Having spent 35 years of her career in the field of communication, publishing and digital media, Melanie Hawken decided to take a different path altogether—harnessing her communications experience to pull the audience of African women entrepreneurs. She founded a women entrepreneurs’ think-tank, ‘Lionesses of Africa’. Within a year, the organisation has managed to reach over 100,000 inspirational women entrepreneurs from across the continent. The target is to assist one million African women entrepreneurs to unlock their business potentials by 2018. During the recent Global Women’s summit in Kigali, Hawken talked to The New Times’ Athan Tashobya about her ambitions to share, inspire and connect women entrepreneurs across Africa and also weighed in on what Rwanda’s women empowerment policies mean to the continent.
