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Asia Sultan: Trailblazing the Design Thinking and Innovation Industry

We are always looking for women who are constantly changing the game and that’s why Asia Sultan’s story was so inspiring to us at SLA.

Asia is a young trailblazer in the industry of Design Thinking and Innovation. She uses her experiences as a woman to apply the human approach that is needed to excel in the Design Thinking industry.

During this interview, Asia chats with us about why more women should be in Design Thinking, the power of innovation, and how we can uplift each other in the career space.

On starting out In Design Thinking…

Curiosity into the field of innovation is what led me to explore this discipline in 2016 when the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design Thinking opened their first school in Africa.

I was pursuing a Masters in Property Studies at the University of Cape Town at the time. I immediately fell in love with Design Thinking because the human-centered approach truly resonated with my personal philosophy.

After spending 6 months at the institute I felt that the final piece of the puzzle had been put in place. Design thinking has allowed me to experience problem-solving in areas that I hadn’t ventured into before.

I’m very grateful to be living my purpose which is to use my experiences, education, and design thinking practice to create innovative solutions that make our world a better place.

Being a woman is actually my greatest strength in the innovation industry - Asia Sultan Click To Tweet

About Switch Innovation and what they do…

Switch innovation is an innovation management company that specializes in corporate innovation. We are a balance between technology and advisory as we help large companies with legacy issues to deliver disruptive products to market and build new businesses.

We use design thinking and lean startup methodologies to drive innovation strategy and process for our clients who span across various industries.

Challenges women in the design thinking industry face…

Being a woman is actually my greatest strength in the innovation industry. Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving.

It starts with the people you are designing for and ends with solutions that are tailor-made to suit their needs. It requires building deep empathy with the people you’re designing for and this comes very naturally to women.

Because of this, I am able to create solutions that are not just technically powerful, but also have an emotional value proposition for end-users. In a world where consumers are spoiled for choice, an emotional value proposition is a massive competitive advantage.

Women that I look up to…

My late mother, Hanifa, is the best woman I’ve ever known. I’m an unapologetic feminist because of my mother.

Growing up, both the girls and boys in my household participated equally in doing house chores.

She instilled in me from a young age the importance of education hard work, perseverance, equality and believing in myself.

Most importantly, my mother taught me to love and care for others. This has contributed to strengthening my approach to empathy, an attribute that is crucial in my work.

As a designer, I spend a lot of time understanding people, putting myself in their shoes and owning their problems in order to best design solutions that are relevant to their lives.

As a designer, I spend a lot of time understanding people and owning their problems in order to best design solutions that are relevant to their lives. Click To Tweet

Professionally I look up to Oprah Winfrey, a longtime advocate of female education. I am inspired by her story, especially how she overcame hardships in order to become one of the most influential women on this earth.

I admire that she uses her platform to break gender barriers on a global scale and even uses her resources to invest in education and improving the lives of women.

Lastly and similarly to Oprah Winfrey, I truly admire Rebeca Gyumi, Founder of the Msichana Initiative. She pursued and won a landmark case on child marriages through the petition she filed at the High Court of Tanzania to challenge the Tanzania Marriage Act, 1971, which allowed girls as young as 14 to get married.

The law was amended and raised the minimum age of marriage to 18 for both boys and girls.

My advice to anyone trying to jump-start their career in the Design Thinking space…

I would advise anyone starting in the design thinking and innovation space to try to learn as much as possible.

Read books
Subscribe to newsletters
Engage with other designers through platforms like IDEO and LinkedIn.

A lot of changes are happening in the world of innovation and every day there is a new technology, tool or method designed.

Design thinking entails working with clients across different industries, therefore you need to understand different industry trends so you can use methods, material, and approaches that are relevant to them.

Join design thinking groups on professional networks, subscribe to newsletters, attend design thinking meetups in your area, keep learning and you will be unstoppable.

Why I think uplifting women is so important in the workspace…

Empowerment is created when the strengths that women already bring to the company are recognized and utilized.

If you build organizations of high trust, respect, transparency, engagement, open participation and empowerment your employees will respond accordingly.

