Over the last ten years, South Africa has seen a major rise in the development and continued success of some of its most prominent female entrepreneur’s.
Many of these promising developments have come in fields such as medicine, social work, business, economics and cultural development.Furthermore, many of these entrepreneurs have been given recognition not only for their excellent work in their respective fields, but also because they have managed to break down some social barriers that face women in many societies around the world.
Lesley-Ann van Selm
Khulisa Crime Prevention is a Section 21 - non-profit company, which was launched at Leeuwkop Prison in 1997. It is a crime prevention initiative that involves ex-offenders in starting rehabilitation and reintegration processes for juvenile offenders while they are still in prison. In 2001 she was elected as an Ashoka Fellow.
Linda Olga Nghatsane
The winner of the 2007 Shoprite/Checkers Business Entrepreneur Woman of the Year award, Linda Olga Nghatsane is an ex-public health practitioner who famously built up a successful career in not only health services, education and rural development, but also a highly successful farmer - having built a farm with her husband which eventually went on to turn over around R2 million a year.
In addition to the farm itself, Linda Nghatsane also launched a business called Abundant Life Skills (ALS) that offers training and consultancy services related not only to farming, but also educating people about issues such as HIV/AIDS; managing childhood illnesses; health and sanitation and public health.As chairperson of the Nelspruit Agricultural Development Committee she also does all she can to motivate women to get involved in agricultural projects as a means to fighting poverty and providing healthy food.
Dr. Thabang Molefe
A qualified medical practitioner and professional beauty therapist, Thabang opened Soweto’s very first health spa eight years ago.At the time, all she had was a small amount of money she had saved and the determination to succeed.
At the time of her award, she had already created more than 40 jobs for women in communities where she established Roots Healthcare Centre businesses in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State.
Brenda Roopai
Brenda’s luxury travel and tourism business has gone from strength to strength and has notably won the Emerging Tourism Entrepreneur of the Year Award last year.The competition is open specifically to South African black entrepreneurs operating small, micro and medium level hospitality or tourism related businesses.
Founder of City of Choice Travel & Tours, Brenda had won a business plan competition in the tourism sector two years before she clinched the ETEYA award. Describing herself as ambitious and passionate, she was head girl of both her primary and high schools.
After completing a nursing degree, she worked as a pharmaceutical rep and did a postgraduate diploma course in business management. It was only in 2007 that she decided to make a change to the tourism industry, largely inspired by the annual tourism industry Indaba held in KZN. Interestingly, ETEYA has identified more than 300 small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) in the past eight years, and of these, about 60 percent are businesses that are owned and run by women.
Shona McDonald
Cape Town-based Shona McDonald is a highly successful woman who has clinched several prestigious awards for entrepreneurship over the past couple of years.
In 2008 her company, Shonaquip, won the Western Cape Productivity Award based on the growth and continuing success of her business since 2004. She also won the Social Entrepreneur Regional Business Achiever’s Award from the Business Woman’s Association (BWA) of South Africa.Shona has also won the Ernst and Young Social Entrepreneur of South Africa Award and the Top Woman Entrepreneur in Business Award, as well as the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship’s South African award.
A business that grew out of the pain of having a child with cerebral palsy, Shona founded Shonaquip as a close corporation in 1992, selling wheelchair buggies and support devices for disabled children. These were devices that she had designed and built to cater for her own disabled child, Shelley, simply because there weren't any locally made wheelchairs that fitted her needs.In the early days Shona had two people working for her, and they operated out of her garage.
Today Shonaquip is a well-established and highly regarded business that builds more than 6 000 wheelchairs a year, and generates more than US$4-million in revenue. The company employs more than 65 people who help to improve the lives of some of the many disabled people in this country.
Written By: Wesley Geyer
Creative Writer at ATKA SA
