitarama city”. Suddenly, hiding out at night seemed pointless to her mother. So the family stayed at home that night – only to be invaded by another gang of strange men.
Seven of them surrounded Ingabire’s family as the youngest children slept. Ingabire, her seven older cousins, her two older sisters, her mother and her aunt stood in single
file in the front yard. The men chose their first victims: her older cousins, Rutajengwa and Rujira. “We are starting with these two,” they said, and led the boys away.
“I guess they were professional killers. We didn’t even hear a sound,” she recalls. The women were taken next, and one by one the entire family was led to the forest behind the house. Ingabire was the last. When the men picked her up, “my feet weren’t even touching the ground”. She remembers asking the men, “Where are you taking me?” Then came the moment when the men refused her offer of money. They continued to the bush, finally forcing her on the ground and lifting the spiked plank above her.
In the end, the men could not bring themselves to kill a 10-year-old girl, says Ingabire, who was the youngest family member on the lawn that night. They pointed her toward a hill and told her to flee to Mushubati, a place she did not know. She ran, but not far, and when she stopped, she could hear the voices of her family “crying, dying, I guess it was”.
“It’s the worst sound you can ever imagine,” she says.
Ingabire ran back to her aunt’s house where the baby, now just a month old, was crying. She thought it was her mother. “I went in calling, ‘Maman, Maman, Are you there? Maman, Maman’. She didn’t answer.”
That was the night when Ingabire became mother to her three younger siblings: baby Emmanuel, her eight-year-old brother and a sister who was about to turn three.
The next morning, the four children fled the house, taking nothing with them, and joined a procession of refugees walking to a church in the nearby village of Kabgai. For more than four months, they wandered, in search of safety. On the way to Gisenyi, two Hutu women took Ingabire’s brother, promising to care for him. The baby was left with an elderly woman in Gitarama.
Finally, in September, a full two months after the genocide had ended, Ingabire’s father found her and her sister in Goma, Zaire, where they had taken refuge. He took them home to Kigali – though their family home had been looted and burned to the ground. “There was nothing,” says Ingabire, not even a photograph of the mother and sisters she had lost in the genocide remained.
The months of the genocide were harrowing, and yet it is the aftermath – those days, when she returned to Kigali, that most haunt her today.  “My story and my experience during genocide, it was all about surviving, trying to get to the next point. What touched me a lot was life after, when we got back home [and] how it changed us.”
In 2010, Ingabire emigrated to the United States. She now lives in New Jersey with her husband and two children. She and the other family members who survived have never spoken with each other about what happened during the genocide. Even her father, who lives in Kigali, didn’t know her story until she spoke at the UN last year.