When people find meaning and happiness at work, wonderful things happen to the organization; culture and moral changes, staff turnover reduces, employees are more creative, innovative, confident, open-minded and generally more motivated.

As a leader, isn’t that the environment to work and operate in? I champion efforts to uplift women in the workplace because women have so much to offer the world and often times they don’t get equal opportunity to be heard or showcase their gifts.

The importance of empowering women in the workplace is documented in “The Business of Empowering Women”, a survey of 2,300 business executives.

The survey found that the companies who focused their efforts on empowering women reported significant business benefits.

A third of the businesses surveyed reported that their investments in women resulted in increased profits; another third reported their investments were expected to grow in the short-term.

In summary, to quote the late Kofi Anan,

“There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women”

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Cashless Banking in Africa: How we’re creating payment solutions with technology and innovation

by She Leads Africa

African economies are well positioned to benefit from rapidly accelerating technological change if they can harness the current open landscape for innovation.

East Africa is already a global leader in mobile payments, while mobile money accounts in sub-Saharan Africa are on an upward charge.

Apart from being able to leapfrog the limitations and costs of physical infrastructure, the continent stands to benefit from having the youngest, tech-savvy workforce in the world in the next decade.

Africa’s working age population is expected to grow by 450 million people by 2035. According to the World Bank and the continent is projected to have the largest working population of 1.1 billion by 2034, notes the World Economic Forum on Africa.

Recent GSMA data shows that mobile money accounts in sub-Saharan Africa are up 18.4% between 2016-17 to 33.8m registered accounts.

Banking in a cashless society will require African solutions for African problems - @nnamdi_oranye Click To Tweet

However, we cannot wait 12-15 years before adequate job creating initiatives and policies are unlocked. The answer lies in harnessing the power of the digital economy today to create African solutions for African problems. An important part of this will require promoting and partnering with African innovators to unlock sustainable growth.

We are already witnessing the significant potential of digital innovation in the remittance and mobile wallet space. Penetration of smartphones is expected to hit at least the 50% mark in 2020 from only 2% in 2010, according to the World Economic Forum, offering the continent a clean canvas for tech-based innovation.

It is an opportunity we must not miss. These are exciting times and are forcing us to think differently to come up with true Pan African innovation and development.

MFS Africa is a good example of how carefully harnessed and supported technological innovation can have ripple effects through the continent. It now operates the largest digital payments network in Africa and connects over 170m mobile wallets through 100+ partners, including Airtel, Ecobank, MTN, Orange and Vodafone across 55 markets.

It has about 15% of the African population connected to a platform.

M-Pesa, launched in Kenya in 2007, is an often-touted example of African technology making waves even outside its own borders. After capturing the local market for cash transfers it has spread to three continents and 10 countries.

Residents transfer money using the M-Pesa banking service at a store in Nairobi, Kenya, on Sunday, April 14, 2013. In the six years since Kenya’s M-Pesa brought banking-by-phone to Africa, the service has grown from a novelty to a bona fide payment network. Photographer: Trevor Snapp/Bloomberg via Getty Images

MicroEnsure, meanwhile continues on the path of developing pioneering insurance solutions for low-income people like micro-health, crop, and mobile insurance. These are solutions directly aimed at emerging customers and it is little surprise the company continues new customers by cleverly partnering with telcos.

Access.mobile is another major success story, testing and growing its health innovation offerings for seven years in East Africa. The company works with health systems to hone their communications with patients in lower-income but also in growing areas and it hopped the pond in the opposite direction from most smaller startups and landed one of its first American clients.

Standard Bank, as Africa’s largest bank by assets, hopes to support even more start-up and tech initiatives across the continent Click To Tweet

Adventist Health White Memorial Hospital, a Los Angeles facility that works largely with lower-income Hispanics, was looking for ways to use health data to achieve better outcomes within its population.

These are examples of the role models that will inspire our next generation of innovators. We need more and tech-savvy banks to need to continue supporting them as they grasp future opportunities.

