10 Individuals Who Will Inspire You

Common People Big Impact

Chika Unigwe1

Nigeria Prize for Literature winner Chika Unigwe is a notable writer best known for her books On Black Sisters Street, and Night Dancer. While her latest books were first published in the West. Nigeria-based publishing house Parresia later acquired the Nigerian rights to the books.

She is also the founder of the Awele Crea-tive Trust, a unique initiative meant to sup-port younger Nigerian writers under the age of 26. This movement started after her meeting at the NLNG award ceremony  with the governor of Anambra State, where she is from in south-east Nigeria.

Nigeria’s Inspirational Author and Activist

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He donated land for the project, and her hope is that in 10 years time they can have enough funds to select winning writers within Nigeria’s young demographic.

The Board of Awele Creative Trust is currently lead by Unigwe and made up of Professor Akachi Ezeigbo and Professor Femi Osofisan (writers and scholars); Ichie Nnaeto Orazu-like and Engr Kanene Dieobi (entrepreneurs and lovers of literature).

Chika Unigwe holds a Ph.D is in English Literature, and speaks three languages which in-clude Flemish and Igbo, the local dialect in Nigeria (including Hausa).

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Jeffrey Mulaudzi2

South African Jeffrey Mulaudzi is a young entrepreneur who has started a tourism business in the town of Alexandra, Johan-nesburg by offering personal and up-close visits of the township to tourists travelling on bicycles.

The 22 year old entrepreneur kicked off his unique business, Mulaudzi Alexandra Tours, to coincide with the World Cup in South Africa in 2010 by taking a loan from his mother and starting off with seven bicy-

Entrepreneurial Biking Services

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cles. As tourism was on the rise during that period with a 16.8% increase compared to the previous year, his business also grew.

He now has approximately seven clients a week, and charges $27 for a two-hour tour. While this is a great way for him to afford a living, his aim is also to disprove the negative stereotypes in the area by giving tourists a chance to discover the township for them-selves and talk to locals about their experiences, culture, and background.

To book a tour with Mulaudzi Alexandra Tours, feel free to visit his website - http://www.alexandratours.co.za/

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Madeleine Nyiratuza 3

Madeleine Nyiratuza is no ordinary woman. She has been tasked with one of the hardest roles in Rwanda. Nyiratuza is saving the few chimpanzees left in this world by conserving the Gishwati forest in her home country.

As the program coordinator for the Gish-wati Conservation Project, Madeleine Nyira-tuza’s biggest task is barring the subsis-tence farmers who border the Chimpanzee Conservation from entry into the forest. The farmers have families to feed and it is their opinion that their survival is far more

Saving Rwanda’s Chimpanzees

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important than that of the chimpanzees. As such, the conservation has established border control and set up a thirty-mile corridor at the Nyungwe National Park for the chimpanzees to safely meet with other protected members of their species.

Rwanda is a mountainous country and most of its volcanic mountains are home to moun-tain gorillas. The primates draw a lot of tourism revenue to the country. The Volcanoes Na-tional Park was Africa’s first National Park and Gishwati was once just a forest corridor that connected Volcanoes Park to the north and Nyungwe Park to the south. After the genocide the area continued to shrink due to human encroachment, and human activity thereby reduced the number of chimpanzees that lived in the mountains. President Paul Kagame then developed a long-term plan that laid the path for the Gishwati Conservation Project. The plan and project were also an effort to show the country’s farmers that they were important to the country.

Madeleine Nyiratuza is naturally drawn to the environment. She attained her Bachelor’s De-gree in Biology, Geography and Education in 2004 from the Kigali Institute of Education. She taught primary school for two years before teaching Biology at Gisenyi College in Rwanda, where she worked on joint education and environmental projects between Gis-enyi College and Hockerill Anglo-European College in the U.K. The conservationist also started the Environment Club, which spearheaded the planting of more than 500 trees in local schools and increased conservation awareness among students. Nyiratuza also de-signed syllabi to be used to train local teachers on methods of teaching science and tech-nology in her country.

