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Stuff from Johannesburg

Graça Machel Trust’s Women Creating Wealth Summit Breaks Barriers, Builds Wealth

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Graça Machel Trust’s Women Creating Wealth Summit Breaks Barriers, Builds Wealth:

Africa has the highest proportion of women entrepreneurs in the world with more than a quarter of all businesses being started or run by women according to OECD research. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), women make up 58% of Africa’s self-employed population, contributing around 13% of Africa’s total GDP.

However, whilst these business mavericks are agents for change, they also encounter seemingly insurmountable obstacles along the way – including societal prejudices, gender pay gaps and discriminatory lack of access to finance and technology. A three-day summit entitled ‘Breaking Barriers, Building Wealth’ will address these challenges.

Held between November 18th and 20th in Johannesburg, South Africa and organised by the Graça Machel Trust through its flagship enterprise development programme Women Creating Wealth (WCW), this event will encourage Africa’s women entrepreneurs to invest in themselves, turn challenges into opportunities and push for systemic change within business landscapes.

“The Graça Machel Trust champions a continent where women and youth are pillars of progress and are torchbearers of new African narratives, we believe in the power of collective action. So, we are bringing together people who share this vision to learn from each other” said Theo Sowa, the interim CEO of the The Graça Machel Trust (GMT).

Women Creating Wealth’s mission is to support 10,000 of the continent’s women change makers who are collectively expected to generate $ 1 billion in value and 200,000 jobs within the next four years.

At the summit, presentations and intergenerational discussions will include everything from economic and social transformation to access to markets, access to finance and gender lens investment on the continent. This is an opportunity for women entrepreneurs to learn from and network with influential leaders, industry pioneers and passionate advocates for women’s economic advancement.

Asked why the organisation was holding a summit, Senior Entrepreneurship Manager at GMT, Korkor Cudjoe explains: “Guided by the vision of our founder, Mama Graça Machel, we are coming together to assess where we are, where we want to go, and what’s needed to get there. This summit is about solutions – identifying and scaling best practices that transform systems and ensure that women and youth entrepreneurs can move beyond survival to build businesses that generate sustainable wealth.”

Hosted by Nozipho Tshabalala, CEO of The Conversation Strategists, a firm dedicated to facilitating conversations on global stages, this event will include interactive panel discussions, key note addresses by experts and leaders and presentations by entrepreneurs who will share their lived experiences. These will be underpinned by networking sessions and in depth analysis of work done by the Trust and other experts.

“The summit offers opportunities to meet a range of African women entrepreneurs, investors, donors and ecosystem stakeholders in a collaborative and supportive environment. Learning, advocacy and action to unleash the economic power of women and youth will be at the heart of discussions and presentations with the ultimate aim of enhancing participants’ confidence, developing leadership skills and motivating entrepreneurs to take ownership of their business journeys by breaking through both professional and personal barriers in order to scale their businesses,” Sowa concludes.

Author: Ayanda Phakathi

– MyZA

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Top Star Drive-In: Destroyed by What Created it

However, the very thing that created the Top Star eventually destroyed it. Because the early miners had used crude methods, the Ferreira Dump—and dozens of others like it—still contained significant traces of gold. As the price of gold rose and new chemical extraction technologies (like the carbon-in-pulp process) made it profitable to “mine the waste,” the ground beneath the Top Star became more valuable than the cinema itself. In 2006, despite fierce opposition from heritage groups who argued that the dump and the drive-in were culturally significant landmarks, the projectors were turned off for the last time.

The reclamation of the dump was a staggering industrial feat. Starting in 2008, mining giant DRDGold used high-pressure water cannons to “monitor” the dump, turning 5 million tons of solid earth back into a liquid slurry. This slurry was then piped 40 kilometers across the province to a processing plant in Brakpan. By 2011, the “mountain” had completely vanished. The 50-meter-high plateau that had dominated the southern skyline for a century was reduced to a flat, dusty crater.

The disappearance of the Top Star is a poignant symbol of Johannesburg’s “extractive” nature. It is a city that consumes itself to stay alive; even its historical landmarks are subject to the fluctuating price of minerals on the London and New York stock exchanges. Today, if you drive along the M2, there is an empty space in the sky where the Top Star used to be. While the reclamation removed a source of toxic dust and “acid mine drainage,” it also erased a piece of the city’s collective memory. The land where the gold-flecked mountain once stood is now being rehabilitated for light industrial use, proving that in eGoli, even the horizon is for sale if there’s enough gold hidden inside it.