Five women-led businesses have emerged as the winners of the sixth Women in Tech Zambia programme, securing a combined US$50,000 in equity-free seed funding to support their next stage of growth.
Each of the five businesses will receive US$10,000, following 12 weeks of acceleration that brought together 10 women entrepreneurs for intensive work around business development, customer discovery, financial management, marketing, growth strategy and fundraising.
The five winners are Chifula Nambela of Techroots IT Solutions Zambia Limited, Chikombo Chilufya of Likumi Financial Services, Kasongo Nyakaula of Pluntum, Wanji Maluba of Quotify Services Limited, and Adele Makayi of Pocket Academy by Yellow Ray Digital.
The businesses reflect a broadening technology landscape in Zambia — from education and financial inclusion to healthcare, construction intelligence and digital marketing.
From school management to financial inclusion
Chifula Nambela's Techroots IT Solutions is building technology for institutions, with its flagship product, Eduroot, an education management system designed to help schools manage administration, fees, communication and other operations digitally. The company describes its wider focus as software development, digital transformation, cloud services and technology consulting.
For Chikombo Chilufya, the focus is financial inclusion.
Her company, Likumi Financial Services, works with informal entrepreneurs who can struggle to access conventional financial services because of limited collateral, credit histories and formal business records. According to a profile published during the programme, Likumi had served more than 140 active customers and disbursed 286 loans, while developing a digital lending platform for further expansion.
Taking healthcare and construction into the data age
Kasongo Nyakaula's Pluntum is approaching digital transformation from the healthcare side.
The company's story grew partly from Nyakaula's own experience navigating fragmented healthcare records. Pluntum is developing technology aimed at modernising healthcare and enabling patient information to move more securely and efficiently between healthcare facilities.
Pluntum also operates across ICT, automation, data analytics, cybersecurity and digital marketing.
Meanwhile, Wanji Maluba's Quotify Services is targeting a very different information gap: construction pricing.
The platform is being developed as a construction cost intelligence system for Zambia, bringing together supplier pricing, material costs, labour, equipment and transport benchmarks to help quantity surveyors, contractors and developers make better-informed estimates.
Building a local digital intelligence layer
The fifth winner, Adele Makayi, is taking on the digital marketing and skills gap through Pocket Academy, developed under Yellow Ray Digital.
The platform combines digital marketing education with locally relevant market intelligence. Built as a mobile-optimised progressive web application, it is intended to give marketers, SMEs and students access to practical learning and data reflecting the Zambian market rather than relying entirely on tools and datasets developed for other markets.
More than the prize money
The significance of Cohort 6 extends beyond the US$50,000 funding pool.
The programme is part of a broader effort to address the financing and business-development gap facing women-led technology ventures in Zambia. Women in Tech Zambia describes its model as combining training, strategic mentorship and equity-free funding for tech-based and tech-enabled businesses.
The sixth cohort was implemented by BongoHive in partnership with the Standard Chartered Foundation and Village Capital, with the programme also attracting engagement from Zambia's Ministry of Technology and Science.
For the five winners, the immediate question now shifts from winning funding to deploying it effectively — whether towards product development, customer acquisition, technology infrastructure, market expansion or strengthening the teams behind the businesses.
That distinction matters.
Seed funding can provide breathing room, but the next stage will be measured by what these companies are able to build with it, how many customers they reach and whether their solutions can move beyond early validation into sustainable businesses.
With Cohort 7 already being prepared, the Women in Tech Zambia programme is continuing to build a pipeline of women-led businesses seeking to turn technology into commercially viable solutions to local problems.