A wearer of many hats, Nyiratuza is one of the founders and the current President of For-est of Hope Association (FHA), a local NGO that works on conserving Gishwati Forest Re-serve. She also works with the Wildlife Conservation Society/Rwanda Program as Project Manager for Monitoring Ecosystem Services, Agriculture and Livelihoods in Rwanda.

Nyiratuza has said, “We need trees on those hills, not houses.” She has been trying to con-vince the local population that without trees Gishwati, which is nicknamed “The Forest of Hope”, will turn into a wasteland unable to support both man and chimpanzees.

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Esther Mbabazi4

For a long time African women were only perceived as cradle rockers and care giv-ers, but over time African society has changed its perception of its women as they embrace professional careers.  A good example of the changing times is Es-ther Mbabazi, Rwanda’s first female pilot.

Esther Mbabazi, at 26 years old, didn’t just stumble on a pilot career.  Flying has been her life long passion.  She has wanted to fly people since the age of four.  Even after the death of her father in a plane crash in the DRC, when she was only 10 years old, Mbabazi stayed determined.   She spoke

Rwanda’s First Female Pilot

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of the incident on  CNN’s African Voices.  “From day one, he was always my biggest sup-porter or fan.  But an accident is an accident.  Like I said if someone gets hit by a car, you don’t stop driving.”

It was after high school that Mbabazi set out to Uganda to attend pilot school.  A year af-ter pilot school she travelled to Miami to train for RwandAir.   At 24, Mbabazi became the first female pilot for RwandAir.

Despite the second guesses she gets from both her colleagues and passengers, because of her age and gender, Mbabazi forges ahead.  It has happened that some passengers have opted not to travel when they find out that she, a lady, is flying the plane.  Mbabazi doesn’t lose hope.  “My greatest memories are flying to different cities.  Being in the sky gives you a whole other view…you get to see what they call a bird’s eye view of every-thing,” she disclosed in an interview.

Mbabazi hopes that other women will not let their gender get in the way of their dreams, that through her aviation achievements other women would be inspired to attain more for their lives.  “Time has changed and women are out there working, technology has changed and everyone has the brains to do something, now it’s not about how much bi-cep or how much energy you have.”

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Zuriel Oduwole5

Meet Nigeria’s 12 year old Zuriel Oduwole, who is already an accomplished film maker, interviewer, and education advo-cate. Her mission is to rebrand Africa. She

has interviewed at least 14 presidents and prime ministers and many other social fig-ures like the Williams sisters and the rich-est black man on earth, Aliko Dangote.

A 12 Year Old’s Journey in Re-branding Africa

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At her young age, she is the founder of ”Speak up. Dream up. Stand up”, a campaign she started to advocate for the education of the girl child. She has been staying true to her dreams and mission by combining a rich childhood and travelling the world to create docu-mentaries and high profile interviews, as well as inspiring kids on the African continent to keep dreaming and reaching for the stars.

She even travelled to the World Cup in Brazil to promote her project #FollowTheBallForE-ducation.

Faithful to the name she was given, which means “God is my rock” in Hebrew, she has re-mained steadfast until now in her vision.

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Alhaji Mustapha Oti Boateng

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After being a cab driver for 19 years, Gha-na’s Alhaji Mustapha Oti Boateng decided to wage war against the bleaching and skin lightening practices in the country by producing a line of herbal cosmetics.

He used his deep-rooted knowlege of herbs to help his community because the practice of using creams and other cos-metic products to chemically lighten skin tone is detrimental for one’s health, accord-ing to the World Health Organization. It is

From Cab Driver to Entrepreneur: Ghana’s Organic Cosmetic King

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however a very common practice in Ghana, among many other African countries.

Boateng opens up about how his journey to success:

What was your breakout product?

