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ArchiveJanuary 5 2009

Yolanda Cuba, South Africa

Occupation: Company chief executive.Age: 30
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In March 2007, aged 29, Yolanda Cuba became the youngest chief executive of a Johannesburg Stock Exchange listed company, the Mvelaphanda Group. It has been a meteoric rise for someone who only joined the wholly black-owned investment company five years ago.

Ms Cuba’s life has been characterised by high achievement. A chartered accountant by profession, she has degrees from the University of Cape Town and the University of Durban. She held jobs at leading South African retailer Robertson’s Foods, which is now owned by Unilever, and accountancy firm PKF Accountants before joining the Mvelaphanda Group in 2003. She was made deputy-chief executive the same year.

Ms Cuba was recognised as the Top Empowered Business Women of the Year in 2006 by Topco Media in South Africa and was awarded a Youth Excellence Award by the Black Management Forum in 2007.

Asked what the biggest challenge to establishing herself was, Ms Cuba says it was acknowledging the opinions of others.

“As a young person, one tends to think one has a monopoly on all good ideas,” she says. “The biggest challenge I faced was acknowledging that the best idea in the room must prevail, no matter which side of the room it came from.”

The key to her success, according to Ms Cuba, is in realising that Africa is not a homogenous environment and that a solution which might work on one geographical region will not necessarily work in all areas. Looking ahead, she believes that Africans must work harder to realise their potential. “As Africans, we need to project ourselves as the giant that we can be. Our natural resources are enormous. We should not sell ourselves short.”

Yolanda Cuba’s African hero: Kwame Nkrumah.

The first president of the Republic of Ghana, after the country became the first sub-Saharan African colony to gain independence from Britain in 1957.

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