Kenyan Woman Chebet Lesan Bags Sh33 Million in Jack Ma’s Africa Business Heroes Competition

Kenyan entrepreneur, Chebet Lesan has been named the winner of second annual Africa’s Business Heroes, a competition organized by the Jack Ma Foundation.

Chebet is the founder and CEO of Bright Green R. Energy, a company that produces fuel bricks that save forests and reduce the cost of cooking for underserved communities across Africa. 

She won this year’s competition after beating nine other finalists picked from a pool of more than 22,000 applications from all 54 African nations.

The competition seeks to identify and recognize the continent’s top entrepreneurs in the fields of agriculture, fashion, education, financial services, healthcare, ICT, renewable energy, among others.

The win means Chebet will pocket a grant of Sh33 million from Jack Ma Foundation to boost her company’s efforts in converting urban waste into clean energy charcoal for households, farmers, schools, and hospitals.

Chebet has a background in leadership from the University of Cambridge and also completed a business-design fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology D-lab. 

She also studied product design at the University of Nairobi, and supply chain management at Rutgers School of Business.

The 10 finalists in the competition pitched their businesses at an online grand finale on November 14th for a chance to win a share of $1.5 million in grant money. 

Their presentations were judged by a panel of business leaders led by Jack Ma, founder of the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Group; Ibukun Awosika, First Bank of Nigeria chairman and founder and CEO of The Chair Centre Group; Strive Masiyiwa, founder and executive chairman of Econet Group; and Joe Tsai, executive vice chairman of Alibaba.