Consumer Choice Awards 2026
When I established my blog… this blog [byntha.com]… when I started using social media around the 2010s, one of the things I really wanted was to see more Black, African, Malawian women — people that looked like me — in the spaces that I wanted to get into.
I quickly realized that the representation just wasn’t there… or, at least, it wasn’t too visible.
It is one of the reasons why, through the years, as my work has gotten busier, as I have had less and less time, I have still made time, and I have still committed to being visible because I still remember what it means to the young Black girl in Malawi that needed to see someone occupying the spaces that she hoped she could occupy.
And through the years, this blog came to grow into Ntha Foundation, which later grew and pivoted into the Kwathu Kollective. And now we have pivoted further into deep tech with Q2 Systems. These are the entities, that you continue to award me for, and I am eternally grateful.
Lessons Conversation
Delve into Business and International Development with Nthanda Manduwi
Episode 5: Made in China | Lessons Weekly
Growing up in Malawi, the phrase “Made in China” suggested something cheap, something temporary, something that might break sooner than expected.
If a product was Made in China, it was often viewed as an inferior alternative to goods from Europe, America, or Japan. The label became a shorthand for low quality.
Looking back, that perception is remarkable.
Today, China is one of the most important industrial and technological powers in the world. Chinese companies compete directly with some of the most powerful firms on earth.
Huawei has become a global force in telecommunications and consumer technology. BYD has emerged as a serious competitor in electric vehicles. DJI dominates large segments of the global drone market. China leads in batteries, renewable energy manufacturing, and increasingly artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The country that was once associated with cheap manufacturing is now associated with industrial capability.
After reading Patrick McGee’s Apple in China, I found myself thinking less about Apple and more about how that transformation occurred.
While the book is presented as the story of Apple’s relationship with China, it is ultimately a story about development. More specifically, it is a story about how countries learn.
One of the book’s most important insights is that Apple did not simply use China. In many ways, Apple helped build China.
Conventional narratives often describe the relationship as one in which China provided cheap labour and manufacturing capacity while Apple captured the value through design and innovation. There is truth in that interpretation, but it is incomplete.
Listen to the full podcast, or read the full article via my blog byntha.com
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Through my journey with entrepreneurship, I’ve seen myself go from being a basic content creator, to working with some of the biggest hotel chains in Malawi, to establishing a nonprofit that has trained thousands of young people in Malawi and beyond, to establishing companies and systems that continue to serve millions of people across continents.
And now, having done my MBA and completed my MSc in Entrepreneurship, I see the world as much deeper, I understand that we need to create even more essential technologies for the people that need them the most.
For a long time, as I grew, my limitations mentally were still around what entrepreneurship as a woman was supposed to look like. I was just a social media content creator. I built non-profits [first]. In my mind, that was somehow, still, what a woman could do.
And now I find myself pushing into spaces of engineering: managing teams of incredible scientists, building systems, and stepping into rooms I never even imagined I would belong in.
I read an article that a friend had shared with me a few months ago by Rizine Mzikamanda, talking about imposter syndrome, and he, in his own wonderful words referred to me as some shape or form of 𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴. I paused for a while… shocked really, when I read it, because he had placed my name in context with Michael Jordan, Lionel Messi, and Steve Jobs.
This award hits different because:
1. it finds me newly finding my footing in Detroit. Q2 Systems as a company is just 1.5 years old;
2. We are [still] pre-product [albeit piloting some good MVPs] and prerevenue. DeepTech is HARD!;
3. We are building Q2 in extremely male-dominated fields, and it is never lost on me when I am the only woman in the room [we are continuously fixing that through the Kwathu Kollective]; and
4. It is my first time building businesses in foreign lands and I am, contrary to what I may show, still VERY scared.
I think it is important for me to word that in this moment: that I am scared. Very scared.
Entrepreneurship is a journey of endless fear. It is ever my joy, to do the scary stuff, and it is an even greater joy, to have the slight chance at sharing some of those fears with you.
And I hope that the girls and boys that come after us, by seeing us, know that they can go further.
Thank you so much for voting for me as the Most Inspiring Business Female Leader at the 2026 Consumer Choice Awards.
I dedicate this award to my late mother: I am all that I am today because I was born of her: Africa’s first inland female marine captain.
I grew up in her light, and it was through seeing her visible to me and everyone around us that I understood that I could be and do anything. She inspired me enough, to be able to inspire an entire nation.
This award, to me, is for every little Black… Africa… Malawian girl… and boy… that has dreams, that wants to achieve everything, that wants to be more than the world that they see.
I hope that by sharing my little light, you draw just a little bit of inspiration to be light, too.
Read my Published Works:
If you’d like to go deeper into my journey — from Malawi, through the United Nations to Microsoft, you can find it in my books.
P.S. for 2026, you can get any of my books via Kindle for only $2.99.
This offer is valid till the end of the year.
Links to purchase are as below:
Get a Snippet of and Preorder My Upcoming Books:
CONNECT WITH NTHANDA ONLINE:
About the Author
