UNGWA Africa: Cocreation of Meaningful Impact Through Leadership, Mentorship & Life-ship

BUSINESS • COMMUNITY • IMPACT UNGWA Africa:

Cocreation of Meaningful Impact Through Leadership, Mentorship & Life-ship

Meet social entrepreneur Gomolemo Lolo Enele Madikgetla, who demonstrates that your dreams are valid, and you can make a big impact through being a mindful and prolific individual in your personal and professional capacity. A Chartered Marketer for 10 years, a “Dare To Lead” trained personality from the Brene Brown Institute, a Regional Ambassador for Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization (WEDO) Southern Africa, a Board Director at Botswana Investment and Trade Centre (BITC), Committee Member at Botswana Innovation Fund (BIF), former Advisory Board Member – TEDGlobal, Thapong Art Centre and Botswana Media Women Association (BOMWA), of all her roles, she believes she resonates most with being a servant leader and a mom.

Gomolemo Lolo Enele Madikgetla is the Founder of a social enterprise called UNGWA Africa as well as Flam Arc Holdings, a boutique brand marketing and communications business. She is a curious, creative, and purpose-driven professional with 18 years’ experience mainly in strategic brand marketing and communications.

Through innovation, storytelling, creativity enhancement, capacitation and mentorship, her commitment towards sustainable impact and development on the African continent has seen her get involved in notfor-profit initiatives such as TEDx Gaborone Co-Curator and Producer, Women’s Entrepreneurship Day (WED) Ambassador, Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF)

Entrepreneurship Program Mentor, 2020 Entrepreneurship World Cup (EWC) Mentor.

She believes there is a lot more to being an entrepreneur than just founding a business. It’s about believing in incessant learning; that is learning something new each day. She is captivated more by quietly doing work that matters, that changes lives; work that will outlive and outlast her. She has always been creative and curious, always fascinated by ideas, innovation, stories, storytelling for impact as well as simply changing lives.

Gomolemo has also lectured entrepreneurs and startups for about 5 years with the Lora Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. This further ignited her desire to contribute to committed people doing amazing work and to intentionally bring value to the regional ecosystem.

DISSECTING UNGWA AFRICA The UNGWA Africa’s public announcement took place as a result of a timely nudge at the 2019 Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization (WEDO) Summit in Gaborone which was under the theme, ‘Entrepreneurship as a Catalyst for Transformation.’ The new cohort was invited on to the stage and introduced to the delegates on the tone of the day’s theme.

‘UNGWA’ is a verb of Botswana origin meaning ‘Be fruitful. Grow. Multiply.’ UNGWA Africa is a wholly citizen-owned and woman-led social enterprise whose mandate includes the co-creation and curation of meaningful impact with individuals and institutions through leadership, mentorship and ‘life-ship’ initiatives, executed in a safe space, towards a sustainable future of prosperity.

BENEFICIARIES OF UNGWA AFRICA’S INITIATIVES Priority is given to women and youth as a key demographic. UNGWA Africa places the development of soft skills such as interpersonal skills, integrity, and critical thinking at the forefront, ensuring that growth and transformation starts from within an individual while focusing on other key elements. Young emerging leaders from diverse sectors are paired with experienced executives and entrepreneurs, thereby positioning them to receive ally-ship, guidance, support, opportunities, skill impartation as they embark on not only reaching their set goals and moving from good to great but also preparing themselves to acclimatize in this volatile uncertain, complex, and ever changing world.

UNGWA Africa thereby commits to creating shared value which is linked to three overarching ambitions: fruitfulness, growth, multiplying; by helping to develop thriving and resilient communities as well as steward resources for future generations. The company’s ambitious goals are rolled into different initiatives that address these commitments. As part of its vision and goals for creating a positive impact on society, the environment and creating long term socioeconomic sustainability, UNGWA Africa covers various aspects such as access to healthcare, agribusiness and food security, industrialization, climate change, quality education, sustainability, equality, and equity.

THE INSPIRATION TOWARDS THE BIRTH OF UNGWA AFRICA Being both human-centered and evidence-based is important to Gomolemo, who shares that her reasons for starting UNGWA Africa are two-fold. Firstly, she wants to share what she has learnt and accrued over the years including lessons from mistakes she has made, through building people in a world where breaking others is the biggest ego driver. Secondly, research was increasingly communicating the glaring gap, exposing the pressing need for quality mentorship amongst women especially in the entrepreneurial and leadership space. UNGWA Africa is more about CSV (creation of shared value) which is about economic impact and social impact. Gomolemo states that, ‘The World Economic Forum 2021 Global Gender Gap Report recently shared that it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide. With this lack of parity in key areas, it has been instrumental, since inception, that UNGWA Africa places emphasis on women and youth as priority demographics. Few initiatives within the business have been extended to men such as some Scholarships as well as webinar access.’ For emphasis, she also quotes the 2019 ‘Promoting Competitiveness in Botswana: a bottom-up approach to economic diversification’ report by the Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) states: “Women-led and youthled companies trail other enterprises when it comes to adopting professional management practices and achieving results in terms of productivity, inventory and cash flow. For example, youth-led firms had a capacity utilization rate that was nine percentage points lower than in companies headed by their elders. This highlights an opportunity to boost SME competitiveness through management training for women- and youth-led enterprises.”

