Cape Town – Their goal is to inspire women across Africa and the world.
Reigning Miss Universe, Zozibini Tunzi, South African women’s rugby player, Piwokuhle Nyanda, and local emergency department doctor, Anne Biccard, will be among 58 speakers at the virtual Forbes Woman Africa Leading Women Summit next month.
The sixth edition of the summit is titled “Africa Reloaded: The Power Of The Collective” and will cover a number of sectors including entertainment, politics and sport.
The managing editor of Forbes Africa and Forbes Woman Africa, Renuka Methil, said the event will focus on the need for all of humanity to come together to confer and collaborate as equal stakeholders in resetting Africa on the path of post-Covid-19 recovery and progress.
“It is important to convene and reconvene such platforms for the important discourse on gender issues still plaguing the corporate world and civil society. But beyond that, it is also important to showcase and celebrate success stories. The women who are visible role models for the next generation of female leaders – to have them elaborate on how they have triumphed braving the odds, especially in a historic year that further deepened already existing inequalities.”
Tunzi will be speaking about a number of things, including her Miss Universe win and how her year of reign was during a global pandemic.
“In 2020 I have learnt to appreciate more. It was a year that showed us how short and precious life is. I’m learning to have an even more grateful heart. A gratitude for the people I love, the things that I have and the life that I have. It has been a life-changing experience being a Miss Universe and I look forward to the next chapter of my life. Next I will be taking on television, music and hoping to get involved in more humanitarian work,” she said.
Nyanda said she is very excited to be part of the amazing speaker line-up.
“The world has for many years fallen short on ‘gender balance’ and the time for talking about this is over. I’m a sports player, a passionate one at that. To be able to join this amazing platform of female leaders, especially being in a historically male-dominated contact sport, where women have until recently not considered rugby as something for them, is priceless. I am grateful for the chance to add my voice to this conversation along with these phenomenal women leaders, giving me an opportunity to stand up for all my peers in the sport,” she said.
Biccard said she anticipates being part of a dynamic group, sharing and gaining insight, and hopefully setting an example for women in Africa.
“Interestingly, medicine as I know it has always been an equal pay, equal responsibility profession in terms of gender and I hope that initiatives like this will encourage a mind shift for many. I have so much respect for my colleagues, who have been amazing during the Covid-19 pandemic. I’ve learned that we are much stronger than we thought we were, and that we should value our health-care workers far more than we do. We can have all the ventilators and equipment in the world and we have nothing without the people. I have also learned to value each day and not to waste time and energy fretting about things that are really not important,” she said.
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