Just consider that Findex data shows that sub-Saharan Africa is home to all eight economies where 20 percent or more of adults use only a mobile money account: Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

Opportunities, therefore, abound to increase account ownership up to 95 million unbanked adults in the region receive cash payments for agricultural products, and roughly 65 million save using semiformal methods.

Standard Bank, as Africa’s largest bank by assets, hopes to support even more start-up and tech initiatives across the continent to ensure these opportunities are not lost.

We are setting a new standard in digital payments with the launch of Africa’s first prepaid virtual cards ecosystem, among many other digital innovations - @nnamdi_oranye Click To Tweet

We are therefore innovating ourselves at a rapid pace to harness the benefits of the digital age to drive financial services inclusion. Mobile payment solutions like Snapscan is now available at over 25,000 merchants and a vast user network across South Africa. We are setting a new standard in digital payments with the launch of Africa’s first prepaid virtual cards ecosystem, among many other digital innovations.

The future will be about solving genuine customer problems rather than putting a band aid on them. One area in urgent need of change, for instance, is remittances, where Africa is still one of the costliest places in the world to remit payments – fees as high as 10% to 20% are still endured.

We need to harness technology to genuinely solve this problem.

Sometimes when we talk about banking in cashless society we look too far out – but we don’t have the luxury of time. Knowing your customer (KYC) is about understanding what they need today based on their culture and context and then unlocking the already available data to provide the solution.

Technology, for instance, can solve the unbanked problem on the continent. However, this does not mean you can “plug and play” by taking something that works in one country and expecting it to work in another. Success will increasingly be centered on having a Pan African view of the problem, but local implementation.

The future is certainly bright for Africa as exponential innovation continues to drive change across the continent we call home, disrupts industries and replace legacy technology.

It is now time to grasp this opportunity with both hands before the innovation wave passes us by.

Article By Nnamdi Oranye, Fintech Author and International Remittances Lead at Standard Bank Group.

October 2018

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5 Take Home lessons from the Civic X Launch

by She Leads Africa

On Friday 27th of July, the Civic Foundation for Innovation hit another milestone with the official launching of its mobile learning lab – Civic X, an initiative of the Foundation.

Civic-X is a mobile hub transformed from a truck, into a 15-seater tech hub. Retrofitted with an LED screen, smart tabs and computers, electricity and internet facility. The truck is deployed to execute a specially designed program for women and children in rural areas.

The program seeks to create access and empower women between the ages of 18-35 years old and children aged 10-16 years old in rural communities with information and skill acquisition on issues relating to healthcare, agriculture, basic ICT and social equality using technology as a vehicle.

Civic Foundation launched the program in the School without Walls, a school for children at the Area 1- Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp, Abuja.

Here are five points and lessons learnt from the event:

Breaking Boundaries, Building Synergy

Digital revolution is reaching rural areas in many developing countries. However, the rural digital divide continues to present considerable challenges, especially in a country like Nigeria.

One thing we are committed to is reducing the gap between rural areas and access to ICT and innovation in Nigeria. Rural residents remain largely marginalized; almost anyone seeking innovative products will look to the city centers and the perceived literates.

Civic X allows young children dare to dream by connecting them with Leaders of thought under the mentorship series of the program.

Anywhere innovation and technology thrives, community is formed. A community of change influencers and agents of development. The ripple effect of this can be as huge as total poverty elevation from our society.

Educational Continuity is Important: The IDPS were not always displaced.

One thing we learnt from the launch was that the kids in the IDP camps had proper lives before tragedy struck.

Prior to becoming “displaced”, they attended and received basic and fundamental level of education, either completed or half way. There is an urgent need to build on the foundation already established in terms of education for these children. Also, we want to introduce ICT education amongst those that have hitherto, not had any form of ICT education.

Civic X seeks to build on this ‘foundation’ by raising the bar and exposing women and children to technology. Starting from the basics and a limited number of communities, it is our plan to scale operations, and increase the number of beneficiaries for this project.

Empowering Women Is Empowering the Society

The underdevelopment or slow development of any country is directly proportional to the marginalization of women in issues of nation building and entrepreneurial development in the past.