I started with Chocho cream — the natural skin restorer and beauty soap. It is a local soap produced by our forefathers… It’s not all types of a disease that a cream can cure, but most of the skin ailments the cream can cure. That is why it’s written as a “natural skin re-storer” — it doesn’t bleach but rather enhances your color.

Where has this knowledge of organic cosmetics come from?

My father was a herbalist and my grandfather was a herbalist I tried to recall all those things that when I was young they sent me to the bush to collect. The herbs that we have here have a real potency of curing… and when I started using them too I have realized that I didn’t choose the wrong way of curing people.

You had been working as a taxi driver since you dropped out of school. Why the sud-den need tomix things up?

When I found that my children were growing up, I told [one of my taxi clients] that I had to find something to do so that I would be able to look after my children very well. And he himself told me they needed to send someone to Britain, to go and learn how to operate printing a press. He sent me there, I learned and came back and they opened a printing press for me in Accra.

Then after the printing press, came a stint in Japan…

They gave me the opportunity to go and I traveled to Japan where I started odd jobs… I came back with about five buses and started a transport business, but unfortunately for me it was all accidents, one after the other.

After all these accidents, you didn’t give up though. You transformed one of the buses into a mobile grocery delivery service, right?

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What I was doing was going to the villages, buying food stuffs, buying everything needed in the kitchen and coming to the residential areas and announcing the things that I had to sell. It was a very lucrative job. I did it for some time and I saw that the work was so tedi-ous because sometimes I had to go to the bush myself, carry the load, uproot the coco yam, cassava, and that stuff by myself and age was catching up with me. So I decided that this work, I can’t do it for long because if age caught up with me I can’t go to the bush to carry those food stuffs, so I decided to try another thing.

Where did the name “Chocho” come from?

This name “Chocho” is in the memory of a dear friend, who has passed on. That name “Chocho” was a nickname between us.

And how did you know organic skin care products would take off the way they did?

I went to the market and bought creams that are manufactured and produced by foreign countries, powders and perfumes, and went around announcing those things for sale and it was really doing very well.

So you decided to start producing locally and it’s been quite the success. Has it been an easy ride?

The economy is always fluctuating. You know we haven’t got a permanent exchange rate for our currency. I’m an herbalist, I produce other products but some things, fragrance and petroleum jelly and that sort of stuff. We import them so at the time of importation you cal-culate based on the exchange rate, before the goods would arrive in the country, [some-times] the exchange rate would shoot upwards.

You seem to face these obstacles head on and industry leaders have noticed. How did it feel to be honored as the “Overall Entrepreneur of the Year” in April?

[As] somebody who started from nowhere, if I am in this area and being recognized that I am the entrepreneur of the year, obviously, I cherish this the most … it means they are ap-preciating what I am doing, so I was very happy.

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And after receiving these honors, you’re also trying the “pay it forward” mentality by helping build schools and provide computers in classrooms?

I’m not educated but I’m always happy when I see children in school. You know here in Af-rica, it’s not all people who get [the] opportunity to go to school. Education is a lost treas-ure for every human being. That is why I’m always passionate even if I did not get the change to educate myself very well. Now that Allah has given me that power, everywhere that I see that need [for] education, if it is in my power, I help them.

Last question, what advice do you have for any budding businessmen?

Nobody should think that because they didn’t go to a classroom to sit on a chair I’m not educated. We can always educate ourselves wherever we go. That is a courageous way of life. Whatever dreams that we have, we should think that it’s human beings who can do anything in this world.

Now a household name in the West African region, his Chocho cosmetics has become a popular staple in beauty bags throughout the area.

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Jaffer Isaak7

Kenya has over 42 tribes, each with its own identity and stereotypes attached to them.  Anti-tribalism campaigner Jaffer Isaak seeks the cohesion of all these tribes through his door-to-door campaign.