Blood And Tears Haunt A New Life  In New York

Five hundred years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli said it is much safer for a leader to be feared than loved. Anne Waiguru, Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Devolution and Planning, is the kind of leader who elicits both love and fear.
Waiguru is spoken of as a combative, no-nonsense go-getter and hard-worker. Waiguru, the person, smiles, loves dancing, carries lunch to work and is a doting mother to three sons.
She is among six women in Kenya’s cabinet of 18 and the only female Cabinet Secretary in the Presidency. Outside the presidential framework, Waiguru wields considerable power and influence. Her docket has the largest budget in government – KSh84 billion ($967 million), controlling key government functions of devolution, public service management, economic planning, women, youth affairs, special programs, and arid and semi-arid land dockets.
Working with Waiguru is not for the faint-hearted. With a heavy docket to manage, she pushes hard and keeps long hours. Those who have worked with her describe her as detailed and forceful, breaking all barriers. A government officer who worked in one of the ministries under Waiguru says she rules with an iron fist, it is either her way or the highway.
Waiguru describes herself as “extremely focused, disciplined, hard-working, smart and flexible”.
“I am able to change when I discover I am going in the wrong direction,” she says.
She confesses to placing a very high premium on hard work, an attribute she inherited from her late father who was a police officer.
“He is the reason I am here. It didn’t matter where you ended up, discipline and standards were always a big deal to my father.” She studied in Kenya at the Egerton University for her under-graduation and later pursued a master’s degree in economic policy from the University of Nairobi.
Rolling up her sleeves is part of her character. While preparing for the launch of the KSh6 billion ($70 million) Uwezo (Swahili for empowerment) Fund meant for youth and women, she went to the venue on the eve of the event and did something that shocked her team.
“She practically showed us how she wanted the chairs arranged. They had to be the same without special preferences to the President, his Deputy or herself. She said uwezo is about empowerment and equality of Kenyans,” says Dennis Itumbi, Director, Digital, New Media and Diaspora in the Executive Office of the President.
Her hands-on personality is not only about work. She also sets the bar high for her sons.
“They have a strong personality for a mother and I spend a lot of time with them.” One of her sons is a musician and to support him, she also took up music lessons. Her youngest son, who is 10, wants to be President of Kenya and has even expressed his ambitions to his mother’s boss. The eldest, 19, is already running an IT business.
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Tears and Twitter
Now in her early 40s, Waiguru joined the public service under an initiative of the World Bank as a Technical Advisor to the Public Service Reform Secretariat in what was then the Cabinet Office. Prior to that, she had briefly worked at Citigroup NA.
After completing her term at the Reform Secretariat, Waiguru moved to head the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP), to accelerate Kenya’s economic growth following the slump caused by the 2007/8 post-election violence.
At the helm of ESP, she was instrumental in ensuring all health centers had maternal units with beds.
“Many women in rural Kenya do not make it to a health center and give birth by the roadside. To avoid this, we tried to have them come to the health center every three weeks. We gave health workers bicycles and motorbikes to regularly check on expectant mothers at home. These are the things that keep me in public service.”
Waiguru confesses she did not nurse dreams of becoming a minister.
“The one thing I really wanted to be for a very long time, was a Permanent Secretary because it was the highest level a civil servant attained then that would allow me to influence policies,” she says.
After ESP, she moved on to become Director of the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS). This was a defining moment in her career. She had to lead the implementation of financial policies and programs to ensure efficient and transparent use of government money.
The media described her cabinet appointment in April 2013 as ‘a meteoric rise’. Waiguru was a trailblazer in government reforms and had upset the status quo. The rumor mills on social media went on overdrive. Having worked with President Kenyatta while he was Finance Minister, her appointment was seen as a reward. She was seen as a woman who had suddenly risen from nowhere. The stories got to her.
“I cried and worried in the beginning until I got used to the newspaper articles. You are used to someone criticizing you positively but some people are outright nasty. I now read comments on Twitter and laugh.”
Looking back, she wishes she knew earlier on in her public service career about the need to have the skin of a rhino.
“People asked why I was given the position. The same was not asked about my [male] colleagues. When we [women] do very well, people are surprised. When men do very well, it was expected. I see it even now when people tell me that I am doing very well as if they did not expect me to. They would not be surprised if a man did the same.”
The appointment suddenly threw her in the limelight, but she has never been a public person.
“I am very good one-on-one and in the background. I would never take myself to the media and hence people did not know I existed.”
Waiguru says women have to work four times as hard as men to get recognition because the society is still patriarchal.
“For a woman, half the time you must have proved a point before you are even considered for a position. It is very rare to hear someone say a woman has potential. A woman has to have a few accomplishments.”
Despite the high expectations, Waiguru does not have sleepless nights.
“I am very conscious of the fact that I am human and have limitations, so I do the best I can. Once I have done all I can, I go home and sleep easy because even if I stay awake nothing is going to change anyway. When there is a crisis you will not find me worried. What is the worst that can happen in life?”
Waiguru has had days when Murphy’s Law applied. In November 2013, she had to manage a crisis after health workers went on strike for 11 days over devolution of services from national to county governments. There were reported deaths as hospital services were paralyzed. In January 2014, Waiguru had to flag off food aid to Turkana, in northern Kenya. The media described the drought as a national shame.
“I don’t think flagging off food was a shame. With disasters, the issue is when it happens, are you prepared for it? We were prepared, you did not hear us asking the private sector for money or food. We are still buying and distributing food.”
While putting her heart in her work, Waiguru says she is passionate but not attached.
“Serving in the public service changes the way you see things. When you are out there, you tell government what it can do better but when you are in here with all our problems no one will ever give you a pat on the back. Your passion drives you.”
As Waiguru marked one year in office in April, she says devolution will be her main success story. She wants Anne Waiguru to be synonymous with transformation.
“I want people to talk about my contribution to the transformation of Kenya because I was committed to it and I had the ability to make that a reality,” she says.

