Speakers

Fawzia Ali-Kimathi is the CCO of Safaricom PLC, a leading communications company in Africa. Fawzia is a Commercial Leader and Business Development expert with over two decades of experience in driving market growth across sectors like FMCG and Telecommunications.

Renowned for her ability to fuel commercial success, she has excelled in Strategy and Execution, Product Development, Revenue Management, Strategic Partnerships, and Integrated Marketing. Notably, she led the launch of the MySafaricomApp, achieving 5 million downloads in the first year, and spearheaded projects like digitizing customers through 4G devices and the successful Baze Video and Music platforms.

Fawzia is deeply committed to nurturing business opportunities and strategic partnerships, leveraging her innovative approach and profound market understanding to unlock untapped potential.

Sophia Ashipala (Msc) works at the African Union Commission as Head of Education Division. She is holder of a Master’s Degree in Public Policy Management and has worked in the Education Sector for 23 years at different positions serving the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture in Namibia. She has previously served as Deputy Director for Programme Quality Assurance for 5 years and Chief Education Planner for 5 years.

She has also worked as School Principal for 3 years, Head of Department for Mathematics and Science for 3 years and a teacher for 6 years.

Dr. James Mwangi is one of Africa’s most renowned thought leaders, a disruptive entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the CEO of Equity Group holdings and a holder of the prestigious G8 2007 Global Vision Award that cited him as “an initiator of a concept of the future that will shape the world economy”.

He was recognized in the 2009 Financial Times’ list of the ‘Top 50 thought leaders in emerging markets’ and among the ‘Top 20 most influential people in Africa’. James is the holder of Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of the year 2012 and was named one of the Bloomberg 50 in 2019. He served as the Founding Chair of Kenya’s Vision 2030 Delivery Board from 2007 to 2019. He provides thought leadership serving on several global economic, education and sustainability advisory boards including the UN, and IFC, among many others. James is a certified international retail banker and is married with three children.

Eva Sow Ebion is a Senegalese strategic partner manager and co-founder of the Innovation for Policy Foundation (I4Policy). She works at Meta and supports Community Leaders to mobilize assets within members, encourage social connectedness and engagement. Eva is proud to have promoted the Meta Boost program, a digital capacity building program, which has trained over 27,500 entrepreneurs in 6 francophone Africa countries.

She is a TedX speaker and has also spoken at COP26.. As an innovation ecosystem enabler, Eva has extensive experience helping African startups to grow and showcasing Africa entrepreneurial scenes running incubation and acceleration programs for 10 years. Eva was a member of CTIC Dakar for 5 years where she supported nearly 20 tech startups as business development Manager and trained more than 1,500 project leaders during boot camps and training sessions.

Phone: +254 112 666 000