Like wealth, fame, or even love, power is not static. As any of the 17 newcomers to the 2020 list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women can attest, a person can quickly gain power through elections, mergers, and acquisitions, or the stroke of a pen affirming a promotion. Likewise, as the women who’ve fallen off the Power Women list illustrate, power can just as easily fade when a company fails (we hardly knew ye, Quibi), a board wants a new direction, or a country wants a new administration.



Sometimes, though, power shifts gradually: a person is nominated for a position, but doesn’t yet have the job. She has taken the top job, but hasn’t had time to make her mark on the organization or execute the turnaround that is crucial for survival. Or perhaps she is clearly in charge but is methodical in growing market share, creating a company or investment fund that is large but not hasn’t yet reached the level that earns her a spot among the top 100 most powerful women around the globe.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2019/12/12/power-rising-these-are-the-women-to-watch-in-2020/?sh=36ec15567964">As we noted last year</a>, this is not to say that women who have not quite yet arrived aren’t powerful. In fact, their power is rising, and likely at a rate that could earn them a spot on the power list as soon as next year. To that end, these are the women to watch for 2021:



Janet Yellen:&nbsp;The former chair of the Federal Reserve last ranked No. 6 on the Power Women list, in 2016, but fell off the list when she was not renominated for the role. With the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/monicahaider/2020/12/01/bidens-economic-team-and-first-female-treasury-secretary-janet-yellen-supported-by-powerful-women/?sh=48c196272418">news</a>&nbsp;that president-elect Joe Biden has decided to nominate Yellen as his Treasury Secretary—a move that would make her the first woman to hold this particular Cabinet position—Yellen’s return to the power list is all but one Senate confirmation away. (And this, too, she should achieve, having already notched bipartisan support to become the first female Fed chair in 2014.)



Dana Canedy: A Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist who is also the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, Canedy has long been respected by writers and media types for decades. (Her Pulitzer was for her work on the incisive 2001 New York Times Series, “How Race Is Lived In America.”) In July, she was appointed as the senior vice president and publisher of Simon &amp; Schuster, the eponymous imprint of one of America’s largest book publishers. Canedy is the first Black woman to have the job, and with Simon &amp; Schuster poised to merge with Penguin Random House (pending clearance from antitrust regulators), her influence could soon grow even larger.



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-892818756-764x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49219" width="271" height="362" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-892818756-764x1024.jpg 764w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-892818756-224x300.jpg 224w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-892818756-768x1030.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-892818756-1527x2048.jpg 1527w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-892818756-300x402.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-892818756-scaled.jpg 1909w" sizes="(max-width: 271px) 100vw, 271px" /><figcaption>Pearlena Igbokwe. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



Pearlena Igbokwe: In September, NBC promoted Igbokwe to chairman of the Universal Studio Group, a move that effectively handed her the baton of power from former group head (and Power Woman) Bonnie Hammer. Jeff Shell, the CEO of NBCUniversal, called Igbokwe “ideally suited” to run the company’s television studios and cited her “extraordinary taste.” Having overseen critically-acclaimed comedies like “Russian Doll,” &#8220;Superstore,&#8221; “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” and “The Good Place,” Igbokwe’s next decisions at NBC are almost certain to entertain.



Catherine MacGregor:&nbsp;Eight months after the board of directors at French utility company Engie pushed Isabelle Kocher out of the CEO suite, the company has appointed longtime oil and gas executive MacGregor as her successor. MacGregor will start the role in January.



Julia Cheek: The 36-year-old founder and CEO of at-home testing company Everlywell <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/leahrosenbaum/2020/12/03/at-home-health-testing-company-everlywell-raises-175-million-series-d-round-reaching--13-billion-valuation/?sh=244c28115702">announced</a> in early December that her company had raised a $175 million Series D round of funding—a capital injection that propelled the company to a $1.3 billion valuation. With the pandemic accelerating consumer demand for (and comfort with) at-home health testing kits, Cheek is confident Everlywell will continue to grow. “Hopefully,” she told Forbes, “we’ll emerge as one of the winners.”



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-1137862240-1024x776.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49221" width="356" height="270" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-1137862240-1024x776.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-1137862240-300x227.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-1137862240-768x582.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-1137862240-1536x1165.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-1137862240-2048x1553.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-1137862240-600x455.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 356px) 100vw, 356px" /><figcaption> Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid (Photo by Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



Anna Diamantopoulou, Kersti Kaljulaid and Cecilia Malmstrom: All three women are running to be the next head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). All three are already pretty influential within Europe: Diamantopoulou has had&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniefillion/2020/11/27/anna-diamantopoulou-wants-to-lead-the-oecds-post-covid-recovery/?sh=6d59a5061c19">a long career in Greek politics</a>; Kaljulaid is the first woman have to ever been elected as the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniefillion/2020/11/10/estonias-president-wants-to-lead-the-oecds-ditigal-revolution/?sh=52d9e4445a29">president of Estonia</a>; and Malmstrom was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniefillion/2020/11/19/cecilia-malmstrom-wants-to-bring-her-trade-expertise-to-the-oecd/?sh=39a9f9cf5337">Europe’s trade commissioner</a>&nbsp;for five years until 2019. Any one of the three would be the first woman to run the OECD, which is an intergovernmental organization whose goal is to stimulate economic progress.



Dr. Özlem Türeci: As the co-founder and chief medical officer of BioNTech, a German biotech company, Türeci was, until 2020, focused on researching and developing cancer treatments. But when her husband and co-founder, Ugur Sahin, realized in January that Covid had the potential to become a pandemic, their work shifted—as did their global profile. BioNTech partnered with Pfizer in March to develop a Covid vaccine, and last month, the two companies announced that their drug, which relies on mRNA technology, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2020/11/18/pfizer-biontech-says-covid-19-vaccine-is-95-effective-will-seek-emergency-approval-within-days/?sh=569b110441f7">is 95% effective</a>. With vaccine deployment set to be the dominant story of 2021, the effect Türeci’s work can only grow larger.



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-462834336-1024x681.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49081" width="353" height="234" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-462834336-1024x681.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-462834336-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-462834336-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-462834336-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-462834336-2048x1363.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-462834336-600x399.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 353px) 100vw, 353px" /><figcaption>Nigeria&#8217;s Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Photo credit should read ERIC PIERMONT/AFP via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: Economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was Nigeria’s first female finance minister (and its longest serving) and spent 25 years working for the World Bank. She sits on the boards of Twitter and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and is poised to become the first female head of the World Trade Organization. It is for these reasons, and more, that Forbes Africa named her its <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2020/12/04/african-of-the-year-ngozi-okonjo-iweala/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">African Person of the Year 2020</a> and that we’re calling her a woman to watch closely in 2021.



-By Maggie McGrath, Forbes Staff

Federal Reserve Jackson Hole Economic Symposium

Power Rising: These Are The Women To Watch In 2021

There’s a vignette that Senator Kamala Harris likes to tell about her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris. It’s a well-trodden soundbite that has proliferated into hashtags and official 2020 campaign merchandise, but the commercialization shouldn’t detract from its meaning: An immigrant from India who came to the United States with dreams of curing cancer, Shyamala raised Harris and her sister Maya to be strong Black women who are mindful of what their identities mean in American work and life. “My mother would look at me,” Harris has said, “and she’d say, ‘Kamala you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you are not the last.’”



Shyamala was right: Her daughter has been “the first” a number of times. In 2010, Harris became the first African-American and first woman to serve as California’s attorney general. In 2016, she became the first Indian-American woman to be elected to the United States Senate. In August of 2020, she became the first Black woman and first Asian-American woman to appear on the presidential ticket of a major political party.



