Rachel Sibande pioneers digital innovation in Malawi, empowering youth and women through mHub’s transformative tech ecosystem.
Rachel Sibande empowers Malawian youth and women through mHub, the country’s first technology innovation hub. There, she drives digital skills development, entrepreneurship, and homegrown tech solutions.
In 2013, Malawi didn’t have a single technology or innovation hub. That changed when Dr Rachel Sibande, a young computer scientist with a vision, launched the country’s first-ever tech and innovation hub: mHub. What began as a personal mission to equip youth with digital skills has since grown into a nationwide movement. MHub has trained over 92,000 Malawians in coding, robotics, data science, and entrepreneurship.
Behind the scenes
Rachel Sibande, who enrolled in university at just 15 and later earned a PhD in Computer Science from Rhodes University in South Africa, built mHub from the ground up. In the early days, she bootstrapped the hub using her tech skills, developing websites and software systems to fund its initial activities.
A key turning point came when she secured a foundational grant from Hivos, an international development organisation. This grant enabled mHub to grow into a structured incubator that supports startups with mentorship, seed funding, and market access.
Founding mHub
mHub was established to promote the development of technology solutions and accelerate emerging entrepreneurs by improving access to finance and investment readiness. Since its inception, the hub has disbursed over $1.5 million to youth- and women-led enterprises, supporting innovations in aquaculture, food processing, waste management, and manufacturing.
Between 2018 and 2023, mHub created more than 952 jobs, supported over 6,945 entrepreneurs, and developed more than 45 digital solutions tailored to Malawi’s development challenges. These include constitutional access tools and civic-tech platforms that track government service delivery.
Sibande also launched coding clubs for girls and children and ran community camps that have trained tens of thousands in digital skills and inspired creative, tech-driven ideas. Her goal has always been to create a pipeline of future technologists—many of whom, until recently, had no access to digital literacy or exposure to innovation.
A trailblazing career
Sibande’s contributions extend beyond entrepreneurship. She has earned numerous accolades, including being named one of Forbes Africa’s 30 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs. She is also a Google Anita Borg Scholar, a Mandela Washington Fellow, and a Next Einstein Forum ambassador for Malawi. In 2018, she won the Climate-Smart Innovation Award for inventing a thermal chemical process that converts maize cobs into gas and light—a solution designed to address rural energy poverty using locally available resources.
Under her leadership, mHub has grown into a regional innovation force. It has partnered with global organisations including the European Union, UN Women, UNICEF, USAID, and the World Bank to run hackathons, digital skills training, and civic-tech competitions across Africa.
In addition to leading mHub, Rachel Sibande is now a Senior Programme Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, supporting AI, machine learning, and data science initiatives to improve development outcomes across the continent.
Through every milestone, Sibande’s mission remains unchanged: to create platforms where young Africans can build homegrown solutions and transform their ideas into sustainable ventures.
