Starting Women’s Month off with some fanfare, celebrated Eastern-Cape born app designer Pretty Kubyane has received a fresh accolade for the farmers’ app eFama, which connects farmers directly with buyers locally and abroad.
Kubyane was named winner of the prestigious global Veuve Clicquot Bold Future Award in Johannesburg on July 15.
The prize, designed to honour emerging, high-impact female entrepreneurs, is part of a programme spanning 27 countries.
It is named for Madame Clicquot, who in 1805 took over her husband’s failing wine business at just 27 years old when he died, transforming it into the world-renowned Veuve Clicquot Champagne house.
Born Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, the widow revolutionised the industry during an era when women were legally banned from opening bank accounts or working without permission.
The Veuve Clicquot programme was expanded to SA in 2022, making this the fifth local edition.
To qualify, a candidate must demonstrate entrepreneurial daring and make a tangible contribution to transforming an existing market, bringing visible, ethical change to both the company and their industry environment.
The Dispatch featured her in its March 9 edition.
Alongside her, industrialist and social entrepreneur Lindiwe Nkuna-Kgopa, founder and CEO of Lindiwe Sanitary Pads -- Africa’s first large-scale sanitary pad manufacturing facility owned and operated entirely by women -- scooped Veuve Clicquot’s Bold Woman of the Year award for her innovation, courage, and economic impact.
Veuve Clicquot winners do not just receive a trophy.
The prizes are structured to fast-track global business growth with an immersive trip to Reims, France, to visit the historical estate and vineyards of Maison Veuve Clicquot, as well as put them on a path to sustained global visibility and international media mapping via direct inclusion in the Bold Open Data Base, a global, borderless community connecting female trailblazers for ongoing mentorship and networking.
Limpopo-born Nkuna-Kgopa, who began her fledgling enterprise in her home kitchen in 2018, has the added honour of having a vine named after her. In line with an institutional tradition honoring global laureates, a champagne vine will permanently carry her name inside the historic Veuve Clicquot vineyards.
Pretty’s husband, co-founder and company CEO Shadrack Kubyane, said the farming platform’s longer-term ambition is to reach all of SA’s roughly 2.3-million farmers, many of whom still struggle to access reliable markets.
The platform has about 6,000 buyers and a pipeline of roughly 5,000 farmers, with demand extending into the rest of the continent, Europe, the Middle East and North America.
But this is just the latest in a string of awards for Kubyane.
In April,she won the Wired4Women Tech Entrepreneur Award of the year for her technical leadership in transforming SA’s digital agritech ecosystem with the eFama app.
In 2024, she was recognized by Visa’s global initiative for female-led small businesses with the She’s Next award, earning funding and mentorship to scale her tech platforms.
And in 2022, she scooped the TransUnion Rising Star Award for showcasing significant leadership talent and cross-sector potential. — with Tristan Monzeglio, Business Times
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