On Saturday, November 7, the Associated Press projected that former vice president Joe Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, won the state of Pennsylvania and have earned more than 270 electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election. Senator Harris can therefore add more firsts to her list:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/11/07/kamala-harris-makes-history-as-first-female-black-asian-american-vice-president/">she is officially the first female vice president-elect&nbsp;</a>in United States history and the first person of color to earn the distinction as well.



In her first public statement after the race was called—<a href="https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1325119592130252801" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a tweet</a>—Harris didn’t mention these firsts. “This election is about so much more than&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@JoeBiden</a>&nbsp;or me,” she said. “It’s about the soul of America and our willingness to fight for it. We have a lot of work ahead of us. Let’s get started.”



Harris’s presence in the 2020 race—both for as a candidate for president in the early days of the Democratic primary, and for vice president in the general election race—has been a potent reminder of what has been lacking in our nation’s highest office for more than two centuries.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“It&#8217;s a kind of beautiful, full-circle moment for the story of America because I think women, and more specifically Black women, have done so much work—and are sort of the backbone of this country—without the acknowledgment of the work that we&#8217;ve done,” says Alia Daniels, co-founder of the global queer digital media network Revry. “And so I think being able to see someone who looks like me, in one of those positions, it&#8217;s just a level of pride that I don&#8217;t even know if I can fully express.”</blockquote>



Daniels notes that because we’ve seen women attain powerful positions in the private sector over the past few decades—consider former Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi, or General Motors chief Mary Barra, to name a few boundary-breaking corporate leaders—it can be all too easy to take female leadership for granted. “But this is the highest position in our country that a woman has held,” she says. “There&#8217;s something to actually seeing it.”



The American public has already witnessed Harris asserting her expertise and authority on the national stage: her use of “I’m speaking” during the vice presidential debate last month was a master class in dealing with a male interrupter, and her questioning of then-U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions and now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh in Senate hearings in 2017 and 2018 were similar showcases of feminine confidence and capability. But her impending presence in the executive branch of government has the potential to be as instructive as inspirational.



“No one can deny the power of seeing somebody who shares an identity, like your gender or your race, which are so salient in American society, certainly, in a position of power,” says Colleen Ammerman, director of the Gender Initiative at Harvard Business School. Ammerman points to research that has shown how female role models and mentors, as well as mere exposure to portraits of female leaders, can help encourage women to speak up, stand up and perhaps achieve more. “The images of leadership and power that we see are overwhelmingly white and male. Sometimes we don&#8217;t even quite notice that until we see something different,” she says.



Henah Parikh, development and communications manager at She’s the First, a nonpartisan nonprofit devoted to fighting gender inequality through education, puts it this way: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” She points to research that shows that, without female role models, girls stop believing they can be anything they want to be as early as 5 years old. Women like Harris help combat that.



“We talk a lot about these women trailblazers, like Kamala Harris who are the historic first, but they&#8217;re also paving the way for pulling other girls and women up with them,” Parikh says. “And that&#8217;s what&#8217;s so important to me and to a lot of women, but especially for me as a South Asian woman.”



Senator Harris’s election to the vice presidency comes at a moment when a pandemic has killed more than 200,000 Americans and forced thousands more out of work. Women have been disproportionately affected: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 865,000 women dropped out of the labor force in September, compared to 216,000 men. The childcare and remote learning demands on mothers working from home stand to erase <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace#" target="_blank">close to a decade</a> of gains for women in the workplace unless spouses, employers and the government work to find solutions and provide support.



Harris alone cannot fix this. But for Aimee Koval, cofounder and president of Metis Consulting, a B-corp and certified disability-owned enterprise that provides technology and management consulting, Harris’s experience as a daughter, aunt and stepmother makes her more qualified than previous White House occupants to understand the unique challenges facing women.



“For me the big impact of choosing a woman in the White House is that that comes with a perspective that I think that we haven&#8217;t seen enough of, or enough understanding at a federal level from lawmakers who have not taken those concerns into account have not addressed issues such as childcare and the funding of schools,” Koval says.



Koval notes that fairly or unfairly, all eyes will be on Harris when it comes to these issues; this level of scrutiny and pressure is one of the well-documented downsides of being a “first” or “only” within an organization. In the federal government, where Democrats have held onto their majority in the House but control of the Senate is still unclear, women like Cori Bush—the first Black woman&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/elanagross/2020/11/04/the-firsts-of-the-us-2020-election/?sh=3309ce521c89">elected to Congress</a>&nbsp;by Missouri—and the newly-reelected members of “The Squad” (Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib) can use their personal experiences and political sway to advocate for these policies, too. But the rates of women in government, even with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/erinspencer1/2020/11/05/record-number-of-women-to-serve-in-the-117th-us-congress/">a record 131 women</a>&nbsp;so far elected to the 117th Congress, still lag that of the general public. The work is not over.



“I strongly believe that progress isn’t inevitable,” Harvard’s Ammerman says. “And I think it&#8217;s dangerous to sort of think, okay, we&#8217;ve broken one barrier and so we&#8217;ll just automatically keep going.”



Jackie Adams, coauthor of “A Blessing” and the first African-American female correspondent formally assigned to cover the Reagan and H.W. Bush White Houses for CBS News, has watched women vie for positions of power since Geraldine Ferraro was the first female vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket in 1984. Looking at the developments from the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, she finds reasons to be optimistic about female leadership beyond Harris’s fresh status as vice-president elect. “There are more women of color running for office than ever before,” she said. “I think that there is a flywheel that&#8217;s spinning and it might be pushed further ahead a little bit faster, [as] Senator Harris becomes vice president, but even if she doesn&#8217;t, it&#8217;s not gonna be stopped.”



The inspiration that Harris has already instilled in young girls is evident in the tweets and photos depicting Halloween costumes (<a href="https://twitter.com/meenaharris/status/1322297281333272576" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Converse and all)</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/ErinnFHarley/status/1313473405514125313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1313473405514125313" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">driveway stump speeches</a>. But the significance of her election is not limited to the Gen-Z set.



“Senator Harris actually shares a birthday with my mom,” She’s the First’s Parikh says, going on to explain that both her mom and Shyamala Gopalan Harris come from South India, and both came to American with a lot to learn. Parikh describes hearing Harris talk so fondly about Shyamala and then texting her own mother.



“I said, ‘I just hope that you feel like you have seen some growth in this country, just by seeing this on television.’ Millions of Indian people around the country can relate,” she says. “It is something we&#8217;ve never ever experienced before.”



&#8211;By Maggie McGrath, Forbes Staff

kamala harris

Kamala Harris Makes History: What The First Female Vice President-Elect Means For Women

Tennis champion and Olympic gold medalist Venus Williams has some advice for the more than 30 million small business owners and entrepreneurs across the U.S. struggling to find their footing in the new normal: Don’t let fear take over. It’s a lesson she learned at the age of 19 while competing with sister Serena, then 17, at the 1999 U.S. Open. Williams only made it to the semi-finals—her sister went on to win the tournament.



“I let fear take over, and that&#8217;s where I should have just let go and would have been my best,” she says. “You want more, and you work very hard for more, so less than that is just&nbsp;not&nbsp;acceptable. That was my biggest loss.”&nbsp;



Speaking to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;ahead of the American Express “<a href="https://about.americanexpress.com/all-news/news-details/2020/American-Express-to-Host-Ninth-Annual-Business-Class-LIVE-Summit-for-Success-for-Small-Businesses/default.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Business Class Live: Summit for Success</a>” on October 20, Williams drew parallels between her experience playing tennis and running various businesses during the pandemic. “Even though it’s a very challenging time it’s an opportunity to really refine your business and make it something that is a service or a product that is really needed and not just wanted,” says Williams, the founder of full-service commercial and residential design firm V Starr and activewear brand EleVen by Venus Williams. “This year showed all of us that we need to be a product or service that you can’t say no to.”