The recent terrorism attacks in Kenya have convinced most that those responsible are members of a certain tribe in both Kenya and Somalia.  It didn’t help when police did a search in Nairobi’s Eastleigh Es-tate, which is predominantly occupied by this tribe.  The result is that whenever the

Anti-Tribalism Campaigner

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other tribes see members of this community they fear for their lives.  This fear has led to people disembarking public vehicles whenever they see a member of this tribe board, es-pecially one with a bag.  The tribe has tried to change this perception but new attacks keep them stigmatized.

It’s for such causes that Jaffer Isaak fights, why he founded “Pillar of Hope”.  Pillar of Hope is a non-profit organization that seeks to educate Kenyans on how to live in peace and harmony.

Isaak has been going from door to door preaching peace and talking to both the young and elderly about the importance of unity within humanity.  The peace crusader seeks to walk  from Nairobi toMoyale to champion his cause.  So far he has been able to walk from Nairobi to Mombasa, which is a considerable distance, and says this is only the first leg of his journey.

Jaffer Isaak was born in Northern Kenya in Moyale District in 1973.  Isaak belongs to the Gabra tribe, one of the smallest tribes in Kenya.  After completing primary school, even though his knowledge of English and Swahili were questionable, he managed to serve in the army for ten years, and even traveled on a peacekeeping mission with the UN to the former Yugoslavia, in 1992.  After his stint in the army, Isaak left and settled on becoming a taxi driver at the Jomo Kenyatta Airport, Nairobi.  Fate led him to London where he worked odd jobs and later opened his own cab service.  The whole time, Isaak  was invest-ing in his transport business back in Kenya.  Even after gaining British residency, Isaak still felt the need to return to Kenya, which he did in 2006, and set up a clearing and forward-ing firm at JKIA.

In 2012, Isaak hoped to vie as a presidential candidate in the Kenyan elections but sadly could not.  He believes he will be able to serve Kenya better through his anti-tribalism cam-paigning.

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Dr. Denis Mukwege8

Picture this a rape victim who has been shot 45 times in her genitals comes to you seeking help or even worse a naked rape victim who is leaking urine and faeces, psy-chologically traumatized seeks your help. For me these are horror stories which would make me break down. I would also

be confused. I don’t know what you would do but I don’t think you would go to pains to treat her, counsel her and provide food and shelter for her as Dr.Denis Mukwege a gynecologist decided to do by opening Panzi Foundation.

Gynecologist Beyond Measure

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Dr.Mukwege is a gynecologist from the Democratic Republic of Congo and when he real-ized that rape is being used as a weapon of war in his home country he decided to do something about it by opening The Panzi clinic. Here he expertly seeks to treat women with sexual injuries. “Other women come to us with burns .They say after they were raped chemicals were poured on their genitals. There were situations where multiple people in a village were raped simultaneously and the rest are forced to watch,” Dr.Mukwege revealed in an interview with The BBC Outlook Team. Dr .Mukwege’s clinic is located in Bukavu in northern DRC. He started a tented version of it in 1998, when he built a maternity and oper-ating theatre. In that same year the clinic was destroyed. This wasn’t the first year that a hospital owned by Dr.Mukwege had been destroyed. When the war broke out in Congo in 1997, 35 patients in his hospital in Lemera in the Eastern part of the country were killed and that’s when he fled to the north.

Dr.Denis Mukwege’s 350 bed Panzi clinic is funded by UNICEF and other donors. It also boasts of a mobile clinic and micro finance initiative. The clinic was founded in 1999 and it has since cared for more than 21,000 victims of sexual and gender based violence .The clinic has performed over 4,000 fistula repairs and provided urgent health care for 11,000 victims of sexual torture. The act of rape not only damages the victims physically but also psychologically. Before Dr.Mukwege starts treating the patients he performs a psychologi-cal examination to test their resilience for surgery. The next stage is the surgery or plain medical care. The third stage is the socio-economic sector or after care. This is done after discharging the patient to inaugurate them back to society by teaching them ways of self sustenance. Under its micro finance programme, the clinic has been able to provide eco-nomic empowerment and micro finance programming for more than 3,000 women.  The fi-nal stage is the legal care, where the perpetrators of the crime are brought to book.

