Passing my PhD and graduating was a defining and memorable moment for me. A great sense of accomplishment, it was both the ‘Mama, I did it’ feeling and the ‘coming of age’ feeling which came with the sudden realisation that I could do that and more.

A defining moment in my career has been the realisation that my purpose as an entrepreneur is far reaching, not just to create jobs and wealth, but also be a leading example of charting a path others can follow, especially women.

I feel honoured and proud to be a young entrepreneur, to create employment for other young people, and to deliver value through my business Corium Skincare. My entire life shifted the day I realised that I can actually do it, and I went for it!

That confidence to believe that my age won’t define me has stuck with me and opened doors in my career I could never have imagined. I ended up finishing as the top student for the year and have never looked back.

In April 2022, just over ten years after they founded BongoHive, Zambia’s first innovation and technology hub, Lukonga Lindunda, Simunza Muyangana and Silumesii Maboshe were planning for the next ten years. Based in the country’s capital, Lusaka, BongoHive had a social purpose: to create systemic and lasting social change for Zambians. The three colleagues were satisfied that BongoHive had made great strides in achieving this. But the venture was now bigger and more complex, with four business units. Should they focus on one as the growth area?

In May 2022, Christina Close, co-owner with Natalie Matthews of Love Jacaranda, a blanket retailer based in Johannesburg, was halfway through a two-month freelance job setting up a new digital venture in Cape Town. Since leaving her business transformation position at an international telecommunications operator, to work full-time on Love Jacaranda in September 2021, she had begun to feel lonely working by herself all day.

In September 2021, Talitha Govansamy, advisor to Ebrahim Patel, Minister of the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC), considered how competition, or the lack thereof, affected pricing and therefore attainability of products and services in the long term, especially for the poor.

It was January 2023, and a pivotal time for Thokozile Mangwiro, founder and chief executive officer CEO of Nilotiqa, a South African brand of products that addressed the problems associated with natural hair (African hair that had not been altered using chemical relaxers, texturisers or straighteners). Having established her brand in the market, she was now determined to grow Nilotiqa into a household name. She was considering expanding the range of products on offer, diversifying into different personal care categories and launching the brand in the rest of Africa.

TEACHING NOTE

On 7 May 2019, Steinhoff International, a global retail group based in Stellenbosch, South Africa, published its delayed Annual Report for 2017. The report detailed the results of the company’s investigation into a tangle of accounting irregularities and governance failures that had led to the delay and resulted in the resignation of the previous chief executive officer (CEO) Markus Jooste on 6 December 2017, an 80% plunge in the company’s share price over the following two days and the need to restructure debt of more than €10.4 billion (R166 billion).