Maureen Ndlovu Maureen is an author, motivational speaker, MCee, Coach and many more things. Her story is one of triumph after a great tragedy at the hands of her former boyfriend.

After surviving an abusive relationship that almost robbed her of her life, Maureen Zamagatsheni Ndlovu has written a book to inspire others to find healing.

Ndlovu’s book ‘Connecting the dots backward’ relates the trauma and pain she suffered at the hands of her former boyfriend and her near-death experience after he beat her to a pulp and left her for dead.

“The abuse had been going on for a while, but the incident that almost took my life happened in November 2011. My then boyfriend assaulted me for two hours; he raped me, strangled me with my dreads and a belt and then smashed me with a computer tower on my head.”

Ndlovu said as she was being beaten, she lost consciousness.

“In his mind, he thought I was dead, he drove me to one of the local clinics near where we were staying in Midrand to dump my body at a parking lot.”

She said a security guard at the clinic found her body and took her into the hospital where she was treated for extensive injuries.

Two days after regaining consciousness, Ndlovu said she started piecing together the details of the night she was assaulted.

“I couldn’t remember what happened, everyone at the hospital thought I had been a victim of a hijacking. I prayed to God to help me remember the ordeal of the night I was assaulted and I did.”

Ndlovu said she confronted her boyfriend and he threatened to kill her son if he reported the matter to the police.

“Like any abused person I was scared and wanted to forget about that night and move on with my life so I didn’t report him. I had nightmares, I was addicted to sleeping pills and suffered from depression and had to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital for three months.”

Ndlovu relived the trauma when she was raped again and impregnated with her second child in 2013.

On today's episode of Africa Now, Adetunji hosted Selna Ncgobo, Selna is an actress and singer, Selina Ngcobo from Ixopo, KZN.

She started singing at age 14 and began recording in 2016 Selina is a graduate in Financial Accounting in DUT. She is currently studying for Music production@ Soul Candi Institute of Music with the help of the bursary she won at KZN music imbizo. She is a top five Business and Arts(BASA) finalist in KZN and the only woman sitting in top 5. The piano is her passion

Our guest on the line from Nairobi is John Agboola, a farmer who is here to assist us with unpacking agriculture in Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria. We have decided to get John’s insights into the Agricultural sector and Agribusiness in Nigeria. As a country, Nigeria is synonymous with oil yet there are almost 200 million mouths to feed daily. John Agboola is an agriculturist/farmer with a passion for agricultural research for development. He is a value chain catalyst, agricultural mechanization and communication expert with a degree in Agricultural Economics and Extension from the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria.

On this episode, we are looking at the Match-making industry in Africa, to help us unpack this, we have in the studio Hlengiwe Sigasa CEO of Swift Dating. Swift Dating is a dating agency which  Hlengiwe has founded in order to ensure love in the black community. Hlengiwe founded the agency because in her words’ I love, love. I am a sucker for romance and I realize that we all at some point want it. Why not make it a fun and fascinating experience? Hlengiwe says she is not Dr. Love but Dr. beautiful wholesome sustainable black love.

Our another guest joining on the line from Pretoria is Hetty Boachie-Yiadom, Co-Founder of P & H Boutique store which she owns in partnership with her husband Papa. P & H deals with clothes made out of African fabrics with wax prints and they cater to men, women, and children.

Hetty and Papa both left the corporate to pursue their own business. Hetty says they followed the Robert Kiyosaki model which of running their business alongside their day job until the business grew to a satisfactory point where they felt they could leave their day jobs. Hetty left in 2016 and Papa in 2017. P& H now has five stores in award-winning malls in three provinces across South Africa.

Our guest in studio today is Jim Dando, Director Sales, and Operations, NISSAN. Jim has been in the motor trade for four decades and with Nissan for the past two decades. He was formerly General Manager, Nissan Africa Regional office for 11 years. Before that, he was in Aftersales field operations for 8 years.

Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary-general and Nobel peace prize winner, died yesterday (Aug. 18) in Berne, Switzerland after a short illness. He was 80.