Loved And Feared In The Corridors  Of Power

When entrepreneur Maureen Dlamini took over as CEO of the Chamber of Mines of Zambia (CMZ), she had no idea what she was getting into. It’s arguably the toughest job in Zambia; running the lifeblood of the country – copper mining. Dlamini keeps the flow of private investors and government in line. What’s more, until two weeks into the job, she’d never been down a mine.
“It was 14 January, two weeks after I began as CEO, that I had my first taste of the mines. I was in awe. I looked at the size of the machinery and the size of the pit. It gave me a different perspective of the mines. Actually seeing it, I had a greater respect for investors. You really don’t know that you will get the return you anticipated. You are dealing with nature, you could have disasters, you could have flooding. To have enough faith to invest $2 billion when your return is not immediate, is something I learned to respect,” she says in her office in Lusaka.
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Copper. It is the industry that died and came back to life. Zambia has been exporting since the 1920s, but it’s been a rollercoaster ride complicated with colonial privatization, nationalization, and then privatization again.
According to the World Bank, Zambia has the largest known reserves of copper in Africa, 6% of the world resource. It means businesses are flocking to Zambia as if it were the days of the 1849 California Gold Rush.
For Dlamini, the job in mining is a far cry from what most people expected of her, she says. She worked in finance with the likes of Barclays, First Line of Africa and was the former Executive Head of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s (JSE) Africa Board before moving to home, Zambia.
In Lusaka, she went into business with her brother to run Zambezi Airlines, a private airline, but the business failed to take off. Controversially, its operations were shut down by the government citing safety concerns. It went bankrupt in 2012 and Dlamini was thrown out.
“My agent just called me and said there was a job…I said yes I’ll try it.”
This was how Dlamini took the position of CEO of the CMZ; the rest was history. Dlamini even had to put her dreams of becoming an interior decorator on hold to take up the position.
“My real passion is interior decorating. I love event management. From here I could do it and work until 4AM. I would love to be able to do it at some time at my own pace. My friends say to me I love to challenge myself, and maybe that’s why I am in the mining sector,” she says.
Her first step was to Kansanshi mine, in Solwezi in the North Western Province. She traded arranging furniture to begin her new job in a hard hat and overalls. Now back in Lusaka, she wears a suit and is making a mark in the male-dominated industry.
“After a while, you get used to it. I think my background, especially in the JSE, is that I don’t feel the pressure. I had good mentors. If you are not going to do something don’t string me along. Don’t sit quietly and give me excuses later on. It’s just a waste of time and money.”
Kansanshi’s is a story of good news and the bad. Thanks to copper, Solwezi has become one of Africa’s fastest growing towns in a few short years. It was once a tiny village on the northern borders of Zambia 16 kilometers from the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo, 581 kilometers from Lusaka, and a million miles from the rest of the world.
According to research by the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), mining is on the rise in 2012, 32% of tax revenue collected was from mining; in 2008, the percentage was half that. The bad news is that the mines have to deal with lack of infrastructure and skills development, says Dlamini.
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“It needs a combined effort, not just the mines. The local authority needs to play a significant role in terms of town planning, in terms of creating social services. If you look at the mines there, Solwezi is one of the richest authorities in terms of revenue from mining authorities. But the challenge is we don’t know if that money is remaining in Solwezi or is dispersed to other towns in the country. The infrastructure in Solwezi is non-existent. Everything is clustered around one street, because there is a lot of emigration, there are a lot of social evils coming into the town,”
says Dlamini.
According to Dlamini, the reliability of data collection from both government and private sectors is also hampering investors. The Zambian government records mining GDP contribution to be at 8% when it should be 12% when researched by the ICMM, she says.
“Our biggest challenge is changing the perception of the mines. We need to get the facts straight. This is the backbone of the economy. At the end of the day, it’s finding that balance where we don’t irritate investors and irritate the government,” she says.
Despite its challenges, Zambia has won back its claim to be the copper power house of Africa. At the helm is Dlamini. She might be new to the industry but she knows all about making money, taking risks and losing it all. There is no doubt that the mining companies and government will find her one tough nut to crack.

