Revisiting More Than A Woman 2023

The showcase introduced Thuso Motau, Katlego Malatji, Lungile Maile, and Mahlodi Letsie to share their experience with investors and support organisations to highlight the groundbreaking work they are doing.

Eighteen months after the launch, our #MoreThanAWoman finalists have come back to share their story on the impact that the funding and support has had on their business growth and journey as innovators. Their achievements been varied and exceeded expectations, including:

• New funding and investment: through further grants, awards and investment in the form of sponsorships and joint ventures
• Expansion of operations: to new clients and users leading to expanded business opportunities and growth
• International recognition: by securing places on international innovation support programmes to connect and learn from other entrepreneurs across Africa and beyond
• New collaborative partnerships: accessing collaborative research and development on existing and new ideas with potential future commercial opportunities

Updates from the 2023 winners

Spotlight: Thuso Motau

Thuso Motau, winner of the #MoreThanAWoman Showcase 2023 Award, explains how the award has transformed her business, the Mighty House of Soap.

The Mighty House of Soap takes used cooking oil (a common waste product with limited disposal options in Thuso’s local township) and turns it into a range of soap products including bar and liquid soap. Environmental sustainability is a core focus of the business model – taking waste and turning it into something useful – from product development through to packaging and distribution.

Spotlight: Katlego Malatji

Katlego Malatji is the founder of Project One Engineering, an industrial engineering consultancy that offers design, planning and management services across the manufacturing ecosystem. The ProjectOne purpose statement is to rebuild South African manufacturing by creating production capacity and changing lives in the process.

Spotlight: Lungile Maile

Lungile Maile, winner of the #MoreThanAWoman Showcase 2023 Best Pitch Award, shares the story of how her business, Nubian Smarts, has grown since the programme.

Nubian Smarts is an education technology (EdTech) business that has developed STEM products and services for school-aged children living in townships in South Africa. The NuMaths application, for example, aligns with the South African curriculum and can be used offline, making it accessible for children in township communities such as Lungile’s where limited internet connectivity is commonplace.

I will never be able to perfectly articulate how much this program has changed my life.

– Lungile Maile

Spotlight: Mahlodi Letsie

Mahlodi Letsie is the CEO and founder of Bare Mind Holdings, a health technology start-up that works to promote positive mental wellbeing in African communities. Bare Mind’s main product is a mobile app that delivers personalised mental health support through a gamified interface using natural language processing (NLP) tools, accessible in multiple African native languages, to support individuals on their journey to improved mental wellness.

The [#MoreThanAWoman] programme stretched me because it gave me the opportunity to present myself to various stakeholders at different points in time in a more cohesive and packaged way… To me, pitching was an exhilarating experience. Being in front of people really taught me the importance of knowing your story in order to share cohesively who you are as a business.

– Mahlodi Letsie

Commitment to inclusive economic growth

#MoreThanAWoman seeks to deliver on one of the core pillars of the UK Government’s Strategy for International Development to:

provide women and girls with the freedom they need to succeed, unlocking their future potential, educating girls, supporting their empowerment and protecting them against violence.

Under the FCDO’s Africa Technology and Innovation Partnership Programme (ATIP), our initiative provides training and investment support alongside access to new opportunities to women from underserved innovation communities to help stimulate inclusive economic growth and the scaling of technology-enabled businesses to solve development challenges.

The success of the #MoreThanAWoman 2023 has spurred a second campaign in 2024-2025, expanding the ambition to support a cohort of women innovators across the three Global Alliance Africa countries (South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria). This is in our commitment to continue breaking down barriers to opportunities and promoting inclusive economic growth by furthering women’s economic empowerment, a priority set out in the UK Government’s International Women and Girls Strategy, 2023-2030.

About Global Alliance Africa

Innovate UK Global Alliance Africa project is a six-year project funded by UK International Development through GCRF and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).

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Instagram @WeAreGlobalAlliance

Webpage iuk.ktn-uk.org/programme/africa