All entrepreneurs can benefit from that guidance right now. As of August 31, more than 163,000 businesses have closed as a result of the pandemic, according to Yelp’s September&nbsp;<a href="https://www.yelpeconomicaverage.com/business-closures-update-sep-2020" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Local Economic Impact report</a>. This represents a 23% increase from July 10. Even more alarming: 60% of closed businesses have permanently shuttered due to Covid-19 and the resulting restrictions in many states. The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.yelpeconomicaverage.com/yea-q3-2020.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Q3 Yelp Economic Average Report</a>&nbsp;released on October 22, however, points to a hopeful rebound: More than 210,000 businesses have now reopened amid a significant increase in consumer interest for outdoor related services and activities.&nbsp;



For those businesses that have managed to stay afloat, the path forward will require the will to adapt in an ever-changing environment. In fact, about 76% of small and medium-sized businesses have had to pivot their business models to maintain revenue, according to the latest Business Resilience Survey of 1,000 business owners by American Express. Of those surveyed, 73% expect to pivot again in the next year. More than 80% still believe the benefits of owning their own businesses outweigh the challenges.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“It’s okay to be afraid, but it’s not okay to let it ruin your decision-making process. There’s always a reason to be afraid. But should you let that take over? Hell, no.” </blockquote>



When it comes to overcoming obstacles, small business owners can’t afford to doubt themselves. Williams learned this, and the importance of mental preparation, long ago. “It’s okay to be afraid, but it’s not okay to let it ruin your decision-making process,” she says. “There’s always a reason to be afraid. But should you let that take over?,” she says. “Hell, no.”&nbsp;



The hard-earned lessons from the court have translated to the boardroom as she’s set out to become a multi-venture entrepreneur. Inspired by her father, who ran his own security company, and her mother, who encouraged her creativity as a child, Williams found her second calling in fashion and interior design. In 2002, she founded V Starr, which recently collaborated with Airbnb partner Niido to design its first-ever apartment complex. In 2009, Williams and her sister became the first African American women to buy&nbsp;<a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/news/story?id=4422313" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a stake in a NFL franchise</a>&nbsp;when they joined the ownership group of the Miami Dolphins. Three years later, she launched EleVen by Venus Williams and earned her associate degree in fashion design from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. Earlier this year, she partnered with Credo Beauty to launch a line of clean, mineral-based SPF products for EleVen by Venus.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Williams says running her businesses in the current environment has been one of the greatest challenges she’s ever faced, but she still appreciates the silver linings. “The world of business is really lending a hand to African Americans and women and minorities during this time. And that has also been unprecedented—so opportunity comes out of this really crazy hardship as well. You have to look at that as a challenge—you need to accept it and run with it. There’s no time to waste.”  



-By Maneet Ahuja,Forbes Staff

Empire State Building Hosts Venus Williams and American Express In Support Of Small Business Saturday

Venus Williams’ Advice For Entrepreneurs: Don’t Let Fear Take Over—Just Push Through It

Saray Khumalo shares the humbling and enthralling experience of breaking barriers and summiting some of the world’s highest mountains. &nbsp;



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In May 2019, Saray Khumalo became the first&nbsp;black African woman to summit Mount Everest.&nbsp;In a recent interview with FORBES AFRICA, Khumalo speaks about her emotional, adrenaline-driven experience getting to its peak. &nbsp;



The South African has also just launched&nbsp;a&nbsp;Malaria&nbsp;No More&nbsp;emergency response&nbsp;campaign called&nbsp;The Bigger Picture Campaign&nbsp;alongside marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge and World Cup winning South African rugby captain Siya Kolisi.&nbsp;With Covid now taking up so much airtime,&nbsp;Khumalo, who has herself had&nbsp;malaria many times growing up, is helping refocus the attention on malaria, as it’s still one of the world’s deadliest diseases and especially in the African context. &nbsp;



Khumalo is also the founder of 7 Summits, an initiative that raises money for underprivileged schools through her climbing, and is now aiming for the Explorers Grand Slam involving summiting all seven of the highest peaks on the seven continents, completing a technical rock climb and reaching the North Pole as well as the South Pole.&nbsp;



With a day job as an executive at Momentum Multiply looking after e-commerce, Khumalo started mountain-climbing in 2012.



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IMG_3503.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-48530" width="222" height="222" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IMG_3503.jpg 720w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IMG_3503-300x300.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IMG_3503-150x150.jpg 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IMG_3503-80x80.jpg 80w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IMG_3503-600x600.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IMG_3503-100x100.jpg 100w" sizes="(max-width: 222px) 100vw, 222px" /><figcaption>Photo: Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>



In this interview, she says: “I made a commitment to step on top of the highest peak on every continent, but use the journey to raise money for education. And that&#8217;s where the journey started. I&#8217;ve built five libraries. And I&#8217;ve raised money. And it&#8217;s the only way we can change the narrative for the next generation.”&nbsp;



She also speaks of her harrowing experience surviving an earthquake in Nepal in 2015, and returning to summit Mount Everest in 2019, and valuing every breath.&nbsp;



“The higher you go, the more appreciative you become about where we live, and the oxygen and a lot of stuff we take for granted.&nbsp;



“I remember thinking about my mother telling me and my sisters, that ‘the sky&#8217;s the limit’ and suddenly, the clouds were beneath me. I could not see any ground. And also because it was my fourth attempt [climbing Mount Everest], you know, all the people that said I couldn&#8217;t do it, nobody like me had done it before. How wrong they were at the top! &nbsp;



“It&#8217;s just a humbling experience and it also helps you realize how much of a speck we are in the bigger scheme of things.”&nbsp;



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/296135805560457128_928A0540-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-48528" width="388" height="258" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/296135805560457128_928A0540-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/296135805560457128_928A0540-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/296135805560457128_928A0540-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/296135805560457128_928A0540-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/296135805560457128_928A0540-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/296135805560457128_928A0540-600x400.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 388px) 100vw, 388px" /><figcaption>Photo: Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>

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‘Suddenly, The Clouds Were Beneath Me’: Why The Sky’s Not The Limit For This African

Ada Osakwe’s business growth in Nigeria was fraught with struggle, but she is now fighting the injustice meted out to her as a female entrepreneur in the early days.



Most democratic societies consider themselves – on the surface at least – to be gender equal. But while legislation may not discriminate against women outright, real equality is still a long way off. The answer to greater empowerment and more profitable leadership may lie within women themselves.



Ada Osakwe, founder of Nuli Juice, a healthy ‘fast food’ company based in Lagos, Nigeria, believes the time for women to act is now. Osakwe catapulted Nuli Juice from a single-brand organization to a multi-category, multi-brand beverage giant. But that story almost didn’t materialize.



On September 1, 2016, Osakwe was celebrating the highlight of what was a journey that had taken almost four years in the making. Her juice company had just opened its first flagship shop in the cosmopolitan hub of Ikoyi, Lagos, and the young female agripreneur was the talk of town for her innovative approach to empowering local farmers by sourcing raw materials locally.



The next day, disaster struck.



“I was lying in bed and I get a call from one of my guys who said there are people here at the shop with bulldozers and I need to come. I got in my car and the streets were blocked off. There were police officers with guns all over the place,” recalls Osakwe.



Her shop was part of a group of four female-owned businesses being ransacked by the Nigerian police over the landlord’s alleged failure to pay taxes due to the Lagos State government.



“This was like 8AM and I said to them ‘we are tenants’ and they didn’t listen to us. We couldn’t reach out to the landlord. I made some calls to the relevant people in Lagos State and nothing happened. I said ‘don’t do this’. We are employing people, even squatters have rights and I pleaded with them to stop.”



