Lilian Uwintwali is the 40 Chances Fellow jointly awarded by Howard Buffet Foundation, Tony Blair’s AGI, and the World Food Prize Foundation. She was honored among the top three young innovators in Agribusiness across East Africa and Ethiopia. She won 1ST Place for People’s Choice Award for Best App awarded by Broadband Commission and the office of the president of the government of Rwanda. Lilian holds a Global MBA in Impact Entrepreneurship and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and Information Technology. She has undergone postgraduate trainings with Cambridge, MIT, IFC/World Bank Group, USAID and Scope Insight, specializing in entrepreneurship and business development, ICT4D (Information Communication and Technology for Development), Human and Institutional Capacity Development, Agro-Inputs-Output market and Value Chain development. She is the Vice Chair of Rural Youth Alliance under IFAD and a Board director of Urwego Bank and also a business consultant for IFC/World Bank Group since 2013 to-date.

MAHWI Tech, the company Lilian owns and runs, is an Agritech firm based in Rwanda with a mission to digitalize agriculture in Africa, serving over 20,000 smallholder farmers providing access to high end markets and financing via MLIMA digital marketplace and consequently increasing farmers’ incomes and sales. MLIMA platform addresses demand and supply chain gaps of agriculture commodities using digital technologies and hence contribute to food systems security. Over 60 farming cooperatives benefit from MLIMA cooperative management system to digitize their operations and keep digital records of their finances, production, sales, stock and a database of all their member profiles and farm records.