Melissa Mwale, Founder of three organizations, two of them, operating in the technology space, is a Zimbabwean-renowned, award-winning entrepreneur, E-commerce & Blockchain Investor, Venture Capitalist and Philanthropist making waves internationally as a thought provoking young business woman, bent on solving economic challenges in Africa. In 2016, Mwale while job hunting and selling second-hand clothes out of the boot of her car lost her brother when he was only 33 years old. This awakened her and she began to search for a greater purpose to live for. The entrepreneur at heart wanted to find something that would not only change her family, but change the lives of Africans, especially women.
As a result, she started Hive Incorporation, an online fashion store after selling off her car. The platform has a secure online shopping service with multiple payment methods to choose from such as Debit Visa Cards, Zimswitch, electronic funds transfer, PayPal, EcoCash, Wallet One, Zipit, Bitcoin and cash on delivery. The Hive sells fashion and lifestyle items. Melissa leads a team of four people who help her with running the site and designing items to sell.
Her love for digital and e-commerce led her to co-found CryptoGem Global, a peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange that allows cryptocurrency traders to trade for e-monies or local monies. She was invited by Afrobytes, an African tech marketplace, to share her journey in the e-commerce and blockchain industry in Paris the same year.
Despite the challenges of entrepreneurship in Zimbabwe, Melissa is determined to mentor other women in business and create opportunities that can create 100 female millionaire entrepreneurs in Africa by 2030, through an organization she founded called Messe Foundation.
She says “ I don’t want Africa to be left behind. If I’m able to create solutions that can help both the African community and the international community to be on the same page, that’s what I focus on. So it’s all about empowering Africa, because sometimes countries elsewhere attempt to impose solutions based on their own standards, without realizing that society here is different, and those solutions will not work”.
Read more of this on blockleaders.io and ForbesAfrica
