Twaa

I am an entrepreneur whose career spans over 15 years in Media, Marketing Communications, Technology and Development programs (focused on women and girls empowerment.) My current roles include:

- Founder and CEO of Frontline Media Management Africa - A Pan African Media and Communications Company;  - Founder and President Of Twaa - A knowledge sharing platform for women and girls in Africa;  - Founder of eCOBbA – An AI driven FinTech platform designed to integrate under served financially excluded populations, especially women into the financial ecosystems and  - President Of The Women of Achievement - A Not for Profit organization that works to support women and girls achieve social and economic transformation in East Africa and beyond.

I am a mom of 3, with an MBA in Marketing from the University of Dar es Salaam, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations from the same university.

The progress on Gender Equality in the last decades still has challenges including pervasive discriminatory laws and social norms, women continue to be under-represented at all levels of political and economic leadership, 1 in 5 women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49 experience gender violence, limited access to opportunities and resources.

The coronavirus outbreak exacerbates existing inequalities for women and girls across spheres –from health and the economy, to security and social protection. 

Twaa's mission is to connect women communities with relevant digital tools for personal career and business growth.The tools will enable women to learn and exchange information; access mentors and counsellors for guidance and social-emotional support; showcase and access opportunities; create and manage digital communities in various interest areas.

Putting women and girls at the centre of economies will drive better and more sustainable development outcomes for all and support a more rapid global recovery.

Across the globe, women earn less, save less, hold less secure jobs, are more likely to be employed in the informal sector. They have less access to social protections and are the majority of single-parent households.

The situation is worse in developing economies where the vast majority of women’s employment - 70 % is in the informal economy, where to earn a living these women often depend on public space and social interactions, which are now being restricted to contain the spread of the pandemic.

Violence against women and girls is increasing globally. Before the pandemic, it was estimated that one in three women will experience violence during their lifetimes. Many of these women are now trapped in their homes with their abusers. 

From past experience and emerging data, it is possible to project that the impacts of the COVID19 global recession will result in a prolonged dip in women’s incomes and labor force participation, with compounded impacts for women already living in poverty. For those who, as a result of recent economic growth managed to escape from extreme poverty, they are likely to fall back into this most vulnerable of situations once again.

When women and girls are not integrated—as both beneficiary and shaper—the global community loses out on skills, ideas and perspectives that are critical for addressing global challenges and harnessing new opportunities.

Twaa is a knowledge sharing and mentorship platform for women and girls; and organizations working to advance women to access mentors and run mentorship programs, share and exchange knowledge and information, access and offer counselling support, promote and exchange opportunities, access templates for personal, business and career growth and so much more.

It's built to foster a safe and secured place for women communities to connect and engage with each other. Twaa is accessed as a web portal and app globally. The platform is AI driven with secure protocols, end-to-end encryptions, machine learning  analysis, geotags, instant reporting and sharable API’s for 3rd party integration.

Users are able to sign up, login and use the platform from their mobile phones, tablets or computers/laptops and can access features like content creation tools for short posts, articles, videos and digital classes, group mobilization tools for group discussions, forums and workshops, web conferencing tools; marketplace for products and services;  book store for women authored books, goal setting tools and chats.

Twaa is designed to serve the below 4 categories:

a) women and girls across the world aged 18 to 60+

b) women networks, associations and groups working to advance women issues in various levels and categories

c) organizations and institutions targeting to impact women and girls including Not for Profits, health, education and other categories

d) corporate companies looking to upskillo and empower women in their organizations and beyond

Twaa is the result of 14 years progress working to uplift women and girls via mentorship and capacity building programs. It is built by women, for women capturing needs and addressing gaps that exists in other platforms. 

After 10 years of physical inteventions, the Twaa platform project was launched in 2017. The platform grew to over 10,000 users in 8 countries and the needs and usage analysis used to launch the currect product.

Twaa is built with AI abilities to analyse, predict and anticipate user needs therefore will consistently be improved to accomodate growing demands. It also has an inbuild feedback mechanism tool through the platform intelligent assistant/hostess Zara.

Twaa’s VISION is a prosperous world that is inclusive of women and girls' social, political, economic and cultural participation at all levels. 

The 2019 GSMA report indicated that closing the gender gap requires addressing literacy & skills, affordability, relevance & safety and security and could add 700bn GDP growth. 

Twaa is built with women empowerment at its core, therefore it is a relevant tool for women. It is also built with sucured protocals that allow for one on one and many to many engagements in closed environments/settings. 

This platform along with its sevrice offering will attract more women who were not using technology to start using. The knowledge repositiory that will result from Twaa will change and shape people's attitiudes and behaviors.

I graduated from university in 2004 and set up a PR and communication company. A year later in 2005 I was travelling across 8 regions in Tanzania for a client's work. In the evenings I would interact with girls aged 18 -32 just to find out what  motivated them and understand their context. I very quickly realised that most of them lived in what I have come to term as a "per day model" where all they were concerned about is how they will earn enough money to put food on the table the next day.

Over 95% of them had dropped out of school, were mothers to 2 - 5 children, were married at very young ages, and run micro businesses in the informal sectors to make ends meet.

