Malawian wins K67.5m fellowship
Thirty-year-old Bettie Kawonga was on Wednesday named one of the four young entrepreneurs under the age of 40 as recipients of the $150 000 (about K67.5 million) fellowships to launch innovative social enterprise projects addressing hunger and poverty in Africa.
The fellowship is a brain child of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, Tony Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative and the World Food Prize Foundation.
At an auspicious ceremony held at World Food Prize international symposium in Des Moines, Iowa, USA, Kawonga said she will use her 40 Chances Award to establish a network of community business incubation centres which will enable underemployed Malawian youth to become successful entrepreneurs in the dairy sector.
She said the project aims at tapping into the current ‘sleeping giant’ of Malawi–– the youth––who make up over 60 percent of the population, but most of whom are either not employed or are unemployable due to lack of technical skills.
Currently pursuing her doctorate at the University of Kentucky, Kawonga is also a lecturer in dairy science and technology at the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Luanar).
Other winners included Liberian Mahmud Johnson, Lilian Uwintwali from Rwanda and Emiliano Mroue from Sierra Leone.
In his statement, Howard W. Buffett, trustee of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and co-author of 40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World, hailed the recipients, saying they have demonstrated that a single individual has potential to change the world.