Her cries for help went unheard and in that one morning, all her hard work came crashing down.



Ironically, a week before the demolishing of her shop, Facebook founder and American internet billionaire Mark Zuckerberg was in Lagos with the government celebrating the trip as a testament to their support for the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Lagos.



“It was really tough. A woman-owned business in agriculture, which was the focus of the government for youth job creation with over 15 youths employed in the store, was destroyed that morning,” says Osakwe.



For her, the experience was a bitter pill to swallow. She had turned down a lucrative position to follow her mentor, Akinwumi Adesina, as he made the transition from agriculture minister to the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), in pursuit of making her mark on the world.



After graduating with a first-class honors degree in economics from the University of Hull in the United Kingdom (UK), Osakwe began her career by working in investment banking in London. After two years on the trading floor, she was introduced to the AfDB where she secured an opportunity in France at the age of 24.



“I think I was the youngest person to be ever employed by a development institution and it was such a transformational path and it really set me on the path for who I am today. I worked hard, took minutes and people began to notice the effort I put in.”



Osakwe was right in the heart of what she felt was her calling at the time, driving Africa’s development, but she started to question whether there was more she could do.



Her goal was on making more of a direct impact on the African continent and the people she knew.



“It’s so easy to be in these institutions and you are traveling business class meeting different ministers in different countries and it is tempting to stay in that position but I had this burning feeling to do more,” recalls Osakwe.



After working in the infrastructure team where she was a part of the financing of the Lekki Toll Gate project, a multibillion-naira infrastructure project in the heart of Lagos, Osakwe decided to do an MBA in the United States (US) and transitioned into the private equity space.



“At that time, the African government was investing into private equity because I felt it was a way to truly support entrepreneurs. I worked with a company called Actis which was the biggest private equity firm for emerging private equity funds and ended up in New York with an African-focused fund.”



Osakwe was beginning to feel more at home making an impact with local entrepreneurs. A chance encounter with the team from the Tony Elumelu Foundation, a nonprofit organization pushing the advancement of youth entrepreneurship in Nigeria, brought her attention to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.



“I met with the minister of agriculture at the time, Dr. Adesina and I took a flight to New York and what was supposed to be a 30-minute conversation, lasted three hours. We talked about plans for the youth in agriculture and it was a fun conversation. I was like ‘this is a minister’ and he was talking about the private sector and funds for the agriculture sector and when I left, I knew I would be working with the firm,” says Osakwe.



That was a lifetime ago. After working with the AfDB for four years, she knew it was time to venture out on her own. That eureka moment was sparked by two startling statistics Osakwe came across.



Firstly, Africa was spending about $40 billion on food imports that could be grown locally. Furthermore, Nigeria’s total importation amounted to about $11 billion on fish and tomatoes.



“I was like what is happening to our farmers? So, the wheat farmers in the US are getting richer and our farmers are only small-scale farmers and struggling. Something had to be done,” she says.



After making a series of small investments in two startups as an angel investor, Nuli Juice was born. Today, the company has 10 stores across Nigeria with a further expansion in its product portfolio to include homegrown coffee. Her brand is also stocked in all major retail outlets including Spar and Shoprite.



“The food industry is a $3 trillion industry and Africa is not on the map. You don’t go to Tesco in the UK and pick up a spaghetti that says ‘made in Nigeria’ or ‘made in Togo’; you see ‘made in Spain’. We have to change this.”



Osakwe is deliberate about changing the narrative of how agriculture is seen in Nigeria. Her goal is to use her platform to fight the injustice she suffered as a female entrepreneur in the early days of her business.



“It has been a struggle. The gender issue is a real thing for a woman in Nigeria and I see it when I am raising money. Women have to be resilient. As an entrepreneur, you will get the nos and sometimes your store will be demolished and you will get the police threatening to shut you down because they want a bribe, but you have to believe in that bigger plan and vision for where you want to see yourself,” says Osakwe.



And for her, that vision is to see Nuly Juice, an indigenous Nigerian brand, on the shelves of all major international retailers across the world.&nbsp;

Ada red 3

A Demolished Shop That Built A Success Story

This writer witnessed the alluring and ceremonial mukudji dance of the Punu women in a remote Gabon village, originally performed by men dressed as women.



Early this year while near Tchibanga, the de facto capital of the Punu people of Gabon which straddles the border with the Republic of Congo, I got word that there was going to be a small mukudji ceremony in a local village. As a contributor to this magazine, a ceremony that celebrates the female ancestors of a tribe was certainly a special one to witness and report.



So I hastened from my forest abode pillion-riding on a barely functioning motorcycle to reach the village of Loango, where the elders there have still maintained their traditions. To understand the significance of the mukudji dance, I had my NGO colleague and motorcyclist Antonio Anoro translate the answers to my questions to the village chief Jean-Louis Nzamba.



Much of the description is also available through a quick online search, that the Punu are matrilineal and trace their lines of descent through the women of the community. The female ancestors are honored with okuyi ‘white masks’ that harness their power.



There is little doubt in me that Africa is still the last frontier for ancient cultures. Despite rapid modernization, I have been fortunate to visit communities in many parts of West Africa where the effects of Islam and Christianity have had little effect on cultural practices that are both ancient and a record of human development. Having collected West African art for nearly four decades, I never seem to tire looking at their amazing forms. This passion has taken me this past decade into many parts of West Africa including frequent forays into Gabon, where I help in directing an NGO, Gabon Untouched, for sustainable tourism and gorilla habituation.&nbsp;



The next stage of my art collection I reckoned should be one where the collections of some of my masks should actually be seen coming to life. While Mali and Burkina Faso offered me amazing experiences in this aspect a decade ago, Gabon has been delivering me some amazing experiences I wish to share here.



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The art of the Punu and Fang peoples of Gabon are well-known to the West and served as an inspiration for Picasso and Matisse besides a host of other cubists in the early 20th century. Performances are appreciated as the most aesthetically appealing and exciting form of expression in Punu culture and consequently have become a national icon of Gabon. Such ceremonial dances were originally performed by initiated men who dressed as women; the practice has lately been on the wane.



The mukudj mask of the Punu is especially renowned globally with representative masks found in the major museums of New York, Dakar, Paris, Berlin and London. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which I am a member of, describes the mask this way: “Among the Punu of southern Gabon, the visual focal point of a dance known as mukudj is a mask whose features are inspired by the most beautiful woman in a community. These marks are transformed into otherworldly spirits when empowered with white kaolin drawn from riverbeds associated with the ancestral realm, and are activated during spectacular acrobatic performances executed on stilts.”



While the average museum-goer reads these words and nods quite unremarkably, I had the opportunity to actually witness one of these ceremonies.



As we assembled around the small village quadrangle with a small group of locals to mourn the death of one of its members who passed away a few weeks ago, the arrival of the mukudji on stilts was quite an affair. To the heavy beating of drums and chants, the mukudji arrived waving a fly whisk.



The purpose of the whisk I understood was to request spiritual intervention in the hunt for malicious sorcerers and witches. By clearing such bad omens, the mukudji prepared the village for celebrations. Dancing on stilts up to two meters high, holding fly whisks, and dressed in costumes of plant fibers, the dancer was a sign of authority and inspired a mixture of admiration and fear in view of the amazing physical exploits of their performances.



Well into the dance, the locals thrusted whisks in my hands and allowed me to dance around the mukudji as a sign of appreciation and acceptance into their community.



The joy of cultural travel is one where you appreciate local traditions, their significance and enjoy the human bond such ceremonies create to strengthen. Africa may be called ‘the dark continent’ by the West, but it reveals to me each day the sophistication of its cultures and the originality of spiritual thinking. 



