Businesswoman builds bridges for change

Fashion garments made with Vlisco fabrics. Evelyn Mungai is the sole distributor in Kenya and East Africa of the African inspired fabrics from Vlisco available at Evelyn School of design. Photo/Margaretta wa gacheru 

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

In Summary

• Kenyan investor speaks for continent in influential international trade lobby in Islamic world.

Just back from London where she’d been attending the World Islamic Economic Forum, what she calls “the Davos of the Islamic World”, Evelyn Mungai was there as a member of WIEF’s International Advisory Panel.

The only African on the panel and just the second woman to be invited to join nearly three years ago, Ms Mungai was first invited to speak to the WIEF the year before on the topic of Women in the Global Economy.

“It was after that when I was called to come join the board (or panel), which meets twice every year,” said Ms Mungai who is a Christian. But even so, her views were valued.

“As we all speak the language of business, we find what matters are not religion, race or even gender. These differences evaporate when we realise we share the same goal — to do business that makes profits. That’s why I loved the theme of our recent meeting on ‘Building bridges through business,” she said, adding that the official title of last week’s London forum was also timely: Changing World, New Relationships.

Attended by at least a dozen heads of State, including British premier David Cameron, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and King Husain of Jordan, Ms Mungai does not know exactly why she was called.

However, prior to her appointment to the WIEF board, she was the first woman to join the African Business Roundtable and after that became the first elected president of the All Africa Businesswomen’s Association.

But frankly, she first got involved in economic empowerment for women after joining the Nairobi Business and Professional Women Association and became its second African Chairperson in 1977.

“But I feel I don’t represent women at WIEF so much as I represent Africa since I am the only African on the advisory panel,” said Ms Mungai who appreciates the forum’s main focus which is on investment opportunities.

“I’ve been speaking out on the immense investment possibilities available in Africa for quite some time. And I’ve been inviting investors to come visit the region to see the opportunities for themselves.”

One reason Mungai might have been invited to join this prestigious investment forum, apart from her work with a number of international business-oriented organisations, (including Rotary International, having served as the first woman chairperson of a Nairobi Rotary Club), is because she owns her own investment firm.

“Speedway Investments Ltd. Kenya is the holding company through which I conduct my property development,” said Ms Mungai who is best known for the school she started in the late 1970s, Evelyn College of Design.

“We were the first college of design in Kenya, and we’re proud to have created a new profession that was non-existent here before we started,” she said, adding that her school is busy producing top Kenyan fashion designers.

“We now have our own Yves St. Laurents right here, our own Guccis, Christian Diors and Chanels,” she said, shamelessly admitting she initially announced the school was open for students to apply even before she had a single member of faculty.

“There were no Kenyan designers at the time, but I took a leap of faith, and once I put that notice in the paper, I got many calls from professionally-trained designers who were in Kenya as housewives, but who wanted to teach in my school,” she said, noting her first batch of design instructors were all expatriates who came from Britain, New Zealand, Poland and Ghana.

Today, Ms Mungai could boast of hosting students from all over Africa, including Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, DRC, Ethiopia and South Africa as well Kenya.