Winners named: Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship

BUSINESS

The African Leadership Network, the membership network of new generation leaders in Africa, and Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm, have given Dr. Richard John Pelwana Maponya of South African Maponya Mall fame a Lifetime Achievement award at the 2012 Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship.

The awards were handed out at African Leadership Network's Annual awards ceremony in Accra, Ghana. 

Other winners included:

• La Laiterie du Berger won the Outstanding Small and Growing Business Award, a prize of USD50 000, and a commendation from the African Leadership Network. The company is a Senegalese dairy company that sources and processes milk from semi-nomadic Fulani pastoralists living along the Senegal River.

• Bridge International Academies was the runner-up for the Outstanding Small and Growing Business Award, also a prize of USD50 000, and a commendation from the African Leadership Network. In 2007 the company developed a strategy that would allow it to launch a large-scale network of high-quality, ultra low-cost, for-profit private schools.

• Secure ID won the Mature Business Award, which also came with a grand prize of USD100 000. SecureID is Nigeria's foremost Smart Card manufacturing company. It is the leading Europay, MasterCard and Visa - certified card plant in West Africa, one out of only six on the continent and a member of the elite club of only 80 such companies in the world.

• Quality Chemicals Industries Ltd. (QCIL) won the Transformational Business Award. The prize is bestowed on a notable business leader who has had a major socio-economic impact in Africa by building a business with revenues greater than USD 50 million. QCIL is a leading sciences and distribution company that locally manufactures anti-malarial and antiretroviral drugs to combat two of Africa's greatest challenges malaria and HIV/AIDS.