Future 54 2026 includes six women working around the mines and in cleantech
Director Woman published its 2026 cohort on 12 August, fifty-four founders and executives from Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Botswana and Lesotho. Among them are the State Diamond Trader’s chief executive, a steel fabricator in Kuruman, a Mpumalanga workshop owner preparing to supply the mining sector, and three founders turning waste and climate literacy into enterprises.
Kuruman, the Northern Cape town that serves the Kalahari manganese field, is where Tsholofelo Millicent Jansen founded Khutsho Solutions, a steel fabrication business she runs as chief executive and works in as a project supervisor. Director Woman named her this month in Future 54 2026, its list of fifty-four women across the continent, and she is one of six on it working around the mines or in cleantech.
The Johannesburg title published the full cohort on 12 August from more than a hundred nominations. By the country tags on the list, twenty-five of the women are South African, sixteen Nigerian, nine Kenyan, three from Botswana and one from Lesotho, and most are building in health, law, education, fashion and media.
Nosiphiwo Mzamo is chief executive of the State Diamond Trader, the South African state company set up to buy rough diamonds from the country’s producers and sell them to local cutters and polishers. A geologist with more than twenty-five years in mining and mineralogy, she told Director Woman her aim over the next five years is a stronger African position in the global diamond industry, through beneficiation and collaboration between producing countries, so that more of what a stone is worth stays on the continent.
Jansen’s aim for the same period is employment in Kuruman and proof that locally fabricated steel can compete at the top of the market. She promotes other small businesses through two campaigns of her own, #30Days30Businesses and #TheFoundation.
Dineo Glomane co-founded Womech Mechanical Works Specialists with her sister in Mpumalanga after an unexpected turn took her into the motor trade. The workshop is black women-owned and handles mechanical and auto-electrical work, and Director Woman reports she plans to take it into new provinces and into the mining sector, funding learnerships and apprenticeships aimed at young women ahead of that expansion.
Zimkitha Duze founded Uuka EcoBricks in Kimberley after returning home and seeing unemployment beside the waste. The company turns plastic and glass into building materials. It has been recognised at the Reside Summit Construction Product of the Year Awards and by the Motsepe Foundation Golden Circle, and she intends to take it into other African markets.
Theo Boitshwarelo founded Eco-Gen in Botswana, a youth-led organisation that runs climate literacy programmes and a Green Entrepreneurship Lab with a consultancy alongside, and she wants sustainability education reaching rural and underserved communities first. Zainab Olayiwola founded Ecowambe in Nigeria, which frames climate action through African culture and incubates green businesses through its Green Enterprise Incubation Program.
Mzamo’s advice to the women coming after her, as Director Woman records it, is to step forward before feeling perfectly qualified, and to back themselves with measured risks.
Photo: Director Woman
