Meet the 2026 Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman Award winners

Two South African women who built businesses in the face of doubt, disruption and outright dismissal have been named the 2026 Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman Award winners and their stories are worth knowing.

Picture: Supplied

Lindiwe Nkuna-Kgopa and Pretty Kubyane were unveiled at a celebratory gathering at Four Seasons Hotel The Westcliff in Johannesburg on 15 July, marking the fifth year of the Bold Woman Award in South Africa.

The woman who built an empire from a kitchen table

When Lindiwe first sought investment for what would become Africa’s first large-scale women-owned sanitary pad manufacturing facility, an investor told her she didn’t fit the profile.

Picture: Supplied

Ten years later, Lindiwe Sanitary Pads operates out of a 4 000sqm factory in Centurion, producing 800 SABS-compliant pads every minute. The majority of its 36 full-time and 93 peak-season staff are women from previously disadvantaged communities.

When the business hit its lowest point, she walked investors into her factory and walked out with R27 million in funding, no collateral required. The company now operates across 11 countries and has supplied more than 100 000 schoolgirls with free sanitary products in 2026 alone.

‘When everyone else suffocates us, we go to other women for oxygen,’ jury member Happy Ralinala said of Lindiwe’s adjudication.

The farmer’s daughter rewriting African agriculture

Pretty Kubyane now leads eFama App, a digital marketplace connecting over 40 000 farmers and buyers across South Africa. Backed by Google, Meta and Amazon, eFama uses technology and data to help farmers make smarter production decisions based on real market demand.

For Pretty, boldness is ‘the audacity to be a technical powerhouse, a devoted wife, and a present mother simultaneously.’

Female entrepreneurs can join the global Bold Open Data Base at boldopendatabase.com.