“If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.”
Guest speaker Irene Ochem quoted writer and activist George Monbiot during her talk at the Cape Times breakfast yesterday, held at the The Southern Sun Newlands hotel.
Ochem is the founder and chief executive of the African Women Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (AWIEF), Ochem shared insights from her journey of economic empowerment.
AWIEF is a pan-African women's economic empowerment organisation that works to promote and support women enterprise and innovation across Africa.
Irene said her passion for women and entrepreneurship, coupled with her strong belief that Africa's socio-economic transformation can be fast-tracked through enhanced economic empowerment, participation and leadership for its women and girls, led her to found AWIEF in 2014.
Born in Nigeria, Irene holds Nigerian but also Italian nationality, a country where she lived the better part of her life before coming back to Africa in 2008.
“My mother (was) widowed very early in her marriage with five children to raise, educate and feed. I grew up and experienced first hand, what it means and why it is imperative that a woman should be economically empowered
“‘Just in case’, ‘You never know’ - these were my mother's two phrases.”
Ochem said she brought a report card from high school home to show her mother.
“I was the first in class out of 32, and she looked at it - yes she was happy, and she goes ‘Oh you got 85% in English literature, what about all those novels that you read?' She told me 90% is also a distinction,” Ochem said.