The Woman With  the toughest job

It was a cold morning in April, two weeks before the 2014 London Marathon. I was ready to take on the steep slopes of Mount Kenya near the town of Sagana, 210 kilometers from Kenya’s capital Nairobi.
Stretching and warming up, I eagerly waited to join Kenya’s First Lady Margaret Kenyatta at this high-altitude training camp. And when she showed up, what was meant to be a light 13 kilometer jog left me with a wonky knee and a sore back. By the time we reached the finish line, my body had given up.
But the first lady? At least once, I thought she would give up too, but the sprightly 50-year-old was more focused than anyone I had seen.
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Her focus was the streets of London, where she would take part in the 42 kilometer London Marathon, not to become yet another long-distance Kenya runner, but to promote a cause close to her heart. The cause: the ‘Beyond Zero Campaign’, a fund-raising initiative aimed at improving maternal and infant health in Kenya.
According to UNAIDS, in Kenya, as many as 5,500 women die annually due to pregnancy-related complications, and more than 100,000 children die every year by the age of five. Twenty percent of maternal deaths in the country are AIDS-related. The ‘Beyond Zero Campaign’ aims to improve maternal health care by ensuring accessibility to health facilities through mobile clinics, and prevention of mother-to-child disease transmission.
“There is simply no good reason why thousands of women and children in Kenya should die during child-birth today. This is unacceptable,” says Kenyatta.
“These are not just statistics. These are our fellow Kenyan sisters and children who die largely as a result of pregnancy and HIV-related complications that are preventable. It is just not acceptable with such worrying statistics to sit back and watch. This concerns the future of this nation, we had to take action.”
As in many African countries, Kenyan women face challenges in accessing healthcare facilities. Most of them have to travel long distances for them. The funds raised by ‘Beyond Zero’ will assist in the provision of mobile clinics, incubators, diagnostic kits for early infant testing of HIV, and oxygen concentrators.
“As a mother myself, it is worrying, it is heart-breaking. It is unnecessary for children to die through lack of medicine. I will do what I can to help,” says Kenyatta in her campaign message.
The campaign is targeting a total of $5.7 million and the first lady chose a marathon as a means to raise the funds.
“Marathon-running is a very Kenyan thing. As Kenyans, we are the undisputed kings and queens of road running. This is something that pushed my limits and took me out of my comfort zone, and something that has got Kenya and the world paying attention,” she says.
In March, she participated in the inaugural First Lady’s Half Marathon, a 21 kilometer race in Nairobi for the ‘Beyond Zero Campaign’. She then decided to take the cause to the world stage by participating in the
London Marathon.
The first lady finished the race in seven hours. At the finish line was her husband, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, waiting to receive her.
As expected, the Kenyans came tops in both the men’s and women’s elite races, with Wilson Kipsang (2hr 4min 29sec) and Edna Kiplagat (2hr 20min 21sec) taking first positions respectively.
No wonder the first lady completed the race with no qualms. She had trained with some of the world’s finest athletes, including Kipsang who is also the World Marathon holder and Florence Kiplagat, the World Half Marathon holder.
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Her team trainer is also one of the world’s champions, Douglas Wakiihuri. He won the 1987 World Championships in Athletics, the London Marathon in 1989 and the New York Marathon in 1990.
Wakiihuri was returning to London 25 years later at the age of 50, but this time for the course that he shared with the Kenyan first lady. He prepared her mentally and physically.
“We trained in a camp, same as the Olympic one. Her mental preparedness is basically that of an elite athlete which is very special,” said Wakiihuri of the first lady’s preparedness.
What made it even more commendable was that she was running and training for the first time.
“It has not been easy because none of my team members has run before. It’s very new for us and we are not that young,” says the first lady.
The team started training in November, walking at first, then jogging slowly before picking up pace. The challenges were waking up in the wee hours for intensive training and being away from their families. In the end, it all paid off.

The First Lady of the road

A deep horn blast was used in a slice of history at Africa’s biggest stock exchange. It was from the lungs of Rakesh Wahi, Founder and Vice Chairman of Africa Business News (ABN), signaling the opening of the bourse, as CNBC Africa crossed a new frontier in business broadcasting on the continent.
CNBC Africa – the sister of FORBES AFRICA in the ABN stable – became the first African broadcaster to beam shows from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). It came on the eve of the company’s seventh anniversary.
“It’s an exciting time; I haven’t stopped smiling since yesterday. It is to the credit of the people around you who have all done a fantastic job,” says Wahi.
CNBC Africa is emulating the example of CNBC in the United States (US), which has broadcast from the New York Stock Exchange since 1995. This move is all part of a bigger plan.
“Our vision is to be in all 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. We have to be in all the major exchanges and report from the smaller ones. We need to be able to integrate all these exchanges through information flows. We need to be able to go out and educate people about what markets are,” says Wahi.
The new studio is state of the art. It includes an eight cube video wall, six interview positions and robotic cameras – which will be fully controlled out of the gallery and will minimize additional camera crew. The main anchor desk, resembling a star, is a copy of the one used both in Europe and the US.
It will host Open Exchange, Power Lunch and Closing Bell, with regular crossings to Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Mauritius, Uganda, Zambia, Namibia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Botswana, Gabon and Ghana.
Jean Landsberg, the head of technical and operations for the ABN Group, traveled to New York and Singapore to check out the latest technology.
“When I traveled to the SGX in Singapore and New York, I got an idea how they put their infrastructure in place… whereas Singapore still link in to their [stock exchange], from the main studio, we will be actually running everything and all the operations from the JSE studios. So it’s a little more advanced than what Singapore is doing,” says Landsberg.
LED technology will be used to reduce the power consumption by the studio lights and the video wall. Landsberg says, as time goes by, small technological frills will be added.
The new technology is in the interest of keeping business people better informed about what’s happening inside Africa’s biggest bourse.

Category: Woman

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