They are among the 19 finalists picked, out of 300 applications, for the 10th edition of the Les Margaret Awards by JFD (Journée de la femme digitale), a movement that promotes innovation by women. There are eight of them listed in the Entrepreneur, Intrapreneur, and Junior categories for Africa.  

JFD will reveal the laureates of its 10th Les Margaret Awards on February 10, 2022, at La Sorbonne, Paris. The African finalists include an Egyptian, a Ugandan, a Senegalese, an Ivorian, two Gabonese, a Kenyan, and a South African in the three categories mentioned above.

Entrepreneur

• Farah Emara, from Egypt, runs for the awards with FreshSource, an agricultural platform that connects farms to businesses and provides last-mile solutions. With it, she wants to rationalize the fresh produce value, empower farmers, and cut food waste.
• Shamim Nabuuma Kaliisa, from Uganda, founded Chil AI Lab, a startup that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to expand essential health services to the poor and marginalized, women especially, in her country.
• Ariane Akeret, from Gabon, runs as a finalist with her CaPay project. CaPay is an App that facilitates the payment of salaries, amongst other financial transactions, via mobile money. This digital payment solution targets employees, retirees, workers with no bank account, social security funds, organizations, associations, and public administrations.

Intrapreneur

• Adjaratou Wakha Aidara, from Senegal, is executive director at Partners West Africa-Senegal. She has developed a clean, safe, sustainable, and connected mobility project with motorbike taxis. 
• Patricia Ndikumana, from Kenya, head of partnerships at Sokowatch, an e-commerce platform whose goal is to help informal retailers easily secure essential goods, without relying on wholesalers or banks. 
• Ivoirian Cleo Ngokoudi is the CFO of Anka, a platform that provides local merchants with integrated digital management solutions, and facilitates international financial transactions.

Junior

• Maylis Kouakoua, 13, is from Gabon. She developed Scratch, a quiz-based game to raise teenagers' awareness about the internet’s dangers, cyber-bullying notably.

• Malebina Tsotsotso, 15, is from South Africa. She built MTutor, an e-learning platform designed to provide an adaptable, scalable, safe, and secure learning tool. 

According to Delphine Remy-Boutang, CEO of the Bureau & JFD, the projects selected were the best out of hundreds. “We received over 300 applications. This is a unique opportunity to bring out our future European and African tech champions. All their projects address major societal issues.”

She then stressed the need to “direct more investment towards female entrepreneurship, which also provides solutions to digital transformation by putting it at the service of our societies and the environment.”

For this year’s edition, the vote of the general public will count for one. Launched in 2013 by JFD, Les Margaret Awards rewards female entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, in Europe and Africa, every year. The laureates’ projects are innovative and address major social issues. The Awards is named after Margaret Hamilton, former director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo program. 

Brice Gotoa