Inspiring Open: Amplifying the voices of Africa's inspiring women

In Episode 6, Betty chats to Islam Elbeiti, a renowned Sudanese cultural curator and bass player. Her journey to music creation began when her auntie gave her a guitar. As one of the few women who plays the bass guitar in Africa, Islam had to defy the odds to prove she belonged in this field. Beyond music, Islam is a member of the Pan-African Innovation for Policy Foundation, supporting start-ups across Africa with process development, research and pushing for reforms in start-up law. 

She is a co-founder of the Sudanese Innovative Music Association. Her work has been featured on NPR, Yamaha, CNN, Public Radio International, The Mosaic Rooms, Voice of America, 500 Words Magazine, and Action Music Women.

Angela Lungati's interest in technology started when as a little girl she would play with her father’s computer. Now, that interest has evolved into a passion for building and using appropriate technology tools to impact the lives of marginalised people. She has over 10 years of experience in software development, global community engagement, and non-profit organisational management. 

She is the executive director at Ushahidi, a global non-profit tech company that helps communities quickly collect and share information that enables them to raise voices, inform decisions and influence change. Angela sits on the Creative Commons Board of Directors and is also a co-founder of AkiraChix, a non-profit organisation that nurtures generations of women who use technology to develop innovations and solutions for Africa.

In the 4th episode of Inspiring Open, we speak to Dr. Nkem Osuigwe about the future of Africa's libraries. 

Dr. Nkem Osuigwe’s first experience of the magic of a library was at the tender age of five, when her mother left her with a local librarian to go to the market during a civil war. The impressions she took away with her that day lasted a lifetime and led her into a career working in libraries and with librarians that span more than 35 years. Nkem strongly believes libraries are more than books, and that the power they hold to impact and tell and preserve the history of communities remains untapped in Africa. 

This is the work that she and the team at AfLIA, the African Library, and Information Associations and Institutions are dedicated to equitable access to information and knowledge for all. Nkem wants librarians to go beyond being disseminators of information, to information leaders in their different countries, telling the stories of their communities on a global platform. She’s the chair of the Public Library section of AfLIA.

Episode 3 features open education innovator, Maha Bali. Maha Bali comes from a family of medical doctors but she fancied studying computer science. This was not to last however, as it didn’t gel with personality as an extrovert. She then made the happy option of becoming an educator.

Maha’s love of interacting and connecting with people led her to co-found virtually Connecting a grassroots movement that challenges academic gatekeeping at conferences. She is currently an Associate Professor of Practice at the Centre for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo. She is also the co-facilitator of Equity Unbound, an equity-focused, open, connected intercultural learning curriculum.

Our second podcast features Maryana Iskander. After over half a decade of working with Planned Parenthood as their Chief Operating Officer, she fell in love and made the jump from the United States to the southernmost tip of Africa.

Even though this love affair didn’t last, her love affair with South Africa did, and it ushered her into a career path that saw her working on solving the problems of youth unemployment in Africa, to her current position, leading the Wikimedia Foundation.

Prior to Wikimedia, she spent ten years as the CEO of Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, a non-profit social enterprise focused on building African solutions to tackle the global crisis of youth unemployment. Under her leadership, Harambee received the prestigious Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2019 for its model to support millions of South African youth with access to learning and earning opportunities.

Maryana has dedicated her career to breaking down systemic barriers to access to opportunity and education. She has a proven track record for scaling complex organizations through collaborative solution-building and community empowerment. She spent more than half a decade as the Chief Operating Officer of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She was also the Advisor to the President of Rice University, an associate at the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company, and a law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Inspiring Open launches with its very first episode focused on Anie Akpe, the founder of African Women in Tech.

Anie started her business for the same reason many entrepreneurs do – to solve a problem that impacted her firsthand. Through her work as vice president of mortgages and operations, managing a $1.5 billion dollar real estate portfolio which included Loss Mitigation and Mortgage Servicing,  Anie realised people asked her a lot of questions about business, but little to none about technology.

It was then that she birthed her idea of teaching African women in the diaspora, and later in Africa, how to leverage technology and business to succeed in the world today.

She has more than 25 years of combined experience in her chosen fields and we are pleased to have her as our guest today.

A sample teaser for Inspiring Open