Regina Honu

Regina Honu is the CEO of Soronko Academy, a leading technology, coding, and digital skills development center in Africa, pioneering the way for young people especially women and girls to realize their economic potential equipping them with the technical and soft skills they need to attain dignified, fulfilling jobs and overcome the gender gap in technology. The academy which is the first coding and human-centered design academy in West Africa has trained over 20,000 women & girls and has expanded to train boys, men, and children with disabilities.

Regina was recently named on the 2021 Quartz Africa Innovators Africa Innovators List: a dynamic group of over two dozen women from 12 countries and 15 sectors whose work dispels the myth that women are primarily focused on social sectors as opposed to areas that drive economies. Since September 2021, she has been appointed as a Leadership Champion and Observer to the Governing Committee of the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) at the World Bank. We-Fi is a collaborative partnership among 14 governments, eight multilateral development banks (MDBs), and other public and private sector stakeholders, hosted by the World Bank Group. They seek to address financial and non-financial constraints faced by women-owned/led small and medium enterprises in developing countries.

Soronko Academy won the Most Impactful Initiative at the Women in Tech Global Awards for 2020. She was awarded the 2018 AFS Active Global Citizen Award for her contributions to global competence education and a winner of the Challenging Norms, Powering Economies initiative by Ashoka, UN Women, and Open Society Foundations for work to challenge gender norms in women’s economic empowerment. She has also been ranked one of the top young 50 CEO’s in Ghana and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Role Model by the Ministry of Education (MOE) through the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET). She sits on the board of AFS International.