Entering its 5th year in South Africa, the Veuve Clicquot by Bold Woman Award continues to celebrate the women reshaping entire industries; these are the women turning overlooked problems into category-defining ideas and personal conviction into global ambition. Inspired by the legacy of Madame Clicquot – a visionary who took over the House at just 27 years old with no experience and transformed Veuve Clicquot into one of the world’s most iconic champagne houses – the award honours leaders who challenge convention and build lasting impact.
The Award features two categories: the Bold Woman Award, recognising established entrepreneurs who have built and sustained successful businesses for more than five years, and the Bold Future Award, which spotlights emerging leaders whose businesses are less than five years old yet already driving meaningful change.
From manufacturing and clean beauty to agri-tech, education, sustainability and women’s safety, the 2026 finalist cohort represents a generation of women who understand that boldness requires audacity. It’s taking calls between hospital visits, driving clients before sunrise, or mixing products in a kitchen long before anybody believed in the vision.
This year’s six finalists reflect the evolving face of African entrepreneurship: visionary, globally minded, community-driven and unapologetically ambitious.
THE BOLD WOMAN AWARD FINALISTS:
Lindiwe Nkuna-Kgopa – Founder & CEO, Lindiwe Sanitary Pads
“11 years ago, a guest speaker at a women’s event said something casually: ‘South Africa has never had a female president, and no woman had ever owned a sanitary pad factory at an industrial scale.’ The room moved on, but I never did.”
Lindiwe Nkuna-Kgopa took that moment and turned it into a movement. Founded in 2018, Lindiwe Sanitary Pads (LSP) has grown into Africa’s first large-scale sanitary pad manufacturing facility owned and run entirely by women, producing 800 SABS-compliant pads per minute from its 4000sqm factory in Centurion.
Through white-label manufacturing programmes, distributor networks and strategic partnerships, LSP enables women across Africa to own brands, build sustainable incomes and access economic independence. The business supplies South Africa’s National Sanitary Dignity Programme and has already reached more than 100,000 school girls with free sanitary products in 2026 alone.
Lindiwe’s journey has been defined by extraordinary resilience and conviction. During one of the company’s most difficult periods, she secured over R27 million in funding without collateral after personally inviting ABSA and IDC executives to her factory floor and presenting her vision directly.
“Our accounts were empty. Suppliers were at the door. My team was watching,” she says. “I sat in my car outside the factory I had built from nothing and made a choice. Not to survive, but to thrive.”
Today, she is reshaping ownership within an industry historically built around women, yet rarely owned by them.
Sonto Pooe – Founder & CEO, Nativechild
Some businesses are born from opportunity. Nativechild was born from memory. At just eight years old, Sonto Pooe experienced painful hair damage after a salon visit. It stayed with her for decades and became the foundation for Nativechild – a plant-based, vegan hair and body care product line designed specifically for people of colour.
What began with a single castor oil product mixed in Sonto’s kitchen has since expanded into a nationally recognised brand stocked by major retailers including Clicks, Checkers, Pick n Pay, Dis-Chem and Shoprite, with distribution extending into multiple African markets and the United States.
Sonto made the decision to leave behind a stable corporate career to pursue entrepreneurship full-time. At a time when chemical relaxers dominated the beauty industry, Nativechild championed natural and afro-textured hair as something to be celebrated.
Today, Nativechild stands as one of the first Black-owned hair and body care brands to successfully build a large-scale e-commerce presence in South Africa. But beyond the products themselves, Sonto’s broader mission is about changing narratives. “This is proof that African brands built with purpose, quality and authenticity can stand confidently on the same shelves as global giants.”
Xolile Mabuza – Founder & CEO, Tendalo Trading
For Xolile Mabuza, rebuilding her life became the blueprint for rebuilding waste into something beautiful. After suffering a stroke shortly before university, she faced a long recovery before picking up a discarded rubber tube on the side of the road and transforming it into an owl-shaped earring – the beginning of Tendalo Trading.
Founded in 2019, Tendalo Trading transforms discarded rubber tubes into premium handcrafted bags and accessories, diverting around 1.2 million rubber tubes from landfills every month. The brand combines sustainability, craftsmanship and storytelling, creating products that are environmentally conscious and deeply personal.
