Bekele Stresses Opening Up The Business Sector To Women & Youth In The Age Of The Digital Revolution

Dec. 10, 2019 - PRLog -- At a high level International meeting of African Women's Forum, organized by Crans Montana, Sophia Bekele addressed a room of delegates sharing her thoughts and experiences about being an entrepreneur and women-in-tech as well as the success of the Miss.Africa Digital foundation she runs.

The forum's aim was to highlight African Women's experiences, which can be described as life-enhancing and contribute to the global development and integration process.

Bekele touched on ways to leverage the strengths of the African women and youth to drive business and entrepreneurship through use of technology. She stated that "women are a highly visible part of the African economy, thus they run it, and this can be seen from testimonies in major African media covering Women's work in all sectors of the economy. Our Miss.Africa digital 300 Plus women led initiatives also adds to this testimony".

She noted, "just before I sat to speak here, I saw an alert from my staff on my on my tablet, where I was informed via a retweet from our past Miss.Africa Digital Seed -Fund from Ghana - 'Kumasi Hive' - were voted in as a finalist in the Equals-in-Tech award led by ITU, a United Nations Telecom outfit. Miss.Africa Digital was recognized as the same few years ago by the same awards. Our winners therefore are tweeting thanking us - Miss.Africa digital- for this early opportunity we gave them to be where they are now", Bekele shared with audience.

Bekele went on "Therefore, as the our honorable Chairwoman here was asking us to relate our most proud moments, I would say this is worthy of a mention, as well as the many testimonies we have on our website from women and girls across Africa that benefited from our training or seed-fund grant awards, as well as being empowered by our continued partnerships.

Expressing her confidence in women-in-tech, Bekele cited examples from her own foundation where the past 4 year annual competition seed fund of the Miss.Africa Digital program has seen an amazing growth. Thus, the impact of their work ranging between web and mobile app development, graphic design and entrepreneurship has created numerous opportunities for women and girls throughout Africa. This includes the Miss.Africa Ambassadors who go and champion not only our work, but use our established social media and network platforms to champion and share their own vision and work.

"Sub-Saharan Africa has shown highest number of female startup entrepreneurs relative to established businesses at 11 percent. Even our yearly Miss.Africa Digital competition exhibits a high number of application from this area.