Adri Williams, a South African entrepreneur changing women’s lives in Khayelitsha through cookies  — Lionesses of Africa

What inspired you to start your company?

Unemployment in South Africa combined with the number of uneducated women in our country. We want to enable women to take care of their families. With the world changing into mechanization of all the manufacturing facilities, which leads to more unemployment, in a country that has nearly 30% unemployment rates, we are playing our part to radically reduce unemployment in South Africa and putting food on tables. 

Why should anyone use your service or product?

We hand bake and hand pack cookies, unlike the majority of the cookie companies in South Africa who machine bake and pack these cookies. We sell the best quality cookies, at affordable pricing. The real difference…..they are baked with love. To see women who have never worked before and have no skills, like speaking and  understanding English, and cannot read or write, employed and enabling them to provide for themselves and their dependents, is worth every single risk we have taken thus far. In a country where 64% of our children die before the age of 5 due to underlying causes of malnutrition, we have to do something to radically reduce unemployment and enable people to provide for their families. This is the way in which we can change the unemployment figures around and prevent more children from becoming part of these statistics. 

Tell us a little about your team

We have a team of over 60 women bakers in the factory, who collectively own 30% shareholding in the company through a trust fund. We have a team of 8 males assisting our majority women team in the factory. We employ over 80% black women in our business. Our shareholding is 51% black women owned and 100% women owned and managed. The majority of our staff cannot read, write or speak English.