One of Xolile’s defining moments came during a launch for a major local retailer. “I sent what I thought was a finished product, and they told me it wasn’t good enough, so I used the production money to redo it,” she says. “One week before delivery, my machine broke, and I had R145 left. I was bold enough to pitch to an investor I’d never convinced before and secured the funding I needed in 24 hours.”
Her work has since attracted international attention, including a conversation with Prince William about how recycled rubber could challenge the future of luxury fashion.
“For years, bullying and a stroke at 21 made me feel invisible. I learned to survive in silence – afraid to raise my hand, even when I knew the answer,” she says. “Starting this business was me finally raising my hand.”
THE BOLD FUTURE AWARD FINALISTS
Maambele Khosa – Founder & CEO, SheCab
Born and raised in rural Limpopo, Maambele Khosa is building a business with social impact, science and women’s safety at its heart. In 2021, during a period of rising gender-based violence and kidnappings in South Africa, she asked herself a simple but urgent question: if she felt unsafe travelling alone, how many other women felt the same way? That answer became SheCab.
Founded in 2021 alongside a full-time job, SheCab is a women-led e-hailing and charter transport platform connecting female passengers with professional female drivers across the Western Cape and beyond. Every role within the company, from drivers and operations to leadership and accounting, is held by women. Built initially through WhatsApp-based bookings and without external investment, the business has become a transport solution and platform for economic empowerment and solidarity among women.
“One of my SheCab drivers received a life-changing career opportunity through a passenger she met during a ride,” Maambele explains. “That’s when I realised SheCab is not just a transport service. It’s a space where women see each other and choose to lift each other up.”
Pretty Kubyane – Co-Founder & Tech Lead, eFama App
Pretty Kubyane describes herself as a “village girl by birth and a technical powerhouse by design.” As the Co-Founder and Tech Lead of eFama App, she’s transforming agricultural supply chains across Africa through technology, AI and data-driven infrastructure.
Since 2023, eFama has been connecting farmers with buyers through a digital marketplace trusted by thousands of farmers and buyers across South Africa, helping them make informed production decisions based on market demand.
“Early on, I was met with scepticism by investors who doubted a woman without a formal engineering degree could lead a high-stakes AgTech venture,” said Pretty. “Rather than being broken by this ‘trust gap,’ I spent hundreds of hours mastering the deep mechanics of coding, cloud architecture, cyber security and AI.” 40+ global certifications and multiple awards later, Pretty is leading a team building applications with backing from the biggest names in tech, including Google and Meta.
Pretty’s journey has been deeply personal, too. While raising a sick child, sitting for technical exams and managing intense financial pressure, she made the difficult decision to walk away from a toxic client contract that threatened both her mental well-being and her family’s stability.
“True boldness,” she says, “is knowing that your worth is non-negotiable.”
Tshaamano Mabuba – Founder & CTO, Buddy Learning
At just 22 years old, Tshaamano Mabuba has grown Buddy Learning from an idea started with just R50 and a free Instagram page into a business that has supported more than 10,000 families while creating income opportunities for young tutors across Southern Africa.
Its flagship platform, BuddyAI, is Africa’s first multilingual AI-powered tutor built directly into WhatsApp. Designed for low-data environments, the platform provides curriculum-aligned tutoring, quizzes, voice-note support and multilingual learning assistance, ensuring learners are not excluded from the future of AI-powered education because of geography, language or income.
Tshaamano’s entrepreneurial journey emerged from lived experience. While navigating serious health challenges and repeated hospital visits as a student, she used tutoring income to fund her own medical treatment and eventually an operation at age 20. Rather than stepping away from her ambitions, she channelled those experiences into building a platform designed to support other young people facing educational barriers.
“Boldness feels quiet when nobody is watching. It feels like waking up and choosing the difficult but necessary thing. It feels like sending the proposal, making the call, paying the tutor, showing up for learners, and believing in the vision even on days when there is no applause.”
The winners of the 2026 Bold Woman Award and Bold Future Award by Veuve Clicquot will be announced on Wednesday, 15 July, with both joining the global Bold by Veuve Clicquot network.
For more than 50 years, the award has celebrated women redefining leadership across industries and generations. This year’s finalists prove that boldness takes many forms, from building factories and pioneering new technologies to rebuilding lives and opening doors that did not previously exist.
