Women entrepreneurs across Africa are building companies that address waste, food insecurity, unreliable water supplies and deforestation. Their experiences also highlight the obstacles many women face when seeking finance or operating in sectors traditionally dominated by men.
In Nigeria, Ifedolapo Runsewe founded Freee Recycle in 2020 after more than 12 years in banking. Her Ibadan factory collects discarded tyres from four states, processes them into rubber granules and turns them into products including playground surfaces, gym flooring, paving blocks and interlocking tiles.
The company employs about 62 people and has partnerships with organisations including Michelin, Save the Children and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Runsewe says she was often treated as though the man accompanying her owned the business, reflecting assumptions about women’s role in industrial manufacturing.
Freee Recycle also runs an art residency programme, launched in 2025, that transforms discarded tyres into works inspired by African history and culture. Runsewe is exploring the possibility of expanding into the recycling of aerosol containers such as insecticide cans and spray bottles.
In Uganda, water engineer Kyokushaba Shine established Winta Engineering Solutions in February 2025 to provide affordable irrigation systems for smallholder farmers. Inspired by her mother’s struggles with failed harvests, she has helped install 30 water systems across the country, most powered by solar energy. More than 10 have been installed for female farmers, and women make up 80% of her team.
The company designs and installs systems using solar pumps and technologies such as drip irrigation. It also digs boreholes when necessary and trains farmers to maintain the equipment. Kyokushaba has begun working with microfinance providers to connect farmers with loans of about 5m Ugandan shillings, which can generally be repaid over two years.
Her educational programmes address soil degradation and the effects of the climate crisis. Kyokushaba also wants to create more opportunities for women in an agricultural and engineering sector where men still have much of the influence.
In Kenya, Wawira Njiru’s Food4Education has grown from a small kitchen serving 25 children in 2012 into an operation with 209 kitchens feeding more than 700,000 schoolchildren each day. Njiru started the initiative after hearing that pupils were fainting from hunger at a school near Nairobi.
The organisation distributes meals using motorbikes and trucks and employs 6,000 people, most of them women. Its flagship Nairobi kitchen, which feeds about 60,000 children, uses solar power and steam, while other kitchens are moving towards eco-briquettes made from sawdust and agricultural waste.
Food4Education buys about 130 tonnes of food daily, with roughly 80% sourced from local smallholder farmers. In early 2026, it purchased 1.3m mangoes from 5,000 farmers in Murang’a county after a surplus caused by hot weather left growers struggling to sell their harvest. The fruit was then distributed to schoolchildren.
In Malawi, Chifuno Stevens founded the Chifuno Changa Green Initiative in September 2020 in response to poor waste management and deforestation around Dedza. The women-led enterprise works with 18 members of the Dauya Ladies Environmental Group to produce charcoal briquettes from discarded peanut shells.
The briquettes provide an alternative to firewood and conventional charcoal, while also giving agricultural waste a productive use. They are used by the initiative’s sister business, Dedza Pottery, when other energy supplies are limited.
Since early 2026, the organisation has also offered sewing classes, enabling members to make reusable bags from local kitenge fabric. Tours of the briquette workshop give visitors the opportunity to meet the artisans and try producing the fuel themselves.
Stevens says the initiative must keep its products affordable while creating sustainable income for the women involved. However, unreliable supplies of peanut shells, the cost of specialised equipment and limited access to finance continue to restrict its growth.
Across the four businesses, the founders are combining commercial activity with efforts to address social and environmental needs. Their stories also illustrate the continuing difficulty women face in accessing capital and gaining recognition in industries where ownership and leadership are often assumed to belong to men.
Sources: The Guardian Business.