World Region: Sub-Saharan Africa

Mavis Nduchwa
Botswana

Nduchwa is the founder and CEO of Kalahari Honey, a social enterprise that uses beekeeping as a tool to mitigate human and wildlife conflict while transforming rural communities. Botswana is home to the world’s largest elephant population, and every year farmers lose their lives and their crops due to elephants. Kalahari Honey trains and supplies rural women in elephant-infested areas with beehives that they use as living fences along their farms. The beehives create a natural barrier as elephants hate bees and therefore keep away from the farms. The women then harvest the honey from the beehives, which Kalahari Honey buys back and sells as raw organic desert honey, creating a new source of income for the more than 500 rural women they work with.

Nduchwa’s business supports the following SDGs:
SDG 2: Zero Hunger
SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
SDG 15: Life on Land

Alison Price is the founder and managing director of SoilCyclers, a business working with construction, waste and mining industry clients to recycle unsuitable materials on their sites and transform them into materials they can use in their projects. Their mission is to make onsite recycling ‘business as usual’ for these industries by providing innovative, cost-effective and planet-saving solutions that reduce the use of virgin resources, avoid the risk of importing contamination to sites and transform onsite waste into reusable materials. Each year, they recycle around half a million cubic meters of soil and take about 30,000 truckloads of waste off local roads. The business also creates high-paying jobs for women and young people in a traditionally male-dominated industry through their Trainee Plant Operator program.

Price’s business supports the following SDGs:
SDG 5: Gender Equality
SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
SDG 13: Climate Action

Sarah El Battouty is the founder of ECOnsult, an award-winning architecture and environmental strategy company aimed to change the way buildings are made in Egypt. Their mission is to make affordable green buildings that save energy, water and materials, not only accommodating the needs of the business, but also the community that surrounds the structure. ECOnsult does this by creating partnerships with local and affordable supply chains, employing local labor for projects, and using up to 70% recycled materials in interior designs. As the only company in Egypt pioneering a sustainable, localized design model, ECOnsult is also proud to be an equal pay certified, women-owned company with staff that is 50% women in a male-dominated sector.

El Battouty’s business supports the following SDGs:
SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
SDG 13: Climate Action

Danielle Sharaf is the founder of Switch, a mobile solutions company that produces content rich SMS, IVR (interactive voice response) and digital solutions for mobile users in developing markets. Through their mission “Mobile for Change,” Switch focuses on text messages and audio services since 65% of people in Pakistan still use basic mobile telephone services without internet access. Switch-ITC reaches out to over 17 million mobile users through their services in healthcare, education, financial inclusion, agriculture and career development, providing them with reliable information, learning platforms and connecting them to socioeconomic growth opportunities. In response to COVID-19 Switch has been pushing out text and audio content on virus information reaching about 2.7 million Pakistanis in rural areas and in their regional languages.

Sharaf’s business supports the following SDGs:
SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
SDG 4: Quality Education
SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

Valrie Grant is the founder of GeoTechVision, a business that uses Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to deliver sustainable solutions that positively impact communities. The business uses innovative spatial technologies to support smart city solutions while also enabling and developing underserved and underrepresented students with technology tools to bridge the digital divide. They work with and educate women entrepreneurs, Girls in Technology and Caribbean Governments on how to use location information to implement solutions that impact the SDGs. GeoTechVision exposes them to STEM through various initiatives such as technology camps, mentorship and day functions for girls in ICT and GIS.

Grant’s business supports the following SDGs:
SDG 4: Quality Education
SDG 5: Gender Equality
SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

Bessie Schwarz is the co-founder of Cloud to Street, the leading flood mapping platform designed to protect the world’s most climate-vulnerable communities. By harnessing global satellites, advanced science and community intelligence, they monitor worldwide floods in near real-time and remotely analyze local flood exposure. Their mission is to ensure that all vulnerable governments access the high quality information they need to prepare for and respond to increasing catastrophes. Cloud to Street is or has been used by governments across 15 countries and is on track to enable new flood protection and insurance for 10 million people in the next five years.

Schwarz’s organization supports the following SDGs:
SDG 2: Zero Hunger
SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
SDG 13: Climate Action