TotalEnergies Moves To Encourage Women Entrepreneurs

TotalEnergies has underlined the need to encourage women entrepreneurs for the development of the nation’s economy.
The company, which stressed this during the winners of its third edition of the Startupper Year Challenge ceremony in Lagos, expressed realisation that women were missing in a lot of spaces, hence, the initiative was designed to support young entrepreneurs in Nigeria as well as the African continent.
According to the Executive General Manager, TotalEnergies Country Services, Olubunmi Poopola-Mordi, the idea behind having a price for female entrepreneurs is to encourage more women to participate and to encourage more women entrepreneurs to come up.
“So, the idea behind this award in this specific price for female entrepreneur is about improving the lot of women”, Poopola-Mordi said.
The Country Chair, TotalEnergies Companies in Nigeria, Mr Mike Sangster, represented by the Managing Director, TotalEnergies Marketing Nigeria Plc, Dr. Samba Seye, presented the award to the three finalists.
The winners were rewarded with N5 million financial support each, personalised coaching and mentoring, networking opportunities as well as media visibility.
He said the Startupper Challenge was designed to support and reward young entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 and 35 who had created a company in the past two years.
According to him, it reaffirms TotalEnergies’ commitment to supporting the socio-economic development of the countries in which the company operates in Africa.
“This prize is very important to TotalEnergies as it aligns with our culture of diversity and inclusion. I received the 15 top finalists during a courtesy call to my office. During that interactive meeting, I noticed that out of the 15, seven are females.
“We are happy with this development which clearly underlines the fact that our women are not waiting for anyone to empower them they are demonstrating that they have all it takes to excel, in an environment of equal opportunities.
“I believe that today in our midst, we have entrepreneurs whose ideas can address some of the economic challenges Nigeria and other countries in Africa face,” Sangster said.
Responding, the winners thanked TotalEnergies for initiating the programme, and promised to make Nigeria proud at the grand finale of the competition scheduled to take place in France.
There, they will join other winners from 32 African countries for the three grand prizes of Grand Winner, Best Business Creation, Grand Winner, Best Startup Under three years old and Grand Winner, Best Female Entrepreneurial Regulations.