Lawyer And ImpactHER Founder, Ukala, Receives Forty Under 40 Africa Award
The Forty Under 40 Africa awards held recently, seeks to identify, honour and celebrate a cross-section of the continent’s most influential and accomplished young business leaders under the age of forty from a wide range of industries who are committed to business growth, professional excellence and community service and have risen up the ranks of their companies or industries at a relatively young age as a result of this.
Ms. Ukala, whose day job involved leading and advising numerous investments into Sub-Saharan African companies noticed that even though women make up 58 percent of Africa’s self-employed population, there are still significant imbalances between opportunities to scale, access to funding, and training; African female entrepreneurs had limited access to institutional capital like their male counterparts.
Her research revealed the size of the entrepreneurship-funding gap for African female entrepreneurs – about €40.07 Billion according to the African Development Bank. Given these results, her first-hand observation, and also her experience in the sector, she decided to create a non-profit that can help address this issue.
In 2017, Efe founded ImpactHER, an impact-driven nonprofit organization that seeks to empower African female entrepreneurs by bridging the gender business financing gap to help African female entrepreneurs realize their full economic potential.
Under her leadership, ImpactHER has successfully built a community of over 60,000 women and since its inception trained over 44, 275 female entrepreneurs across 53 countries in Africa.
In the last five years, ImpactHER has connected African female entrepreneurs to investors, helped women to secure over €1908014.00 in institutional capital for their businesses, awarded grants worth over €4770.04 to African female entrepreneurs, and provided 40,956 African women entrepreneurs with business, advisory, and digital skills support. With this support, these women have been able to get access to local and international markets, resulting in their business growth.
Just recently, ImpactHER partnered with Google to train some of these women on digital marketing skills so they can leverage technology for basic purposes while also providing these women access to funding, one-on-one mentorship sessions, teaching them to be investor-ready and also helping them strategize and build scalable businesses.
Efe just wants to make the world a better place for women and that’s why she founded ImpactHER despite her busy schedule as the Vice President and Assistant General Counsel at JP Morgan. “We must change the narrative for women entrepreneurs. Women SMEs contribute about 40% of the continent’s GDP without leveraging their full potential, yet, the African Development Bank has documented that there is a huge gender funding gap for women-owned businesses in Africa. Can you imagine what can be achieved if women SMEs are given more access to the finance and business resources they need? Africa’s economic potential could be further unlocked.” Bridging the gender gap is not a sentimental matter, it is the economically sound thing to do for Africa’s GDP.” she says.
Last year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Africa Development Bank, and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa invited her to suggest and provide advice on policies that would improve the economic status of African women. In the same year, she was also invited by The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to provide advice on how to ensure women in Africa benefit and participate in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Efe sits on the boards of Mobilhealth, a multi-award winning (by World Bank SDG, amongst others) telemedicine and digital health service provider transforming the way patients receive care and serving underprivileged communities in Africa and beyond, and Operation Water, an organization whose mission is to deliver clean water solutions to the greatest number of people in need globally.
She was also elected to serve for two terms as the 41st Vice President of the Association of Black Women Attorneys in New York.
The Forty Under 40 Africa awards honoured Efe alongside other Africans such as Folabi Edward Obembe, Maryann Omollo, Orry Diana Musiburu Seem, and Dr. Eurika Mogane, among others