&#8211; By Ramdas Iyer

04-RAM_4590

The Power Behind The Mask: Up Close With The Dancers Of Gabon

U.S. Supreme Court: Behind the Scenes

From Sheryl Sandberg To Tory Burch: Power Women Pay Tribute To Ruth Bader Ginsburg

With the economic crisis and people in her country going hungry, for Ronke Bamisedun, standing by and doing nothing was not an option.



Almost every industry has been adapting to life during the Covid-19 pandemic. While small businesses might not be an industry, they contribute tremendously to millions of people in Africa. With the demand shocks that have been created by the virus, we can see decreased consumer spending, which has consequently led to temporary business closures.



An adverse effect of the pandemic in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous economy, is hunger. The Covid-19 lockdown, which has been implemented in the country since May, is causing thousands of unemployed youth to resort to desperate measures to keep hunger at bay. The situation was so dire that it has caused Latti Ronke Bamisedun, founder BWL Agency, an award-winning strategic communications agency based in Lagos, to take a temporary pivot and focus her efforts where it is needed the most.



“When the lockdown started across the world, all our clients pretty much pressed pause on all our work. This is the first time in almost ten years that I have not worked. You know, I tried to figure out how best to use this time and then I was driving during the lockdown to the supermarket and I drove past a group of youth in Lekki and they had started carrying placards that said ‘please feed us, we are hungry’ – there were about 150 of them on that Admiralty Road and I knew at that point that I had to do something to help.”



Her efforts almost caused a stampede as the hungry youths collected all the donations in a split second. Bamisedun then set up a social media page and started raising more funds to feed the youth. They used a local church in Lekki, a suburb of Lagos, as a distribution center and began feeding the street children in the area. In just over a few months, the food distribution operations have spread to different parts of Lagos.



“We started with 300 meals and as donations increased, we went to about 1,200 meals a day. Once Lekki was sorted, we identified other areas that needed our help. One of the locations was Victoria Island, a commercial hub and with all the businesses closed, there were a lot of people by the park who had been neglected so we started distributing there too. We did about 300 meals daily before we moved to Ikoyi where we also distributed about 150 meals daily,” says Bamisedun.



Since its inception, Bamisedun’s food donation campaign has provided meals to over 40,000 people. The change from the corporate world she is used to has given Bamisedun a deeper sense of connection with Nigeria where she grew up as a young girl before relocating to the United Kingdom (UK) to complete her secondary education. After graduating from Birmingham City University with a BA in Media and Communications, she joined Kaizo PR in London, where she worked on a number of campaigns including House of Marley, a range of eco-friendly audio products by Bob Marley’s family. After relocating to Nigeria, she joined Grayling, an international communications firm where Bamisedun was hired to support the African expansion of the business.



“I was in that role for a year before the company decided that Nigeria was too volatile for them at the time and that was how I started my own agency.”



That was the serendipitous moment that birthed the BWL Agency. The company has since handled brand campaigns for some of the most reputable brands in the country such as Pernod Ricard and Universal Music Group as well as non-governmental organizations like the United Nations Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.



The coronavirus has sometimes been called an equalizer because it affects both rich and poor, but when it comes to food, the commonality ends. It is poor people, including large segments of poorer nations, who are now going hungry and facing the prospect of starvation.



“This project further opened my eyes to the inequality and injustice in the country and as such, we are working out a long-term plan to ensure that these vulnerable communities do not go without. Nobody should go hungry,” avers Bamisedun.



The sudden loss in income for millions of Nigerians who were already living hand-to-mouth along with the collapse in oil prices has made the hunger situation an especially precarious one for the country. Some parts of the country are already experiencing looting and break-ins amid frustrations and worries about hunger. For Bamisedun, standing by and doing nothing is not an option.



“Weirdly enough, this season and this project has given me a sense of belonging and I am determined to do what I can to ensure that this country becomes somewhere we can all call home. I didn’t know that we were going to be doing over 1,500 meals a day across four communities. I just wanted to help. For me, this has been a time to serve others and it really has been a humbling experience,” she says.

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The Nigerian Distributing Food And Hope For the Neglected

Tshego Manche grew up in Klerksdorp and found sartorial visibility in big city Johannesburg.



Born in Klerksdorp, a small town in the North West Province of South Africa, Tshego Manche was raised in a business-oriented family.



Her parents owned a salon and cosmetic store in the township for over 20 years before venturing into other businesses.



“Coming from that environment, I already knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur,” says the 30-year-old fashionista today. “I aimed for what I am passionate about. Growing up,&nbsp;I always said I am&nbsp;a small town girl with big city dreams.”



Manche, known for her sartorial sense among friends, studied for a BCom degree in Marketing Management and whilst in varsity, worked at Pulsate, a fashion store in Africa’s richest square mile, Sandton, in Johannesburg.



“Two weeks after being employed, the owner flew down and said he had to meet me as there was a spike in sales. I was never afraid to approach people and tell them about the store, and also interact with customers. I then learned customer and marketing skills, and developed a deeper love for fashion which led me to want to start my own brand,” says Manche.



La Manche clothing was registered in early 2012 and was ready to put the all the theory into practice. Manche dropped out of varsity during her third year and went on to start selling on a small scale to friends and family, and she opened her physical store end of 2012.



Her mother contributed immensely to her startup and invested in clothing, packaging, and also paid for her flights and accommodation to look for stock in China and Turkey. The brand started growing. In 2014, she employed three workers, teamed up with stylists and magazine editors and the brand grew with sales doubling, she says.



“In 2015, we hit our million mark [offering local and international clothing]. From 2016 onwards, we hit a decline in sales as new entrants in the market came; rental for my space was also high and the location remote. In 2017, I started 100% custom-making; growth had been slow yet steady and I had nine employees by the end of 2019. I decided to close my physical store in April 2019 and stay with one employee.&nbsp;Now in 2020, we are focusing solely on the online space we have rebranded and restructured.”



The coronavirus also had an impact on business but this has taught her that digitizing the business is the best way to go. She also took to social media, encouraging other entrepreneurs during the tough times.



“I invited different people from different industries to come talk to people and engage about entrepreneurship every Monday for 10 weeks. We had one livestream with over 10,000 viewers,” says Manche.



Who would have thought a small town girl would encourage entrepreneurs in a big city to keep pushing ahead in the hard times.

Tshego Manche

The Small-Towner With Big Dreams For African Fashion

Tsholanang Mathibe never let her humble upbringing come in the way of her big dreams designing for the rich and famous in South Africa.



Picture this. Somewhere in Kanana, a rural village in the innards of South Africa’s North West province, a young girl takes a break from a routine day out playing in the fields with her friends, and accidentally leafs through the fashion pages of a glossy magazine, awe-struck by the style and design aesthetics of the big city. And she plans her life in that one moment.&nbsp;



Today, at 29, Tsholanang Mathibe is a fashion entrepreneur and founder of Blackmarble Designs in South Africa’s capital Pretoria, designing for brides and businesswomen, but still recalling that day in the sun when life shone her career path.



“I’ve never seen myself doing anything else from the age of nine,” says Mathibe.



The coronavirus-induced economic downturn in South Africa has no doubt affected her business as well, but it is a good time to reflect on how far she has come, and how much farther she wants to go.



“Lockdown has affected business greatly because most of our clients get garments done to attend special events. With [not many of those events happening], people are sceptical [about] purchasing costumed clothing,” she says.



Mathibe is now fashioning face-masks and recently rented out a wedding gown for a private ceremony.



Her formative years were tough. After high school, she moved to Pretoria for a B.Tech in Fashion Design at the Tshwane University of Technology. It was not easy adjusting to life in the city and the challenges of higher education. She even briefly mulled switching careers to deejaying, but her mother motivated her to stay the course.



