By Dhiladhila Magazine · Issue 05
A programme is a headline; the people are the proof. At EntreprenHER, the founders are already trading.
A skills figure names a cohort but not a person. Behind the gender ministry’s February 2026 report on 1,485 women stand named founders already running businesses and named officials who convened the programme around them. The 1,485 are not a promise of enterprises to come; a documented share of them are operators trading now, which is the difference between a launch and a record.
Read through its people, EntreprenHER is less a policy than a roster. The women give it evidence; the officials give it reach. Neither works without the other, and both are on the record.
The founders on the ground
The programme’s proof is in named operators. In Lüderitz, Anna Bostander runs both Bostander Shuttle and Tours and a bakery, Anna’s Cookies, two enterprises from one household. In the Oranjemund-Rosh Pinah area, Civiletta Rooi runs Dorcas Fashions as a seamstress, while Selma Hamutati, who joined the programme in 2019, founded SNH Investment CC in solar installation and maintenance – a woman-led business in a trade still coded as male.
These are not illustrative composites but registered founders with trading histories. A model that can name the women running its enterprises is describing a result, not forecasting one, and the range – transport, baking, tailoring, solar – shows the training landing across very different trades.
The strongest evidence a programme works is that it can name the women who run its businesses.
The officials who convened it
Above the founders sits a line of named sponsors. Dr Emma Kantema, Minister of Gender Equality and Child Welfare, carries the programme politically, with Deputy Minister Linda Mbwale steering its regional ceremonies. UN Women’s regional director for East and southern Africa, Anna Mutavati, anchors the funding side, and Bipa chief executive Ainna Kaundu now brings the registry in behind it.
That spread matters because it distributes the load. A minister’s mandate, a funder’s money and a registrar’s authority are three different levers, and the programme has a named holder of each – which is what lets a scheme survive past any one launch event.
A programme convened by named ministers, funders and registrars has more than one person keeping it alive.
Why these profiles matter
Naming the women changes the claim being made. A cohort of 1,485 is a statistic; Bostander, Rooi and Hamutati are proof that the statistic contains real, differentiated enterprises. Their businesses were recognised in a formal certification ceremony for the Southern Zone, the kind of public record that separates a graduate from an attendee.
The officials’ presence matters for the same reason. When a minister, a deputy minister and a development-agency director attach their names to a certification, the women’s status is witnessed rather than merely asserted, and a certificate becomes something a bank or a buyer can trust.
A named founder with a witnessed certificate is a far stronger asset than an anonymous headcount.
The measure of a rising star
The honest test of these profiles is durability. A rising star is not the woman who is certified but the one still trading, hiring and growing a year on, and the programme’s own framing – continued mentoring after the training, not a single graduation – is built around that longer measure. The women who last are the ones who validate the model.
The risk is that the roster thins after the ceremony. Names announced at a launch mean little if the enterprises behind them fold once the cameras and the mentors leave, which is why the measure that counts is who is still operating next season.
A rising star is measured a year later, by who is still trading – not on the day she is named.
For a mentor, an investor or a corporate partner, the people of EntreprenHER are the real case: named founders across transport, baking, tailoring and solar, backed by named ministers, funders and a registrar. The decision for anyone lending weight to the programme is whether to invest in the operators who must sustain these businesses past the certificate, rather than in the headline number that only counts the day they were trained.
Sources: The Namibian – gender ministry empowers 1,485 women through skills; EntreprenHER policy milestone and named founders (UN Women Africa); EntreprenHER case study (De Beers Group)
