In 2016, when Selina Mwenelupembe joined the Graça Machel Trust’s Women Creating Wealth (WCW) Ignite programme, she expected to gain stronger business skills. She wanted to sharpen her numbers and strategy. Instead, the experience changed how she saw herself. “The programme ignited my leadership confidence to step into spaces where women had been absent,” she says, “and sparked a deep interest in public policies that can open real doors for women and youth.”
That shift pushed her beyond her own business. Today, she serves as Chairperson of the Malawi Chapter of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa Federation of Women in Business (COMFWB) and is co-founder of Mount Carmel Ltd. She still runs her construction business, but she also works at the intersection of enterprise, policy, and advocacy, ensuring that laws are translated into contracts, capital, and opportunities for women across Malawi. Since starting her business, she has built a core team of more than 80 permanent staff and, on major projects, provides work for a further 300 casual labourers, creating steady income and skills-building opportunities for families in her community.
Selina during a stakeholders site meeting on the water night storage construction site in Malawi
Selina with her team on her building materials manufacturing plant site.
Selina’s belief is firm and straightforward: Policies must not remain words on paper; they must become opportunities. In COMFWB Malawi, she helps entrepreneurs understand what national frameworks mean in practice. She trains women to interpret tools like Malawi’s MSME Order 2020, which gives preference to small and women-owned businesses in public procurement. Then she walks them through the details, helping them prepare compliant bids so they are not only eligible but also competitive.
Selina collaborates closely with the Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Authority (PPDA) to ensure that the MSME Order 2020 is treated as a genuine inclusion mechanism, not a mere tick-box exercise. “With PPDA and the MSME Order 2020, we are moving women from eligible to winning,” she explains. For her, progress means women-owned firms appearing on supplier lists, submitting strong documentation, and winning contracts that once seemed out of reach.
Inspiring young girls at her plant yard.
Selina and her peers observed that women are often excluded because they are underrepresented in banks and ministries, and because many entrepreneurs are unaware of the policy instruments designed to support them. She chose to respond on both sides. She mentors women to use gender-responsive policies in their favour. At the same time, she engages ministries and banks to apply those policies consistently.
“Access changes when women know what they are entitled to and institutions know how to implement,” she says. “Our job is to connect the dots: translate policy into bankable documentation, procurement readiness, and negotiations that fit women-led MSMEs.” This is why she argues that institutions must “increase non-collateral loan sizes to create value, not perpetual debt.”
“For me, this work is always personal. I see women come in wondering if their business is ‘big enough’ to matter, and through mentoring, I watch them grow into strategic confidence, transitioning from survival- and income-generating activities to serious, wealth-creating enterprises. That transformation is everything.”
Her connection to the Graça Machel Trust community helps sustain that momentum. Selina often speaks about the powerhouse women she has met across the region and how this network has grown into a coalition that multiplies their influence. At the 2025 Women Creating Wealth Entrepreneurs Summit in South Africa, she watched children, mothers and grandmothers standing together, seeing what she calls a “succession plan in action.” For her, lasting change looks like policy gains carried forward by many hands. “That is how we sustain progress,” she says, “by embedding leadership at every age and stage so that more women move from the margins into spaces where they help shape the rules, not just follow them.”
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