Uganda entrepreneur wins Women in Business Award

Beatrice Ayuru Bvaruhanga of Uganda, who founded Lira Integrated School in northern Uganda in 2000, in part because "I got bitter with all the problems around me and especially from my own relatives who never valued girl child education," has won UNCTAD's 2010 Empretec Women in Business Award.

The announcement came early this evening at a ceremony before UNCTAD's annual Investment, Enterprise and Development Commission.

The 10 finalists for the award are graduates of the UNCTAD-supported Empretec programme, whose centres in 32 countries provide training courses for entrepreneurs.

Ms. Bvaruhanga's school now has 1,500 students, some of whom board at the school, and its integration of nursery, primary, and secondary classes is one of its strengths, she said. She has plans to expand the school to include a university.

She received the award - a $6,000 study tour offered by the First Lady of the Dominican Republic - from Luis Piantini Munnigh, Ambassador to the United Nations Office at Geneva. First Lady speaking by video link, congratulated her and the second- and third-place winners and said, "they have set an example for women throughout the world."

Accepting the prize, Ms. Bvaruhanga told the Investment, Enterprise and Development Commission that she was "grateful, humbled, and also proud. . . to be a woman from a war-ravaged area, struggling to make a difference in the lives of war-ravaged children.

"Men," she went on, "I think will even begin to think that women can out-compete them when it comes to business."

Placing second among the 10 finalists was Mar a de la Luz Osses Klein of Chile, an entrepreneur who established Biotecnolog as Antofagasta SA, which creates biotechnology products for the mining industry.

Joy Simakane of Botswana won the third-place award. Her company, Extramile Express PTY Limited, provides customs-clearing and messenger-delivery services.

The winners were chosen by an independent panel of 20 judges, comprising corporate executives, entrepreneurs, academicians and gender specialists.