This is because statistics and research by business analysts and human resource managers have shown that women are greater maximizers of resources. Studies have shown that women channel a larger chunk of their earnings to building family and society.

The place of women in any endeavor cannot be over stretched. Given their huge contributions to socio-economic development, there can be no meaningful advancement when we exclude women from governance and the process of governance.

The Civic X initiative for women is designed to help women make better and more informed decisions in their day-to-day lives. The women would be taught on a wide array of topics including but not limited to; personal and financial management, civic education & participation, health, agriculture and governance.

Harness the Energy of the Young

The energy and excitement with which the kids learnt was amazing. This energy is an untapped resource. This energy must be channeled into productive engagements. As a law of science, energy cannot be destroyed.

We can convert it into something impactful or we can watch these kids viciously engage in social crimes and vices. Education and inculcation of societal values at a young age reduces the chances of kids engaging in such vices.

Moreover, growing in these camps and rural areas without adequate guidance exposes them to a wide range of vices. Educating and empowering these kids with skills that can be commercialized will have a positive ripple effect on the rural areas over the years because it will hugely reduce crime rate while boosting development.

Make the Move and Get the Push

There is a general notion that government is not supportive of indigenous initiatives. The launch of the Civic X proved contrary.

We got Oludolapo Osinbajo – the wife of the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to engage the kids in a Skype call and watch them learn. Three days after, she invited two of the students to the Aso-Villa for an outing and practically spent her day with the kids.

They were treated to lunch and spent quality time with her Excellency. At Civic, we believe that what the government is looking for is a value proposition. Its the same thing every top social impact investor is looking for.

This article was written by Nwachuku Nnamdi for the Civic Innovation Lab.

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Intercultural collaboration: The secret to unlocking innovation and growth

by Liz Grossman

Understand everyone’s goals and work together to achieve them Click To Tweet

According to the Harvard Business Review, “diversity unlocks innovation and drives market growth. ” Because of technology allows us to communicate instantly, everyone can access diversity.

The world is becoming a global village, largely because we no longer need to spend hours, weeks, months or more transmitting messages. We can access information and people within seconds, allowing us to build companies, teams, and relationships with those that used to be unreachable. This phenomenon is a game changer for social entrepreneurs and professionals.

If one does not consider the interconnectivity of the world and the need for diverse teams, one will fall behind and miss economic and social opportunities.

For those who recognize this and seek to diversify partners and scale global businesses, it is crucial that we understand our ingrained mindsets surrounding our work habits, our communications skills and our overall view of success that come from the environment we grew up in.

Often, we do not even realize that we are behaving in a way that hinders our success, even when we have the best intentions.

I have done a lot of work promoting mutually beneficial relationships between Africans and Americans. During this time, I saw some of the major challenges that crop up in our intercultural relations stem from different communications habits.

For example, certain cultures rely heavily on writing, whereas others communicate verbally. The frequency of communication can also be affected by the environment, tone, vocabulary or communication methods used.

In certain contexts, different methods of communication are preferred- in an American office, email is the go-to, even when you could walk down the hall and ask a question in person.

However, in the offices I worked at in Senegal, if I needed anything, I took a walk to my colleague’s desk, chatted about family, the weather, the latest wrestling match, and only then asked about my work needs.

In order to succeed in our globalizing world, the most important thing to do is increase your cultural knowledge of your collaborators. Certain aspects are relatively easy to learn- norms surrounding work attire, greetings in the local language, gestures/body language, or religious belief, for example.

Others take more time to truly understand intricacies such as social classes/ethnicities, relationship with authority figures, gender/family roles, work ethic and office behavior.

Before my trip to Ghana last August, I made sure to do some basic research on culture, customs, and linguistics, but also knew I needed to continue to ask questions and joke respectfully with people during my stay to be better prepared to collaborate professionally and personally with Ghanaians.

Increasing cultural knowledge and working on intercultural awareness are actions to take to ensure you are building the most successful, inclusive, financially solid and sustainable programs with the top talent the world can offer.