I launched Twaa as a corporate social responsibility program the yhear after in 2006, in 2013 It grew to become a stand alone not for profit organization that run advocacy programs, capacity building and mentoring projects, empowerment forums and workshops for women and gils in East Africa and in 2016 we started building the prototype for the platform as we explored how technology could be used to scale our work.

Twaa is particularly important to me because I grew up in a broken family with a step mother who physically and emotionally abused me from aged 5 to when I left home for university. She brutally beat me everyday and told me I did not deserve to live and if I would live I will never amount to anything. 

To survive my ordeal I created a safe space in my mind where I would retreat, get comforted and motivated. The safe space was a make believe world where I was a princess, loved, cared for and guided. No matter what happened in my real life, I focused my energy and spirit in my make believe world. I survived the abuse and I am not broken by it, rather empowered and motivated by it. 

When I talked to those girls in rural Tanzania back in 2005 who couldn't see past their next day, I  knew I had to create a safe and secured space for them where they will be guided, motivated and empowered to survive their circumstances and explore their full potential.

Twaa is build to connect girls with mentor, counselors, knowledge, information, tools and resources to support their growth.

I am well positioned to deliver this project because it has been my life long mission. From my childhood experience where I experienced highest forms of suffering, to very early on in my young adulthood when I realised that my passion and purpose is to support women and girls overcome their obstacles and live up to their full potential.

I have spent the last 14 years working on this mission, one building block after another. In that journey I was fortunate to integrate across networks in Africa and globally that work to also empower women in various capacities. My roles include:

1.WIA Ambassador - Tanzania - an international platform dedicated to the economic development and support of leading and high potential African women.

2. Africa List Tanzania Coordinator - a CDC Group Platform) aims to enhance an enduring commitment to private sector led growth created to bring together the leaders responsible for the continent’s next decade of growth

3. African Women in Energy and Power Tanzania Chair. A programme designed to accelerate African women entrepreneurs’ participation in the Power and Energy sect

4. SADC women in business Tanzania Director for the economic empowerment of women across SADC region countries.

 My other accolades include:

-  2010 Fortune/State Department Global Woman Leader
- 2014 Global Health and Diplomacy fellow
- 2015 Woman of The Year Africa by Africa Reconnect
- 2018 Obama Africa Leader
- 2018 AWIEF (African Women Innovation & Entrepreneurship Forum) -Empowerment Award finalist 

When I explored how we can leverage technology to scale our women and girls empowerment project, I had no technology know how. We had to outsource the project to a tech education company who we worked with to develop the prototype. When the prototype was ready and it was handed to us we realised upon initial use that it had many glitches and challenges. The tech company wasn't able to improve on the product, and we had run out of budget to further fund the initiative. 

It was a very unpleasant experience. I then mobilised three other tech startups like myself who were facing similar challenges with resource limitation and outsourced tech developers who were not thorough and committed to deliver. I mobilized to launch a hybrid tech lab that will look after all our projects from the technology development to all supporting services, full time focused to deliver state-of-the art tech products.

This gave birth to the launch of Ada labs in Africa, an AI powered tech hub focused on building impact driven tech projects that are commercially viable for Africa and beyond.

Ada Labs Africa has since launched 5 projects in agriTech, healthTech, Fintech and genderTech - Twaa.

I believe that leadership is at the core of my growth. Everything I have done in my career has been a demonstration of leadership. I graduated in 2004 and started my PR and Communication company - Frontline Africa. During this time majority of my peers sought employment. I was one of very few graduates who went to set up their own businesses. The industry I chose so set up in was also a new discipline in corporate Tanzania and therefore companies didn't understand what it was. My role shifted to spending hours to educate clients on what PR is and how it can add value. 6 years later the industry picked up, and by 2010 we became a partner of global PR giant Porter Novelli, based out of the US with presence in 80 countries. In 2020, we exited the partnership and are now rolling out Frontline Africa across 20 countries in the continent through an alliance model. We are in four countries now, including Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria.

Twaa is innovative and disruptive because it is a combination of very useful tools into one platform with a use case for knowledge sharing and mentoring targeting women demographic across levels and industries. Imagine if all your favourite digital tools you love and use daily were into one tool.. yes. 70% of them. ;-)

key facets include:

1. Ecosystem of Mentors, Experts, Coaches, Counsellors to support women to reach their full potential

2. Tools, Resources and Knowledge to enable organizations to manage communities, run mentorship programs and empower women

3. Sustainable Social Impact to create resources and tool that support women growth in every way

Twaa currently has over 10,000 users from pilot to date.

Our goal it to reach 500,000 in one year.

And reach 2 million users in 5 years. 

My goals are to foster better societal fabric, build feasible value systems, inspire empathetic, free-thinking, optimistic women, motivate independent  girls, who become inspirational leaders in their fields and across levels because they are on Twaa, acquiring and leading. 

My current barriers include?:

1. Financial access to allow for bigger tech team and acquisition

2. Technology support to improve and adopt better technologies

3. Partnerships with institutions and organizations that work with women to get their buy in and support

Currently, we have partnerd with Ada Labs Africa, who have supported us with technology resources.