“The fashion journey is tough, and the fact that people don’t talk about that side of the industry baffles me, because when I was in high school, I thought it was all glitz and&nbsp; glamor, until I got to varsity.”



When it came to finally starting her own business and choosing a name for her brand, she harked back to her maths classes in school, when her teacher, in discussing numbers, always referred to marbles.



Mathibe used it in conjunction with black, her favorite color, and Blackmarble Designs was born.



The maths teacher had also shown interest in the young creative that Mathibe was and arranged for her to meet with fashion designer, Ephraim Molingoane of Ephymol, a menswear fashion label.



Blackmarble was registered in 2013 when she was still in her final year, and commenced operations in 2014.



“I was helped by the fact that I won an industrial sewing machine for a fashion range I had produced during my third year, when students showcase their work. I won the best innovation award. That helped me start my business.”



In the first year of operation, Mathibe was working out of her aunt’s backroom in Soweto, sleeping alongside her equipment and waking up to work all day or night.



“I spent most of my time in that room doing mostly ready-to-wear garments to showcase and sell at social markets between Johannesburg and Cape Town. A client then referred South Africa’s popular radio deejay, DJ Sabby, to me. He needed an outfit for the J&amp;B MET. That was my first celebrity client,” she recalls.



The following year, she moved back to Pretoria to live with her partner. Business was picking up and she enjoyed making bespoke outfits rather than ready-to-wear. She also started promoting the brand online to reach a wider audience; things were getting better and the business had momentum.



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“I am still using my home as my studio, and in 2019, the business got its first bridal client and since then, that was the market we were mostly [focusing] on before the lockdown,” she says.



Her first client for a bridal outfit was Lindiwe Sibiloane, who had seen a matric dance garment that Mathibe had designed.



“I was looking for something very similar to that [matric dance garment]; then I asked her to do a bridal gown, and she did it. I am still happy about it, everyone was raving about that dress; they still are,” says Sibiloane.



Mathibe’s bridal gowns cost upwards of $1,000.



So far, Blackmarble Designs has also dressed FORBES AFRICA 30 Under 30 alumna such as South African actor Thuso Mbedu and Reabetswe Ngwane, co-founder and MD of Kreamfields, who incidentally, Mathibe has known from primary school.



Mathibe dressed Ngwane for the glamorous Veuve Clicquot Masters Polo social event in 2019.



“I told her I needed a dress. I gave her a brief the week of the event. I sent her a few pictures I had seen on Pinterest. A few days later, the dress was done to the ‘T’ and didn’t need any adjustments, save for a button,” says Ngwane.



Somewhere in Kanana, a young girl must be reading this article now and being suitably inspired, just like Mathibe had been, all those years ago.&nbsp;

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A Day In The Fields, A Lifetime In Fashion

Lydia Mbayo went from an engineering job to making some sharp-suited statements in the fashion business.



How does someone go from being an IT engineer to becoming a modeling agent and entrepreneur with a suit collection?



Lydia Mbayo, 39, who is all of that, says it simply: “I will never let anything stand in my way, if it’s the right time for me to do something, then it’s the right time. I will follow my dreams.”



After a stint as a modeling agent that saw her in-house talent grace global campaigns, Mbayo, originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and now based in South Africa, has launched a collection of ladies’ suits and jackets called La Jaqueta.



“I was always in love with fashion. I have always liked to dress up. I always wanted to be a model. And I always had that entrepreneurship spirit,” she says.



Her new brand seeks to empower women through clothing and help build their confidence and self-esteem.



“I love suits, and I feel confident in them, so I wanted people to be inspired by that so that when they wear my suits, they feel confident too,” Mbayo says.



By her own admission, she is not a designer, but she hand-picks the fabric and adds her own personal flair to it, getting a lot of help from a local ‘cut, make, trim’ factory that assists in manufacturing her “dream collection”.



So how did a young woman who came to South Africa from Kinshasa in the DRC in 2001 to study IT engineering at the University of Johannesburg come to represent models?



Her degree led to her working as at an IT engineer in Johannesburg, but there was something missing. It was not in line with her true passion.



“They used to call me the IT Noami Campbell because I was clever and did well at university, meanwhile, being a Naomi Campbell,” she laughs.



Mbayo aspired to take underprivileged young women from small townships and turn them into international models who could one day represent the biggest names in the fashion industry.



“That was my dream, you get a girl from Hammanskraal and ask her, ‘do you know Paris’? She says to me, ‘mama, what’s that’ and then, I would say to her ‘come sit, let’s Google’ and I would show her the Eiffel Tower and say to her, ‘yeah, we are going here one day’.” &nbsp;



So, in 2013, she represented her first model, who went on to win a local pageant. In 2015, she started a modeling agency, FabulousDotCom. And two years later, she says some of her models were well on their way to attaining global fame.



“You know, in the beginning, no one wanted to book my clients, and I had no idea what I was doing. Everything I learned, I learned from Google – Google was my teacher,” Mbayo laughs. “I even resigned from my job as an IT engineer, and that was a big risk, but it was worth it.”



With the pandemic still at its peak, Mbayo’s brand will be available online for now.



“When it&#8217;s rain, you have a good time. You cannot have a good time if there is no rain. So when you have those challenges, those difficulties, those are just the rain and then the good time is coming,” Mbayo says.



“The coronavirus is not stopping my dream, so it should not stop yours.”

The Entrepreneur In Fashion Who Learned From Google

<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“Men have singled out women of outstanding merit and put them on a pedestal to avoid recognizing the capabilities of all women” <cite>–Huda Sha’arawi, founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union</cite></blockquote>

Quote 2

Quote Of The Day

I love fashion. It’s not just part of my job as an international model, it’s a way of expressing myself and my cultural heritage. I am inspired and excited by the creativity of designers and the variety of fashion choices we can have available to us. Africa has many talented designers who are being recognized on a global scale. Just recently, African designer Kenneth Ize shared the exciting news that he will be collaborating with the Karl Lagerfeld fashion house to co-create the spring 2021 capsule collection.



Yet, when it comes to sustainability, the fashion industry has a lot of work to do. The fast fashion industry that originated in the West has accelerated fashion’s negative environmental and social impact. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the fashion industry uses more energy than the aviation and shipping industries put together. It also states that the industry produces about 20% of global waste water and 85% of textiles end up in landfills or are incinerated when most of these materials could be re-used. Add to this the fact that fashion is also one of the biggest employers of forced labor, and the picture is pretty grim.



Now transport this to Africa, which is already experiencing the impact of climate change and though many African countries are pioneering the fight against plastic – some have made plastic bags illegal for example – we still have plenty to do to ensure we build sustainable businesses, especially in the fashion industry.



For me, sustainability is ultimately about trying to maintain our human existence and we can’t sit back and leave it to others, and this brings me to Malaika.



Malaika is the grassroots non-profit I founded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Its mission is to empower a community of people through education and health programs. It now comprises a school for over 346 girls and a community center that provides education and sport for development programs to 5,000 youth and adults, and we built and refurbished 20 wells that serve over 30,000 people with clean water. We have built Malaika over the past 13 years with sustainability in mind, and to us, it means using minimal resources and using them well.



Our IT suite, school and community center are powered by solar energy. In 2017, we set up our small farm where we teach organic farming and the food produced supplies the school canteen. We engage the community in a big clean-up of the village each month and our students plant trees and learn about the environment. Education is key to empowering people but it’s also key to changing our environmental impact. We are producing the leaders of tomorrow and we want them to be equipped to make an even bigger positive impact on our global carbon footprint than we have.



What can we do to reduce the effects of climate change? Firstly, I believe we, as consumers, need to hold more businesses to account. I try to do modeling campaigns with brands that are ethical and care about giving back because sustainability, to me, is also about the people who make our clothes. According to CARE International, an organization fighting global poverty, 75% of garment sector workers are women and the Covid-19 pandemic has led to brands cancelling big orders with suppliers leading to many workers losing jobs.



