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Street Smart
Forbes Woman Africa
|October/November 2017
A street vendor as a child, American entrepreneur and FORBES 30 Under 30 alumna Christine Souffrant Ntim is now working to digitize the informal economies of the world.
AMERICAN ENTREPRENEUR Christine Souffrant Ntim be-came acquainted with the many drawbacks and opportunities of the informal economy from an early age, selling goods in the streets of Haiti with her grandmother.
What she did not realize was she would one day be able to effect a change in it.
Born and raised in Haiti in the Caribbean, today, Souffrant Ntim is the founder of Vendedy, she is a FORBES 30 Under 30 alumna, and is working to digitize the informal economy connecting vendors in traditional bazaars and markets to prospective shoppers around the world.
“I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur but being a street vendor never really meant you were an entrepreneur which is crazy because informal economies are everywhere and they possess an immense amount of growth potential,” she says, during our meeting at the Johannesburg Stock
Exchange in July. She visited South Africa to present arts entrepreneurship workshops to South African artists to help establish their brand and break into the market.
This story is from the October/November 2017 edition of Forbes Woman Africa.
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