The Board of Standard Chartered Bank Botswana Limited announced the appointment of Rapelang Rabana as an Independent Non-Executive Director of the Bank in January 2021. Rabana is a seasoned entrepreneur and a leader with over 15 years’ experience. Her core areas of expertise include digital transformation, innovation, strategy and product development, operations and process engineering, communications and brand development.
She is a technology entrepreneur who is making waves both on the African continent and around the world. Impressively, she established her reputation in the tech sector as the co-founder of Yeigo Communications, a company that gained international recognition for its pioneering innovations in mobile VoIP and IP communications. Today, Rapelang is the founder of Rekindle Learning, a company looking to improve education in Africa by turning people’s compulsion to check their phones into an opportunity to learn
Further to that, she has received numerous awards as recognition for her skills, experience and expertise such as the 15 Women Changing the World by the World Economic Forum in 2015, Entrepreneur for the World by the World Entrepreneurship Forum in 2014. She holds a Bachelor of Business Science (Computer Science Honours), a Master’s of Science (Property Studies) from the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa.
Rabana’s entrepreneurial journey started at the young age of 22, after she graduated with honours from the University of Cape Town, South Africa in Business and Computer Science. Coming from a family with a strong belief in the power of education to create opportunities (her parents were the first in their families to earn degrees in Architecture and Electrical Engineering respectively), their advice was for Rapelang to focus on getting a good education. She attended the prestigious Roedean School in Johannesburg before moving to Cape Town to further her education.
Whilst at the University of Cape Town, she began the critical process of learning to code, which although difficult at first, was a process which she quickly grew to enjoy. She realised the power of Computer Science, and the ability to code, as the building blocks of being able to create something practical and of real societal value, emanating from the germ of an idea or concept.