CREATING MEANINGFUL IMPACT THROUGH LEADERSHIP, MENTORSHIP & LIFE-SHIP Amidst its teething stages in year one, remarkable impact was

made by the Mentee cohort, such as involvement in African Union Youth Envoy dialogues including the First Lady of the Republic of Botswana, excelling in Agribusiness incubators as well as production and packaging of health and wellness related products. UNGWA Africa believes that mentorship programs do not make people what they become and ought never to claim their achievements but the cocreation model exists to support, guide, and capacitate the individuals or institutions, bringing out innate excellence that they already had.

The maiden year was FREE and delivered over 12-month program with mentor-mentee pairing over a 9-month cross-sector trimester model, alternating for both exposure and experience. Mentors were from Education; Development Finance; Diplomacy as well as Manufacturing and Exporting. Mentees were from Agribusiness and Food Security; Biotechnology and Indigenous Knowledge; Healthcare Naturopathy as well as Research and Engineering Mechatronics (data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence). The first year included some good highs, tinkering and experimenting, as well as a few solid failures - all key ingredients for building and for transformation.

Also in 2019, the Mastercard report celebrated Botswana receiving the third place ranking globally, compared to the 2020 report where Botswana has now claimed 2nd position. These findings showed that there is significant activity in the country.

Amongst the 2020 highlights were virtual engagements such as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) teams during the peak of the pandemic, as well as the awarding of Scholarships (recipients included youth in biotechnology, agribusiness, media, law, and philanthropy).

Like most organizations, UNGWA Africa has been affected by the Covid19 pandemic. Since it was founded at the beginning of 2020, by the time Mentors and Mentees were matched, lockdowns and other restrictions had begun. The swift need to transition to mainly virtual interaction meant that the initial plan had to change. This was both convenient from a time saving perspective but highly taxing where data cost and good bandwidth were concerned, eventually there was full optimization of digital platforms. Currently, due to the Covid19 pandemic, the programs they run are 100% virtual and are delivered over a 3-month period to women and youth. The current cohort includes graduates, entrepreneurs, and employees in the following fields: Machine Learning & Radio Astronomy; Photography and Graphic Design; Tourism and Agribusiness; Public Service and Events Management; Chemical Engineering and Green Energy; Environmental and Analytical Chemistry.

Gomolemo is of the firm view that purpose-led individuals and institutions collectively create exponential change. That when potential no longer remains dormant, nations rise and disruption of the status quo results in the transformation required to create prosperity. The key initiative that has been executed since May 2020 is the MOFAGO installations. MOFAGO is a noun of Botswana origin meaning ‘nourishment for the journey ahead.’ Interactive dialogue on critical issues are discussed through the virtual sessions with experts on the subject matter. Mental Health became one of the thoroughly discussed topics, with a resident specialist. MOFAGO installations have been offered for free and included intergenerational participation by individuals and teams across the world in different contexts and needing different psychosocial support, motivation, and encouragement.

‘’My experience with UNGWA Africa was fantastic, I got to meet new people and gain knowledge on how to manoeuvre around todays challenging time. I learnt new tricks through the nurture sheets on how I can manage my time better. In addition, I also got to put my hosting skills into use by hosting the Mofago Sessions. Not only did I get to learn from UNGWA Africa, but I also got to contribute towards its growth. I got to discover more about myself as a human being from a strength and weaknesses’ point of view, especially during these trying times of the Covid19 pandemic. The life-ship and mentorship program challenged me to continue putting myself up for the task, to continue learning, and wanting the best for myself. It was an overall motivation booster because it started at a time where my business was collapsing and had to find ways to save it. UNGWA became a safe space to open about these and get some insight and courage to keep on keeping on;’’ cites Tsaone Mokwatso, an UNGWA Africa alumina.

The optimist social entrepreneur, Gomolemo mentions that future aspirations will mainly include the democratizing of access to vast opportunities while maintaining a sustainable model by partnering with multiple stakeholders to collectively address systemic inequalities and inequity. This will result in increased distribution and impact; thus maintaining human warmth and empathy yet leveraging emerging technology,’ she states. She further states that future aspirations include establishing strategic partnerships for sustainable impact and market-creating innovation in key sectors such as agribusiness, healthcare, STEM, cultural heritage, and the arts; Global expansion into an exponential organization with high-impact ‘small-circles’ within cities, rural villages, schools, and organizations. Addressing gender parity and systemic inequalities through further capacitation of women and youth will continue being at the forefront. The most important aspiration is to see Africa truly UNGWA: Be Fruitful. Grow. Multiply.

UNGWA Africa has a vast digital footprint and can be found on LinkedIn and Facebook.