Winnie Mang'eni

Speaker Bio

Winnie Mang’eni is a technology executive and AI entrepreneur shaping the future of artificial intelligence on the African continent. As the founder of PAWA AI, she is building indigenous small language models (SLMs) designed to reflect African languages, contexts, and communities, enabling governments, enterprises, and schools to deploy sovereign, culturally grounded AI at scale.
PAWA AI holds strategic partnerships with the GSMA to develop African language models and with the UNDP through their Compute Accelerator Programme, positioning the company at the forefront of inclusive, locally rooted AI infrastructure on the continent.
With over six years at Accenture and Microsoft, Winnie brings deep enterprise technology expertise and large-scale digital transformation. She holds a bachelors and Master’s degree from the University of Notre Dame’s ESTEEM.
Her work sits at the intersection of AI sovereignty, financial inclusion, and African fintech infrastructure, with active engagements across the East African tech ecosystem.