Ladipo-Ajai emerges winner at She Leads Africa 2015

A FORMER Information Technology (IT) Service Engineer and Project Co-ordinator and Business Process Analyst with Virgin Nigeria, Kashope Ladipo-Ajai, has emerged winner at the She Leads Africa (SLA) 2015 Pitch, a business idea-pitching competition designed to showcase the best of budding female African business minds with her concept around the need to make cooking an easy, fun-filled affair and which led to her founding of Omo Alata Foods.

“From my early days of working at Virgin Nigeria, I always tried to find smarter ways to solve a problem. I never believed in laborious, conformist methods,” she said while pitching her business to the judges who must have agreed with her at the event held at Oriental Hotels, Victoria Island.

The judges included Founder of Ebony Life TV, Mo Abudu; Managing Director of Yinka Folawiyo Group, Tunde Folawiyo; Issam Darwish; former Minister for Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson; Nigeria’s Country Manager for the International Finance Corporation, Eme Essien and Genevieve Sangudi.

During the pitch that included five other contestants, Kashope said that her company, Omo Alata, produces Nigeria’s first National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC)-approved 100 per cent organic-packaged blended pepper mix.

While admitting that erratic power supply was a challenge her business faced, she, however, believed she would soon evolve a technology to ensure that her pepper mix, which comes in hot and mild varieties, have longer shelf-life.

Other winners at the SLA 2015 Pitch were Kambili Ngozi Ofili-Okonkwo of Kamokini, who came second with her business idea for an Afrocentric swimwear line and Ngozi Opara of the Heat Free Hair Movement which produces natural curl hair extensions, who came third.

Imoteda Aladekemo of Heels in the Kitchen, Ugandan Brenda Katwesigye who pitched a mobile and app-based emergency health service called Instahealth and Louisa Kinoshi of BeautyRevNG all also gave a good account of themselves.

Ladipo-Ajai walked away with $10,000 cash prize from GTBank, the lead sponsor of the pitch, mentorship, technology prizes from Etisalat and three-months of support from Zippy Logistics while Ofili-Okonkwo and Opara won $5,000 from First Securities Discount House Limited and $1,000 from Zippy Logistics respectively.

In a chat with The Guardian at the event, co-founder, Afua Osei, said SLA was committed to supporting young women’s dream of becoming well-rounded entrepreneurs.

With over 20,000 followers on her social media and a growing online presence, she believes the organisation is poised to achieve its aims.

Founded by Yasmin Belo-Osagie and Afua Osei in 2014, She Leads Africa aims to serve as a platform to invest in Africa’s most talented and promising female entrepreneurs.