In Johannesburg, women leaders bridge generations and push for jobs — and a celebration crowns three days of purpose
Johannesburg — For three days in mid‑October, a gathering of activists, funders, policymakers and entrepreneurs threaded personal histories into public strategy at the Women Create Wealth Summit. Hosted by the Graça Machel Trust from Oct. 13–15, the conference stitched together urgent conversations about jobs and intergenerational leadership with a softer, human purpose: to lift and celebrate the women who carry communities forward.
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The summit, held under the banner Inspiration, Intergenerational Leadership & Job Creation, unfolded against the hum of a region facing familiar contradictions — a youthful and fast‑growing population on one hand, and stubbornly high under‑ and unemployment and unequal access to capital on the other. Organizers framed the three days as both a think‑tank and a living classroom, where experience and innovation could meet.
Opening notes: learning from elders, investing in futures
Graça Machel, the Mozambican educator turned global advocate whose work with children and women over decades inspired the trust that bears her name, opened the summit with a declaration that set the tone: this was not to be a conference of platitudes but of commitments. Theo Sowa, the trust’s chief executive, and Shiphra Chisha, director of programmes, laid out a program that moved deliberately from inspiration to action.
The keynote came from Dr. Phumzile Mlambo‑Ngcuka, former deputy president of South Africa and founder of the Umlambo Foundation, who reminded the audience that transformational change is a process, not an event. “Growth isn’t instant, it’s earned,” she said, condensing a career of public service into a phrase that landed repeatedly in subsequent panel discussions.
Conversations that crossed sectors
Day two offered a candid conversation between Theo Sowa and Reeta Roy, president and CEO of the Mastercard Foundation, whose organization has been a major backer of youth employment initiatives across Africa. The discussion ranged from the nuts and bolts of skills training to the thornier questions of measuring impact: what should success look like when job markets are informal, and how can philanthropy partner with governments to scale what works?
Speakers and delegates returned repeatedly to this practical question: how to turn inspiration and pilot projects into millions of livelihoods. The answers were rarely simple — they pointed to blended finance, regional partnerships that harmonize certification and standards, and to private sector commitments that go beyond headline pledges to durable hiring pipelines.
Stories, strategies and a shared urgency
Throughout the summit, personal testimony threaded through technical panels. Young entrepreneurs described the friction of starting and sustaining small businesses — from accessing affordable debt to navigating municipal red tape. A seasoned NGO leader recalled returning to a rural classroom to find the same problems persistent across decades; another speaker, newly minted from an incubation programme, described how a focused coaching sequence unlocked orders and a path to hiring.
That pairing of story and strategy is deliberate. “Policy without people is just a paper plan,” one participant told me between sessions, noting the summit’s insistence on real voices in the room. It’s a lesson that matters as donors and governments grapple with jobs crises across the continent: numbers alone can’t map the lived barriers women and girls face — childcare, transport, and discriminatory finance practices — but they must be part of any scalable solution.
Advocacy, action and celebration
The final day — framed around Advocacy, Action & Celebration — blended sharp critique with joy. Panels scrutinized how national policies can either enable or choke women’s wealth creation, while workshops mapped pathways for intergenerational mentorships, social protections and rural‑urban linkages that can sustain businesses beyond the first cash flow.
And then, as dusk fell on the summit’s last evening, attendees shifted tone to honor the anchor of the trust. Delegates gathered to celebrate Graça Machel’s 80th birthday and the 15th anniversary of the Graça Machel Trust. The mood was reflective and festive. Tributes traced a life that began in Mozambican classrooms and ascended to a global stage, but always — as many speakers emphasized — remained rooted in the voices of women, children and communities.
What this moment tells us about wider trends
The Johannesburg gathering was more than a regional meet‑up. It crystallised several trajectories shaping not only Africa’s future but the global conversation about gender, labour and leadership.
- Intergenerational leadership is increasingly seen as an asset. Younger leaders bring tech fluency and new business models; elders bring political wisdom and networks. The summit showcased how mentoring can accelerate impact when it moves beyond tokenism to structured, reciprocal learning.
- Job creation requires ecosystem thinking. Training and start‑up capital matter, but so do regulation, market linkages and social protections. Conversations in Johannesburg underscored that piecemeal approaches will not absorb the continent’s growing workforce at scale.
- Women’s leadership is not only a rights issue but an economic imperative. Multiple sessions argued — with growing evidence — that when women prosper, households and local economies follow. The task is to untangle the structural barriers that still constrain access to finance, markets and decision‑making.
Questions to carry forward
As delegates dispersed back to their communities and programs, a few questions lingered: How can the momentum from gatherings like #WCW2025 be translated into measurable employment outcomes within five years? What new financing models will close the persistent gap between pilot programmes and national scale? And crucially, how will policymakers ensure that the benefits of growth are equitably shared across gender, geography and generation?
The summit did not pretend to have all the answers. But in its mix of urgency and celebration, it offered a practical reminder: movements that survive are those that combine the stubbornness of earned growth — as Dr. Mlambo‑Ngcuka put it — with the generosity of mentorship and the discipline of measurable goals. If Johannesburg was any indication, African women’s leadership networks are sharpening both their demands and their tools — and they are doing so with a sense of purpose that looks to the long game.
By News-room
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
