01/12/2020
Young Africans coming to the Business leadership. I congratulate to .
Semhal Guesh
Founder and CEO of KABANA Leather
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Semhal Guesh, a 29-year old Ethiopian entrepreneur, is the Founder & CEO of KABANA Leather. This start-up company, based out of Addis Ababa Ethiopia, produces a wide variety of quality handmade leather products.
Overcoming the many challenges that women entrepreneurs face in Africa, Semhal succeeded in starting and efficiently operating KABANA Leather to become one of the leading leather companies in Ethiopia. Prior to her success with KABANA Leather, Semhal had tried and failed three times which gave her the resilience to persevere and continue forward.
Semhal’s passion for transformative leadership has fuelled her drive to empower women economically. KABANA Leather recruits women and refugees who undergo training and are hired by the company with a goal to transform their livelihoods and families.
Today, KABANA Leather employs 130 staff (80% women) and plans to grow the number to 250 once the KABANA Leather factory has been built. Currently she is also leading a consortium of 12 SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) who have repurposed their factories to manufacture PPE materials in the fight against COVID-19 while savings jobs.
Semhal trained as an architect and uses this discipline and skill to enhance her designs in the leather fashion industry. Her ultimate goal is to be successful in realizing her dream of contributing to the growth of the leather industry which has immerse potential for job creation and will contribute significantly to the Nation’s GDP, complementing Ethiopia’s poverty alleviation agenda to become a middle-income country by 2025.
As a young, successful entrepreneur Semhal is a role model for many young women. She is an awardee of 2018 Young female Entrepreneur of the Year by UNDP and GEW. In a bid to contribute to the empowerment of women, Semhal joined the Association of Women in Boldness (AWiB), a networking platform that connects women with ambition to realize their potential and she served on AWiB’s board in 2017 and 2018. She has also participated in a prestigious leadership program on Sustainable Business Management by the Swedish Management Institute, and she is the finalist fellow for President Obama’s Young African Leadership Program 2020 and 2021.
Quotable Quotes:
“The most important fact for me is that I did not come from somewhere to solve a problem in Ethiopia. I was born here. I saw the problems, but my solutions came from entrepreneurship.”
“As an entrepreneur, no one will come to remind you what you are doing. You set your pace for yourself and motivate yourself. At KABANA Leather, we keep pushing. We keep asking ourselves, what is our next market? What is our next milestone? What is our next product?”
