The Communication Manager- Central, East & West Africa at IBM Kenya, Ms Elizabeth (Lizz) Ntonjira has been awarded the best International Women in Tech award in the prestigious Women4Africa Awards.
The awards that took place at the Great Hall in Kensington, United Kingdom offer a Universal Platform to profile, elevate and celebrate the best of African women across all works of life. The event is the largest and most successful African Awards ceremony across Europe, and supports a charity of choice that empowers women and mothers annually.
The awards core focus is to also identify and celebrate female role models of African descent from humble and ordinary beginnings and to elevate them to a global audience.
In her acceptance speech, Ms Ntonjira said, “Winning this on a global stage is truly remarkable and I’m both humbled and grateful. Women4Africa thank you so much for celebrating women that continue to impacting the continent in one way or another.”
She dedicated the award to all the young women out who had doors shut in their faces asking them not to give up or lose hope.
Ms Ntonjira had been nominated alongside Nisha Maharaj of South Africa.who is currently the CEO of Niche Integrated
Solutions. Other Kenyan Women who had been nominated for the Awards include Dr. Zipporah Ali under international Humanitarian category and Fatma Alimohamed, nominated under Inspirational woman of the year category.
Ms Ntonjira who is the Communications Manager at IBM, a role she assumed a month ago, was previously, IBM’s External Relations Leader for East Africa, Lizz is a strategic communications specialist and has a vast experience managing and overseeing media relations, public affairs campaigns, programs, branding, and media strategy; experience she has gained within a number of roles in the public, private and international development sectors spanning 10 years.
Her role entailed leading external communication activities supporting business issues of major consequence to IBM and the business units in East Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Djibouti and South Sudan) as well as acting in a consulting capacity, providing communication advice and counsel to executive line management.
In this current capacity, she is pivotal in communicating the latest technological trends, research and innovation to the East African market in a targeted, better-understood medium using less tech jargon through strategic media outreach, both traditional and social media, as well as execution of key messaging used by Subject Matter Experts.