Seeds of change: From banking to building food resilience

The eldest of nine children, Victoria Sabula was just 18 when her father died at 48 after a long illness. Her youngest sister was five. Her mother, a primary-school teacher, became the head of the family, but Sabula quickly adjusted to being her lieutenant. “She worked so hard to see us through school. But she also made sure we all had our chores,” she says. ‘And we all took care of each other, but especially the older siblings.”

Taking care of them, indeed taking care of her wider family and of her community, that was the way her mother taught her to think. “My mum was a teacher,” Sabula says. “That really helped make me who I am today.”

A trained lawyer with an MBA, the 43-year-old chief executive of the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF) could have spent her whole career in the lucrative banking sector. Instead, she made a career change in her early 30s that offered her a greater sense of purpose, first as general counsel for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) before being appointed in 2019 to the top job at AECF.