So, what can we as individuals do? We need to change the way we shop and ask more questions about how our favorite brands are producing their clothes. We need to take the time to investigate who is making them, what their working conditions are, and what they get paid. When I buy clothing or accessories, I ensure they are items I love and can see how they will fit in with the other clothes I own. HURR is the world’s leading fashion rental platform and I use it to rent clothes for events so I can wear a one-off piece or luxury brand item without buying it. A website I always check is eco-age.com for the latest news on global supply chains, artisanal brands, community projects and suggestions on which brands to shop. Finally, take a look at the United Nation’s ActNow climate action campaign for practical tips on how you can make a difference.



Start today. It takes time and effort to change our habits but every step we take towards sustainability will help change the world for future generations.



– By Noella Coursaris Musunka; an international model, philanthropist and founder of Malaika, a grassroots non-profit in the DRC.

Neolla at Malaika

Re-Use Clothes, Buy Ethically And Build Sustainability Into  The Fashion Industry

In Lagos, savvy entrepreneurs in the beauty business face-off the Covid-19 economic crisis by glamming up their online offerings.



From always being fascinated by brushes and make-up products and their ability to enhance a person’s physical appeal, Rasheeda Adeosun, one of Nigeria’s leading make-up artists today, was close to this profession from the beginning. When she was about seven years old, her mother ran a hair-dressing salon in Lagos, where Adeosun would spend most of her time but the interest in taking up beauty as a career came much later in life when she herself became a mother, to three children.



“While I was pregnant, I was working for Lloyds in their headquarters in the United Kingdom and I fell really ill. After I had my twins, my husband said ‘your friends are always coming around asking you to do make-up so why don’t you do something like that’. Obviously being at home, I said I will give it a try,” recalls Adeosun. She posted her wedding pictures on Facebook and people began to take note of her talent.



“People were like ‘who did your make up’, and I said ‘I did it myself’. That is when business started booming. A number of bloggers, like Linda Ikeji, posted [about] me and that is when the customers started coming in.”



But the early days were a struggle. Unlike today’s standards in the beauty business – characterized by significant access to resources and industry entrepreneurs, who can provide mentorship, as well as practically no barriers to entry due to platforms like YouTube and Instagram – Adeosun had no one that would help turn her passion for make-up into a business.



“So, I used to work for nothing and sometimes I would only have £20 left but I always say to people not all free jobs are bad jobs and I did a lot of free jobs in the beginning but I always say I gained a client later,” says Adeosun.



But that was a very long time ago. Today, she is one of the most sought-after make-up artists in the UK and Nigeria, with her established brand, OTS Beauty, boasting some of Africa’s leading celebrities like Tiwa Savage, as exclusive clients. The bridal look has undergone an overhaul. New-age make-up artists like Adeosun are the reason behind it. She has perfected her signature style which comprises of natural and contemporary looks in tune with the trend and she has gained a reputation of amping up the glam quotient of brides on their big day.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2126DAE2-6F04-4487-8092-DAD55E4E00CD-1024x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47303" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2126DAE2-6F04-4487-8092-DAD55E4E00CD-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2126DAE2-6F04-4487-8092-DAD55E4E00CD-300x300.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2126DAE2-6F04-4487-8092-DAD55E4E00CD-100x100.jpg 100w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2126DAE2-6F04-4487-8092-DAD55E4E00CD-600x600.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2126DAE2-6F04-4487-8092-DAD55E4E00CD-150x150.jpg 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2126DAE2-6F04-4487-8092-DAD55E4E00CD-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2126DAE2-6F04-4487-8092-DAD55E4E00CD-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2126DAE2-6F04-4487-8092-DAD55E4E00CD-2048x2048.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2126DAE2-6F04-4487-8092-DAD55E4E00CD-80x80.jpg 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Rasheeda Adeosun of OTS Beauty</figcaption></figure>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;I used to work for nothing and sometimes I would only have £20 left but I always say to people not all free jobs are bad jobs and I did a lot of free jobs in the beginning but I always say I gained a client later.&#8221;</blockquote>



This has created a huge demand for her bridal make-up services, which constitute a bulk of her revenue. In addition to this, she can charge a premium for campaigns, video shoots and photoshoots. She charges a uniform price for both celebrities and regular clients, often bringing in anywhere from £3,000-£4,000 on a good month.



But like many industries, the Covid-19 pandemic has meant that entrepreneurs like Adeosun are now faced with an uncertain future as economies continue to implement physical restrictions in a desperate attempt to curb the spread of the marauding virus. Adeosun has seen her biggest cash cow all but vanish overnight. This has led her to pivot her brand to survive the new normal.



“I am now doing a lot of online stuff. Most of my following is not from the UK but rather from Nigeria and Ghana. So, doing online classes has helped. Even though it hasn’t brought in the type of money I am used to, it has helped me make ends meet. Also selling lashes online has helped me to bring in money,” says Adeosun.



There is really no business that has not faced the wrath of Covid-19 as more and more enterprises are being forced to shut their doors due to the nationwide lockdowns in place.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="682" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_3503-682x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47304" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_3503-682x1024.jpg 682w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_3503-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_3503-600x901.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_3503-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_3503-768x1153.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_3503-1023x1536.jpg 1023w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_3503.jpg 1364w" sizes="(max-width: 682px) 100vw, 682px" /><figcaption>Nnenna Okoye of Youtopia Beauty</figcaption></figure>



Nnenna Okoye is an Accounting and Finance graduate from the University of Kent in Canterbury in the UK and is now a beauty entrepreneur. She is the owner of Youtopia Beauty, which initially began as an online beauty shop but has over the years morphed into a physical space offering everything from beauty products to skin serums. A bad case of acne, which lasted for over eight months, was the catalyst that helped her to pivot from her nine-to-five job and enter the scary world of beauty entrepreneurship.



“At the time I thought ‘what can you do with your eyes closed’ and you know you love doing and enjoy doing it and still make money from it. And products were the only thing I knew how to do but it was scary and I didn’t know where to start from,” says Okoye.



After failing to get local products that would help her with her acne problem, she had to resort to ordering the products from abroad.



That was when she had her eureka moment. From a beauty blog, she broadened her horizons into the world of beauty distribution and created an e-commerce site where customers in Nigeria could order online. Once business took off, she began introducing her own line of branded cosmetics, the first of which was her best-selling Youskin Vitamin C Serum.



“I felt that vitamin C is the most essential product in every beauty routine especially in Africa where we have exposure to the sun and a lot of pollution. We have about eight products in our line today,” says Okoye.



The company has had to make several changes to its business model over the years. Firstly, Okoye’s dream of creating the Amazon for beauty products was short-lived due to the logistical challenges in Nigeria.



“When I started, people did not have that trust to use their cards online and they had Jumia, which had an order without paying method but they are a much bigger company so they could afford to do that but we couldn’t. So, we had to devise a method where we could also do it properly,” says Okoye.



Her Nigerian consumers wanted to see the products and have a mini consultation before purchasing and it soon became apparent that Okoye would need to open a physical space in order to attract her consumers.



And that is exactly what she did. Youtopia Beauty now had a physical address and an online presence and the move led to an influx of sales.



Since then, the company has been enjoying unprecedented growth. In addition to Youtopia Beauty and Youskin, Okoye subsequently launched the Beauty Hub, a one-stop shop catering service for all the beauty needs of the Nigerian woman. Then disaster struck. Nigeria’s Covid-19 lockdown order came into effect in March and since then, Okoye’s beauty space has remained closed.