The Congo war which is one of Africa’s most deadly wars began in 1998.It is brought about by conflict of the natural resources in the mineral rich country. The woman is the cra-dle of society and by destroying her you destroy a whole community and it is with the ba-sis of this that this war is being fought. Both the Congolese army and militia commit rape crimes on women and men. Although the war officially ended in 2003, the Eastern part of DR Congo has continued to fight.

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Dr.Mukwege’s honorable act has not always been accepted with open arms in his home country. He only returned to Bukavu in January after being in Europe during his exile. Dr.Mukwege further narrated in the BBC Outlook programme the ordeal which led to this, “They opened the gate and got in my car, pointing their weapons at me. They got me out of the car and when one of my guards tried to rescue me they shot and killed him. I fell down and the attackers continued to fire bullets at me but luckily I survived. They then left without taking anything. Afterwards I found out that they had held my two daughters and their cousin as hostage in the living room at gunpoint as they waited for me,” said the doc-tor. “It was terrible,” Dr.Mukwege concluded. After this experience which happened last year on October 25th. Dr.Mukwege fled with his family to Sweden and finally to Brussels. It was the Congolese women who protested against his attack to the authorities and paid for his ticket back home to Congo. This noble gesture really touched Dr.Mukwege. Upon his return he was welcomed warmly at the Kavumu airport in Bukavu. The doctor performs up to 10 surgeries during his 18 hour working hours. The women have taken the doctors secu-rity upon themselves .Groups of 20 women guard him day and night in shifts without weap-ons. “They don’t have any weapons. But it’s a form of security to feel so close to the peo-ple you are working with,” said Dr.Mukwege in the BBC Outlook interview.

Dr.Denis Mukwege has been recognized by the world through the following awards:  In 2007 he was awarded the Special Human Rights Prize by The Republic of France. In 2008 he got the UN Human Rights Prize. In 2009 Dr.Mukwege was given The Olof Palme Prize in Sweden. He was also named African of the year in 2009 in Nigeria by Daily Trust. In No-vember of the same year he was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur by the French government .In June 2010 Dr.Mukwege received the Van Heuven Goedhart-Award from the Netherlands Refugee Foundation. In October of the same year Dr.Denis Mukwege received The Wallenberg Medal from The University of Michigan. In May 2011, he received the King Baudouin International Development Prize. In September of the same year Dr.Mukwege received The Clinton Global Citizen Award. The doctor has also been nomi-nated for a Nobel Peace Prize twice. Dr.Mukwege gave a talk at The USC (University of South California) on October 7th as an advocate for women’s rights in Congo. The talk  co-incided with the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize Winners of this year.

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Dr. Denis Mukwege was born on March 1st 1955.His passion of medicine stemmed from wanting to heal the sick people that his father who was a Pentecostal Minister prayed for. In addition to this he studied gynecology in France after he saw the complications that women in Congo go through while giving birth. The doctor also travels around the world informing people of the ravages of the war in Congo and how rape is used as a weapon. Under the Panzi Foundation the doctor has the Pennies for Panzi project to raise money and awareness for the children at Jeux Aire de Jeux. This is a daycare facility for children of rape survivors who are healing in Panzi Hospital. The daycare has many needs and through your donation of Drink Congo Project Coffee, Donation of 5 dollars and forty cents a month or telling 5 friends  about Congo you are helping the center build a better day-care. Donations can also be made for the equipment at The Panzi Hospital.

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Stephanie Nyombaire

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In her first year of undergraduate studies Stephanie Nyombayire co-founded the Genocide Intervention Network a Non Governmental Organization aimed at draw-ing attention to the Darfur tragedy in Su-dan and raising funds for the protection of civilians. She is currently a graduate stu-

dent at the New York University, Wagner School of Public Policy.

