International Women’s Day (March 8) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women’s equality
To commemorate International Women’s day 2021, SME100Africa held its annual conference on the 4th of March 2021. The keynote address for the conference was given by Funke Bucknor-Obruthe the founder and CEO of Zapphaire Events. Other speakers at the annual conference included Oby Ugboma (C.O.O Chapelhill Denham) Mrs Basirat Akin Bashiru (Assistant Director, LIRS), Fade Ogunro (CEO Bookings Africa), Akinlolu Akinyele (Head Energy and Emerging Corperate groups) to mention a few. There were also special digital marketing and financial literacy sessions supported by Axamansard. Axa Mansard also sponsored the pitch competition that saw 30 female entrepreneurs in Nigeria pitch their business to win one million Naira (N1,000,000.00). Mariam Lawani of Greenhill Recycling Limited won the pitch competition.
Also to commemorate the International Women’s day SME100Africa unveils the 3 Queens Campaign featuring
A Creative – Omoni Oboli. Award-winning Movie Producer, Director and Actor (Special guest SME100Africa International Women’s day 2016).
A Career Executive – Rashidat Adebisi -Chief Client Officer Axa Mansard ( Keynote speaker SME100Africa International women’s day 2020).
An Entrepreneur– Tara Fela Durotoye – CEO House of Tara ( Keynote Speaker SME100Africa International Women’s day 2019)
They discussed their journey on how they overcame challenges in the past 20 years (2 decades) and what needs to be done in their various industries to achieve a gender-equal world.
The talk show hosted by Seyitan Atigarin touches on strength, hope, dream, innovation and the fight to achieve your dreams irrespective of what society has to say; these women have changed the narrative in their various industries and are women leaders; their hard work, resilience and drive have given them the ability to sustain their craft and their position in their industries. They go into detail about how the pandemic affected them and their industries as well as how they were able to let creativity in and shine throughout. Click to watch https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=irfb2g0k3wc&feature=youtu.be