“Since the lockdown, we have seen a total decline in people walking into the Beauty Hub which has been disastrous. I shut down completely because we couldn’t do anything due to the curfew in place in Lagos. In the middle of May, I decided not to stop selling,” says Okoye.



Luckily, her major sales came from the distribution of her products, which were still being sold in essential shops like pharmacies and supermarkets that were still allowed to open their doors during the lockdown.



“Because of the pandemic, people couldn’t go out and now people who didn’t care about their skin decided that this is the time to focus on skincare. So, we are selling out on our skin products with some of our lines selling about 100 soaps a day. I have actually seen my numbers rise in the skincare products category but not the make-up line and Beauty Hub,” says Okoye.



Kwame Opoku, CEO of Reset Global and a futurist, describes the trend of increasing sales in the beauty industry during a pandemic as the ‘Lipstick Index’. “Research has shown that historically, an increase in lipstick sales occurred during difficult times like the 9/11 crisis in 2001. This was first established by Estée Lauder who saw their lipstick sales double during this period and this is used as a reliable metric to gauge consumer confidence,” says Opoku.



Kika Osunde and Chioma Ikokwu are the owners of Good Hair, a high-end provider of quality hair products for the discerning and upwardly-mobile professional woman. The starting prices for their hair units can fetch up to a $1,000 a piece. Over the years, the brand, which the women started when they met in university over 12 years ago, has attracted the crème de la crème of society like the First Lady of Ghana and the wives of politicians.



“We saw a gap in the market. There were less than 10 people selling hair and it would sometimes take you up to a year to find a good supplier. So, the market was ready for us. Girls our age could not attain and have access to luxury hair. We always knew we wanted to be a luxury brand and fresh and we targeted young professionals, our aunties and affluent people,” says Osunde.



Their love for premium hair has been supported by their wealthy clientele over the years, which has resulted in the two diversifying their brand with a presence in the UK as well as launching the Good Hair Space in Nigeria with a beauty salon, a barbershop as well as a restaurant and bar.



Today, however, the hair market is a lot different. They have still stuck to their unflinching compromise for good quality hair but are no longer the only players in the space. Instead of only a few suppliers, there are now thousands of people selling hair. The proliferation of social media means it is easier to find suppliers from all over the world. Furthermore, cheap hair products from China provide affordable alternatives to premium hair which has created a mass market.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="682" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Facetune_09-07-2020-20-47-12.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47307" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Facetune_09-07-2020-20-47-12.jpg 682w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Facetune_09-07-2020-20-47-12-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Facetune_09-07-2020-20-47-12-600x901.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Facetune_09-07-2020-20-47-12-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="(max-width: 682px) 100vw, 682px" /><figcaption>Kika Osunde</figcaption></figure>



“Even though the salon is closed, we are still selling hair to clients in Nigeria and the UK,” says Ikokwu. “In Nigeria, we offer a product and a service and in London, we only offer a product. So now, we focus on selling our products. We have started creating more content to increase the demand of our hair units and sales have surged during this period. We definitely fall into the lipstick index- the only thing that has changed for us is the delivery times as the post office wasn’t open six days a week anymore in the UK.”



For most entrepreneurs in the beauty space, content remains king. Providing engaging content to their followers either through tutorials and giveaways to keep online audiences engaged has become the new norm if they want to keep building brand loyalty. The Covid-19 pandemic has led to changes in every industry and for the beauty sector, these new changes will require entrepreneurs to put in more hours in front of the camera and utilize social media to remain connected to their consumers, until the world returns to a semblance of its former self.

CHI2

Nigeria’s Beauty Entrepreneurs: Making Up For Lost Business

Temie Giwa-Tubosun supplies blood to hospitals and oxygen to Covid-19 patients in Nigeria. The special deliveries arrive with doses of compassion and hope.



Life cannot be interrupted, can it? Hence, Temie Giwa-Tubosun’s business clock runs 24 hours a day, all year, delivering life-saving medical products to hospitals across Nigeria. “We never close our doors. In the past four years, I don’t remember a time when we have not had our doors open; Covid or no Covid, Christmas Day or no Christmas Day,” says Giwa-Tubosun, matter-of-factly, in an interview with FORBES AFRICA. Long before Covid-19 and the reimagined focus on access to health into Africa’s remotest corners, Giwa-Tubosun had decided that if she was going to make a success of anything, it was going to be by using the power of data, technology and logistics to deliver essential medical supplies in Nigeria. In 2016, she founded LifeBank, a healthcare delivery solution that represented the culmination of her own personal journey of heartache, tenacity and commitment. The Nigerian-American started with supplying blood, and now delivers everything from oxygen to insulin for those in critical need of them. And now, also ventilators for serious Covid-19 patients. “We knew we needed to be of use to our country when the coronavirus hit. I was very worried about the access to ventilators and I was doing a lot of work around making sure ventilators are available. We called all the hospitals and put a list together to make them available to those who needed it. “Then after that, I felt like we needed to do more testing and we partnered with other agencies and pushed for the first mass-testing drive through testing centers in Nigeria. We have done two and we are working on doing two more,” says the LifeBank CEO. Her latest venture is an oxygen delivery service called AirBank for Covid-19 victims. According to Giwa-Tubosun, about 40% of Covid-19 patients need oxygen and only 5% need ventilators. “The reason people don’t talk about oxygen is because in the West, access to oxygen is not a problem so there has not been a focus on it, but in Nigeria, access to oxygen is a major problem so we thought we need to make sure oxygen is available to [everyone] across the country. So, we then started what we called AirBank and started delivering oxygen to isolation centers across the country.” Born and raised in Nigeria, in her formative years, Giwa-Tubosun shifted to the United States (US) with her five siblings when her mother won the US visa lottery, allowing the family to escape a life of poverty in Nigeria. “It was a nice childhood but things got bad when my parents stopped getting paid as teachers and we got really poor,” recalls Giwa-Tubosun. Her new life in the US, the land of dreams, gave her purpose. After obtaining a Masters in Public Administration from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Giwa-Tubosun joined the World Health Organization (WHO) in Switzerland, where she worked on health financing, before moving on to a firm in Minnesota back in the US where she was responsible for health systems and technologies. Then came a fellowship with Global Health Corps, a non-profit organization founded by Barbara Bush, the daughter of former US president George W Bush. Here, Giwa-Tubosun was part of a group of young leaders in global health for about a year before joining the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Uganda, where she worked on health supply chains before moving to Nigeria, to get married. After a stint working in healthcare with Lagos State as an operations manager, she decided to give motherhood a try. “I went back to Minnesota to have my child but it was a very difficult pregnancy. I had a lot of complications; he was born very early and I was on bed-rest for a while and it was through this period that I started thinking more about my health.” And the health of other mothers like her. After doing some research around maternal health, she found that the number one cause of maternal death was postpartum hemorrhage, a condition in which a woman bleeds heavily after giving birth. “It is a very big problem and has the highest [incidence] of maternal death. Other causes of maternal death take about five hours but this one is very quick,” says Giwa-Tubosun. “The data is that eight out of 10 women who have postpartum hemorrhage in Africa could be saved with access to blood.” LifeBank uses a supply chain system that can make cost-effective deliveries of critical supplies round the clock in every village, town and city across the country. “We have saved over 5,000 people. And you will see little cards on the walls [in our office with] the names of the persons we saved and the date we saved their lives, so this impact is one of the most important things for me,” says Giwa-Tubosun, who recently was also adjudged sub-Saharan Africa winner of the 2020 edition of the Cartier Women’s Initiative. But she has no time to rest on her laurels. She says she continues to seek ways to reach out to those who do not have easy access to good healthcare services. “It’s been incredibly gratifying to do this work,” says Giwa-Tubosun. Indeed, her words matter, at a time when passion and compassion must surely overtake commerce.

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