Celebrating Working Mothers: The Kellogg MBA Changing African Women’s Lives

EXPANDING ACROSS AFRICA

This year, the company took a bold next step by expanding their product to South Africa, where Jamal believes Maziwa has a ton of potential to grow.

While Jamal has dreams of further expansion, including other East and West African countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda, she isn’t losing sight of how much opportunity there is for growth in Kenya – where the company originated. Her plan is to continue growing Maziwa in Kenya, with a greater focus on the B2B side of the business.

“There’s still over a million moms who give birth every single year in Kenya alone,” says Jamal. “There are tons of countries where we could launch our product, but I’m going to prioritize first figuring out our model and strategy in Kenya before we slowly and gradually expand across the continent.”

‘WE’VE DONE A GREAT JOB AT DOING A LOT WITH A LITTLE’

Jamal’s biggest challenge so far has been navigating a capital-intensive product with constrained resources; it’s taken some time to learn how to manage the company’s cash flow. “We purchase products outright, and it takes a while for those products to be manufactured and sent to Kenya,” she explains. “Then, it takes time to sell the product. Overall, there’s a three to four month lag between spending and earning.”

So far, all of Maziwa’s growth has been funded by grants; when Jamal graduated from Kellogg, she’d raised $170,000, mainly from the school. But now that the company’s generating revenue, Jamal is looking at more traditional investors in the impact investing space.“Given that the ecosystem of grant funding compared to equity financing is a lot lower, we’ve done a great job of doing a lot with little,” she says.

‘OUR SYSTEMS ARE INADVERTENTLY PENALIZING MOMS’

Along with continuing to expand Maziwa, Jamal hopes that her company can continue to help support mothers with tools, education and lactation support, as well as reinvent workplaces and systems to better accommodate them. “Moms take on a lot, and many of our systems are inadvertently penalizing moms for their reproductive abilities,” she says.

Last year, Jamal’s five-year business goal was to equip 140,000 women with the Wema breast pump and reach half a million people with education and social media campaigns each year. This year, she’s upped the ante; in five years, she hopes to equip over 165,000 mothers with the Wema pump.

CREATING A VISION

To inspire others to make a difference, Jamal’s continuing to stay involved with Kellogg as a guest speaker in entrepreneurship classes. She’s also remained involved with the McGowan Fellowship reunions and alumni engagements.

Outside of Kellogg, she participated in the 2021 Acumen East Africa Fellowship – a nine-month long program that heavily involved personal development. This has helped her to further develop her leadership skills. “Part of my strength as a CEO is creating a vision for the organization that’s inspiring to our team members,” she says.

Currently, she lives full-time in Nairobi, Kenya, where she plans to stay indefinitely as she expands the company across the continent. “I’ve built a great community here and I appreciate all of the support that I’ve received.”

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