Africa!Ignite has been named the 2011 winner of the KwaZulu-Natal Emerging Exporter of the Year award and the winner of a special Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) award by TRANSNET and the Durban Chamber of Commerce. Fezile Peko and Margaret Gribble received the awards on behalf of Africa!Ignite at a gala dinner in Durban.

We are extremely proud to have won the award in the Emerging Exporter category, for exporters who have been exporting for less than three years. The special BEE award, for which Africa!Ignite was the only finalist, was in recognition of the millions of Rands of income that we have achieved for rural crafters through our export partnerships.

A key partnership is with Dutch social entrepreneurs The Rainbow Collection, initiators of the Shake the World campaign, which aims to raise global awareness of the Millennium Development Goals and to sell one million beaded bracelets by 2015.