Nigerian schoolgirls won a Silicon Valley prize for an app that detects fake drugs. Five teenage Nigerian girls developed an app that allows anyone with a smartphone to detect and report fake drugs.

he head of Ethiopian Airlines wants African nations to own a stake in the carrier. As Africa’s largest air airline, the state-owned airline is looking to boost the continent’s fragmented airspace through increased connectivity and strategic partnerships. Chief executive Tewolde Gabremariam now says African countries should also co-own the airline with Ethiopia.

Sport is a unifying factor in Kenya, and the country’s runners are known all over the world for consistently breaking records. The story of Enda, the firm making the first Kenyan runners’ shoe.

Zimbabwe’s constitutional court to hear election results petition (Aug. 22). The opposition Movement for Democratic Change challenged the election of Emmerson Mnangagwa as president and is seeking fresh polls or the declaration of its leader Nelson Chamisa as the winner.

Mohammed Jega, Founder Arewa startup in Northern Nigeria on the need for investments in Information technology and creating techpreneurs in Africa. Startup Arewa focuses on using technology to create lasting business solutions for businesses in Northern Nigeria through mentorship, project management and collaborative partnerships and funding of same.

Our guest in studio is Gina Athanassiou (former Miss South Africa)

Founder of Holanathi.

Gina Athanassiou (born 7 June 1984) is a South African former beauty queen and model of Greek origin who has just developed a new nutritional food solution to assist underprivileged communities in South Africa.

Stories about Africa is always such with the so-called permanent stain of poverty, though rich in everything you can think of in the world, but poverty remains a major problem in Africa and has continued from generation to generation. Some people have argued, however, about what the true definition of poverty is. SOS village the United Kingdom refer to Africa as the poorest continent on earth "Africa is considered the poorest continent on earth. Almost every second person living in the states of sub-Saharan Africa lives below the poverty line".

The world bak regards you as being poor if you live on less than 1.25 US dollars a day to life, it doesn't matter if you have no need of even buying anything with money. Apart from just poverty, there's extreme poverty and that is even worst. Extreme poverty in Africa is caused by many factors, according to the SOS UK, these factors include:

War and crisis, Population growth, climate condition, diseases, Unjust Global trade structures.

The only approach to ending poverty in Africa in our opinion should be generational, meaning that we begin to groom a generation that will understand and well equipped on how to create or generate wealth, there are enormous opportunities and resources in Africa and it is about time we change the stories of Africa from a continent ridden with poverty to a continent where her people flourish and prosper.

The concept of pastoral farming is not just a method of farming but also very much entrenched in the culture and lifestyle of many African tribes; from the Masai farmers in East Africa to the Fulanis in West and Central Africa. Pastoral farmers have a huge contribution to our society in many ways, both economically, socially and are also part of our cultural heritage. Adetunji Omotola hosts Coley in the studio to discuss the opportunities in pastoral farming across Africa and also the current challenges with a specific focus on the killings by Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria and how complicated the entire situation is. Coley also offers some solution to the security burden that Fulani Herdsmen in Nigeria presents.

On this episode, we are looking at the outdoor advertising business in Africa Joining us in the studio to help us critically examine the business of outdoor advertising in Africa is Mark Cooper, the CEO of JC Decaux, Subsaharan Africa. JC Decaux is the biggest outdoor advertising company in the world. In 2016 it bought Continental Outdoor.

Continental Outdoor Media, founded more than 50 years ago and a pioneer in Outdoor Advertising in Africa, was acquired on 18 June 2015 by JCDecaux SA (Euronext Paris: DEC) in partnership with empowerment partner and long-term investor Royal Bafokeng Holdings (RBH) with a shareholding split of 70/30. The company has now completed its integration process, and having finalized all statutory requirements, will officially be known as JCDecaux in each of the countries it operates within.

The new platform in sub-Saharan Africa, with more than 37 000 advertising panels and a presence in 14 countries (Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), on top of JCDecaux’s existing footprint in Cameroon and Algeria, is the number one outdoor advertising company in Africa. It operates a wide range of analog and digital advertising displays on highways and road arterials in metropolitan and rural areas, as well as in airports, shopping malls, the Gautrain Stations, taxi ranks and railway stations across sub-Saharan Africa, ensuring optimal visibility for advertisers and their brands.