Who is Entrepreneur?
A person who undertakes the risk of starting a new business venture is called an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur creates a firm to realize their idea, known as entrepreneurship, which aggregates capital and labor in order to produce goods or services for profit.
Top Female Entrepreneurs In South Africa
Ntsiki Biyela (Aslina Wines, South Africa)
Ntsiki Biyela is South Africa’s (SA) first black female winemaker. She is the founder and director of Aslina Wines, a company she established in 2016 after more than a decade of service to a leading SA winery, Stellekaya Wines.
In 1998, Biyela’s first red wine won a gold medal at the Michelangelo Awards. Aslina Wines- named after her grandmother- now has a global footprint, a realization of Ntsiki’s dream to create an exceptional world-class brand
In 2021, she bagged the Wine Harvest Commemorative Event Diversity and Transformation Award. She also won the Sakura Awards in Japan.
Dulce Oliveira (Fazenda MMM, Angola)
Dulce Oliveira is an investment banker and Founding Director of Fazenda MMM, one of Angola’s top flower farms. Her mother founded the family enterprise in 2008. But it gained popularity during the COVID-19 lockdown as it met the needs of local customers who could no longer access imported flowers.
Since Oliveira took her seat in the family enterprise in 2018, she has helped to innovate the business. The farm produces white, red, yellow, soft, and strong pink roses. Fazenda now generates more foreign earnings and has diversified into fruit production, growing lemons, limes, oranges Avocados.
Filomena Matimbe, (Finana Mozambique)
Filomena Matimbe is the Founder and CEO of Finana, a Mozambican company that processes dry bananas and banana flour. She uses 100% of the fruit, enhancing the nutritional quality while extending its shelf life from 9 days to two years and eliminating waste by converting its peels to animal feed.
Since its establishment in 2015, Finana has won multiple awards including the World Gold Medal at the II World of Inventors and Innovators Forum, and the SANBio Award in Mozambique 2017. Her products are widely distributed in the country through supermarkets, convenience stores, and pharmacies.
Jeanne Groenewald (Elgin Free Range Chickens, South Africa)
Jeanne Groenewald is the Founder and CEO of Elgin Free Range Chickens (EFRC), a poultry farm she started in 1997 with 100 chicks, to provide a healthy option for her family. But the business grew into a thriving enterprise that produced 150000 chicks weekly.
EFRC fowls are raised in a spacious and stress-free environment that allows them to roam, forage, peck, and dust-bathe outside during the day, and to also migrate (naturally) indoors at night to roost
Groenewald has received several awards such as the Top Commercial Female Entrepreneur in the 2014 Female Entrepreneur Awards. She currently sits on several boards including EFRC Holdings RRY LTD and Caledon Hatchery PTY LTD.
Lebogang Manson (Cherished Kidz, Botswana)
Lebogang Manson is a serial entrepreneur and Founder of Cherished Kidz, a mobile tech-enabled child transportation system that seeks to guarantee the safety of children for professional moms in Botswana.
Cherished Kidz made it to the Top 5 International (Africa and the Middle East) Women’s Prize of the Orange Social Venture Prize in 2020. In 2021, she got selected by the Tony Elumelu Foundation to receive non-refundable seed capital.
In July 2022, she was one of the recipients of the Diamond Do Good Entrepreneurship Grant ( a global non-profit), following the intensive United People Global Biashara Entrepreneurship Program and business pitch competition.
Who is the successful black businesswoman in South Africa?
From top left to bottom right: Palesa Mokubung of Mantsho, Milisa Mabinza of Khula Lula, Ntsiki Biyela of Aslina Wines, Siphesihle Kwetana of Siphe Development and Capacitation Agency, Ntombezinhle Jiyane of Era by DJZinhle and Dr Aisha Pandor of Sweepsouth.
Who is the richest female in South Africa?
Wendy Appelbaum
With a net worth of around R2. 6 billion, Wendy Appelbaum is currently the richest woman in South Africa. Wendy is the only daughter of South African billionaire and founder of Liberty Group- the late Donald Gordon. She serves as a director and is the largest individual shareholder of Liberty Group.