Her outstanding efforts to stop social injus-tice  has led to Stephanie  winning numer-ous awards and international recognition  – She was only 18, when she spent a week

The Award Winning Activist From Rwanda – Fighting Wars, Poverty and Famine

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touring refugee camps on the Chad/ Sudan border filming a documentary  for MTV called Translating Genocide. She has also introduced President Bill Clinton at the Campus Pro-gress National Student Conference inWashington DC. Clinton, in the keynote address, praised Stephanie for her work and apologized for the United States’ shameful lack of in-tervention during the Rwandan genocide. He called it “the biggest regret of my administra-tion”

She has been named Hero of the Month and the Top Ten College Women in America by Glamourmagazine. She has also been honored by Rwanda’s First Lady for her efforts against genocide and abuse. 

It was her own family story that gave Stephanie her passion against injustice. She was born in 1986 in Kinshasa, where her Rwandan parents, both Tutsis, were living in exile.

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Rapelang Rabana10

South African technology entrepre-neur Rapelang Rabana is taking African communications by storm as  co-founder of Yeigo Communications, a company that provided services to advantage of the inter-net, mobile and cloud computing technolo-gies.

Rabana’s main job is to tackle the cost of communication in South Africa. By combin-ing her experience at Yeigo Communica-tions and her talent for innovative entrepre-neurship, she became the founder of Rekin-dle Learning, a company looking to im-

The Power of Mobile Phones on African Education

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prove education in Africa by turning people’s compulsion to check their phones into an op-portunity to learn.

Her journey began at the young age of 22. After graduating with honours from the Univer-sity of Cape Town, South Africa in business and computer science, she realized a hard truth of our current generation,”There will never be enough jobs for all the young people to-day – more and more of us must become entrepreneurs.”

Always struck by the high costs of phone calls in South Africa, Rabana felt concerned and with the help of two former University classmates she worked on possible solutions. By 2007, her first entrepreneurial venture, Yeigo Communications, was born. The company went on to becoming one of the earliest mobile VoIP service providers in the world. Just a year later, the Swiss company Telfree bought 51 percent of the company.

When asked about how she came to success to quickly, Rabana said, “The internet does a lot to level the playing field with regards to access to information…you can become an expert in any field now if you put in the work and time to teach yourself. All we had to start was an internet connection and a cheap laptop, yet we produced world-class innovation.”

Her latest entrepreneurial venture, Rekindle Learning, reflects her appreciation for the power of education to change the lives of young people in Africa, and once again builds on her vast specialist tech expertise to provide innovative solutions. She noticed that young people across the continent were increasingly using their smartphones as an inte-gral part of their daily lives, spending hours each day continually checking their phones. This presented an opportunity for learning that was not being addressed on the conti-nent; in sub-Saharan Africa, only 2 percent of the population has a computer and therefore access to online education and learning tools.

Taking advantage of the fact that there are currently 67 million smartphones in Africa and an estimate that by 2025, this number is expected to jump to 360 million, the growth po-tential of such a mobile learning tool was huge.

Her new Rekindle Learning app, developed to work on small screens, both offline and on-line, is essential when dealing with Africa’s unreliable connectivity. It enables young people

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to take short, personalized tests designed to maximize memorization. Her app uses Tweet-sized chunks of information, asking short questions and bringing users back to what they got wrong until they show they have mastered the material. Rabana hopes this tailored “micro learning” method will encourage users and educators alike to learn on the go, at the same time providing teachers with detailed feedback that could improve existing teaching methods.

Rekindle Learning is building knowledge in the palm of young people’s hands. “Develop your mind”, she says. “More than ever, there is so much to learn, so much to know, so many different things to do. The opportunities to be whoever you want to be have never been more accessible to those who pursue their dreams.”

Rapelang Rabana is a Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum, was chosen by Forbes as one of Africa’s Best Young Entrepreneurs, and listed on the ‘O Power List’ by The Oprah Magazine.

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