Furthermore, it is crucial to establish trust in any relationship. A trust model dedicated to intercultural teams is based on ten dimensions; competence, compatibility, goodwill, integrity, predictability, well-being, inclusion, openness with information, accessibility, and reciprocity.

Entrepreneurs will see true disruptive innovation by creating inclusive teams Click To Tweet

There are many ways to build this trust, paying special attention to which methods to employ given the nature of the team, be it in person, remote or a hybrid.

As I build Baobab Consulting, where most of our relationships are virtual, I mostly use WhatsApp, social media, Google Drive and email to share information and create team culture, but I take every opportunity to meet face to face to establish that physical connection, which in many cultures, plays a crucial role.

Even with cultural awareness and trust, there still may be some lingering stereotypes or assumptions we carry that we are unaware of. Let us not presume that two North Americans or two Africans on a team understand each other.

A woman from Senegal will have a completely different vantage point than a man from Zimbabwe, just as a woman from New York City’s will be different from a male colleague from Montreal. Even if there are some similarities between them that may help them bond faster, it is still necessary to follow the same procedures of intercultural awareness.

At the end of the day, no matter where you fall on the intercultural awareness spectrum, how many languages you speak, or how many cultural events you have been to, you must remember that personality can also play a role.

Sometimes, we work better with certain personality types and struggle with others, so this should not be discounted as you work together and build team dynamics. Take a free version of the Myers Briggs test to learn more about your personality and that of your teammates.

By creating inclusive teams and encouraging them to fearlessly and meaningfully contribute, entrepreneurs will see true disruptive innovation. To do that, we must make sure the right steps are taken to ensure that everyone feels taken care of, considered, understood and respected.

There will always be some level of tension and even conflict when we work together, but if we assume all parties have good intentions, these snafus can be overlooked. Always remember the true mission of what you are doing. Understand everyone’s goals and work together to achieve them.

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Twitter Chat with Evelyn Namara: Why we need women in tech

by She Leads Africa

Missed this event? Make sure you don’t miss the next one by joining our community today.

There is no reason for all of this emphasis on women in tech. If women aren’t good at math then they should study ‘easy’ subjects.

If you’ve ever heard any of these disparaging statements and thought “that simply isn’t true,” then you don’t want to miss our upcoming twitter chat on Thursday Oct. 6th. We’ll be discussing ways to support young women in tech, looking past stereotypes and how to prepare for a career in tech. Technology isn’t just for men so let’s make sure women have access to the industry as well.

Join us Thursday Oct. 6th for a twitter chat with Ugandan entrepreneur, Evelyn Namara, who is the founder and CTO of !nnovate Uganda. !nnovate Uganda uses technology to solve social problems and makes it easier to get development projects done.

If you are a woman interested in the tech industry, then you don’t want to miss this chat. If you think the tech industry isn’t for women, then you DEFINITELY shouldn’t miss this chat. We need to set you straight.

Follow She Leads Africa on twitter and use the hashtag #SLAChats to ask your questions and participate in the discussion.

Topics that we’ll cover:

What the tech industry is like for women in Africa
Why the tech industry needs more women
What you can do to support African women in technology
How to prepare for a career in technology
The steps you should take to start your technology business

Twitter chat details

Date: Thursday Oct. 6, 2016
Time: 12pm NYC // 5pm Lagos // 7pm Kampala
Location: Follow She Leads Africa on twitter and use the hashtag #SLAChats

About Evelyn Namara

Evelyn is the Founder and CTO of !nnovate Uganda, a technology start-up that is implementing technology interventions for social and humanitarian programs. Their flagship product, an electronic voucher system has been used by over fifteen thousand small holder farmers to redeem seed crops under a USAID program implemented by MercyCorps. She’s also the vice chair of the ICT Association of Uganda.

Evelyn has previously worked as Regional Manager – East Africa for Beyonic Limited that offers a SaaS platform for organizations to help them move beyond cash to using electronic payments. She’s also held a role of Country Director for Solar Sister, a social enterprise that empowers women with economic opportunity using the breakthrough potential of solar technology. Evelyn is passionate about tech innovations, entrepreneurship and women in technology.