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
Why SMARTER WORLDS Need smaller egos | Lessons Weekly
We find ourselves at a uniquely consequential moment in human history.
According to the ITU, roughly 6 billion people are connected to the internet, compared tofewer than 400 million at the turn of the millennium. Three-quarters of humanity now participates in a shared digital environment where information can move across borders almost instantly.
However, more than 2 billion people remain offline. Only about 36% of Africa’s population is online, meaning roughly 64% is offline. This is the real crisis: Africa accounts for roughly 43–45% of all offline people on Earth.
The digital divide is what pushed me to pursue a Master of Science in Information Management Systems at theMalawi University of Science and Technology[research track], and specifically the entrepreneurial opportunities posited by Africa’s Digital Transformation.
In present day, artificial intelligence is diffusing through society at extraordinary speed. According to Microsoft, roughly one in six people worldwide now use generative AI tools, while nearly 80 percent of organizations report using AI in at least one business function. Global investment in AI has reached hundreds of billions of dollars annually. As I pursued my MBA at the Michigan State University, I got deeper into the question of what kind of tech we can build for those who are vastly marginalized.
Yet the technology itself is only part of the story.
The amount of compute used to train frontier AI systems has been growing at roughly five times per year since 2020, dramatically increasing humanity’s ability to generate, synthesize, and distribute knowledge. Questions that once required teams of researchers and years of analysis can increasingly be explored in hours, days, or minutes.
And yet, despite unprecedented access to information, the world’s defining challenges remain remarkably familiar: conflict, inequality, institutional distrust, climate change, corruption, political polarization, and uneven development.
As our tools become more powerful, a more difficult question emerges:
What happens when technological progress outpaces human progress?
What happens when societies gain access to better evidence but remain constrained by the same incentives, assumptions, identities, and systems that shaped previous generations?
That was the heart of my talk.
WORLD 2.0: Smarter Machines, Faster Evidence, Same Egos
On the 22nd of March, 2026, I and 8 other leaders took to the stage with TEDxMSU, and I delivered a talk on ‘Ego’.
TEDxMSU is a non-profit initiative led by students of Michigan State University. This year’s theme was Sonder, and it celebrated the realization that every person you encounter is living a life and carries stories as vivid and complex as your own.
This being my first TEDTalk, it was ideally a very brief synthesis of a broader body of work explored throughout the both the Lessons Books [publishing on the 6th of July, 2026] – a seven-part inquiry into international development as it is lived, practiced, and inherited, particularly from the vantage point of the Global South.
That book series is my 4 year commitment, to preface this here podcast: the Lessons Conversation.
From the first industrial revolution through imperialism, neocolonialism and development to artificial intelligence and global cooperation, I in this talk examine the tension between what we now know and what we are willing to do with that knowledge.
The audio in this substack and the video on YouTube are similar, yet starkly different. I explain why and how at the beginning of the podcast.
Listen wherever you get your Podcasts [Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc]
If you make time to listen to both, I’d love to hear from you what were the things I may have edited out, or just forgotten to say on stage. Feel free to email me your ideas, and stand a chance to win free copies of my upcoming books [if you get some things right!]
Thanks for listening to the Lessons Conversation! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Episode 8: Mastery [Coming Next Week]
10,000 Hours, and How Artificial Intelligence Can Get You There
In next week’s conversation, we get deeper into tech, as we explore artificial intelligence.
I am currently reading two books: Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick, and I Am Not a Robot by Joanna Stern. I had a sit down with the former Minister of Tourism in Malawi, Dr. Vera Kamtukule, to discuss the future of technology in Malawi, and beyond.
In that episode, we will dive deeper into how I personally use AI in my day to day life; how leaders like Ethan and Joanna use AI, and some best practices on how AI can help you advance in your personal work and explorations.
As always, keep asking:
What works?
In what context?
Under what circumstances?
and…
Why?
Enjoyed the listen? This post is public, so feel free to share it with your community.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit podcast.lessonsconversation.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
