From Rock Bottom to Rebuilding Trust: How One Founder Turned Her Struggles into a Tech Company Redefining Accountability Across Africa
- Mandilakhe Somdle
- Oct 7
- 4 min read
AfricArena’s Mandilakhe Somdle sat down with the visionary founder of ShareCARD Sandra Awili, a woman whose journey from rock bottom to resilience has become a powerful story of innovation, purpose, and impact.
When life forced her to choose between survival and education, she didn’t stop moving, she started building.
For nearly a decade, she hustled her way through the events industry, self-taught and determined, carving out a space in a world that often values papers over persistence. But when the pandemic struck, everything collapsed. Overnight, the business she had spent years building vanished. Income dried up, savings disappeared, and for a year, she had nothing.
At her lowest point, she missed two job interviews in a single week because she couldn’t afford sanitary pads. That moment broke her.
“Poverty strips you of your identity, you don’t own anything, not even your dignity,”
she recalls. It was in that darkness that a new purpose was born.
The Birth of PadShare and the Realisation of a Bigger Problem
Determined to make sure no girl would have to trade her dignity for a basic need, she created PadShare, a platform that helped women and girls access menstrual products with dignity. It started as a grassroots initiative during the lockdown but quickly grew into something much bigger.
As PadShare scaled, she began noticing something deeper: while resources were reaching communities, there was no proof that they actually got to the people who needed them most. Reports were slow, data was fragmented, and too often, “impact” was reduced to undignified photos of beneficiaries used as evidence for donor reports.
“That’s when I realized the real problem wasn’t just access, it was visibility.”
Enter ShareCARD, Building the Infrastructure of Trust
That insight gave birth to ShareCARD, a technology infrastructure company designed to ensure resources are traceable, impact is visible, and no one is ever left unseen again.
Across Africa, billions of dollars flow every year into programs for agriculture, education, health, and development. Yet more than 70% of these impact-driven initiatives lack real-time data systems. The result? Mismanagement, duplicated efforts, and invisible communities.
ShareCARD solves that by giving beneficiaries, even those without smartphones or internet, digital profiles that link them directly to the resources they receive. Through GPS mapping, field verification, and digital tracking, organisations can prove that their support reaches the last mile.
It’s not just data. It’s dignity, giving African farmers, students, and families a way to be visible in the systems meant to serve them.
From Survival to Global Recognition
The journey to building ShareCARD began with a spark, a last-minute application to the EU Global Hackathon at the height of the pandemic. Out of over 5,000 applicants, she emerged the overall winner, earning €20,000 in seed funding and access to world-class mentors.
That win became the foundation. From there, she joined the Starthub incubation program, which provided her first VC cheque and support to pivot PadShare into a scalable business model.
Despite losing her early team and working alone at times, she persisted, bootstrapping, taking on side jobs, and reinvesting every bit she earned back into the company.
By 2025, her persistence paid off when Digital Africa invested $50,000, recognising ShareCARD’s potential to redefine accountability in Africa. Today, the startup has raised over $150,000 through a mix of grants, incubation support, and early-stage investment, with another $170,000 currently being negotiated.
The Challenges of Building in Africa
Building a startup in Africa comes with layers of challenges, from bias and underestimation to infrastructure gaps.
“As an African founder, you’re not just pitching your business; you’re defending the credibility of an entire continent,” she says.
Founders often have to build not only the product but the ecosystem around it, from digital literacy to payment systems. Yet, it’s precisely these challenges that make African innovation so unique.
“We learn to turn constraints into creativity. The future of innovation will be written in Africa.”
AfricArena Recognition, A Moment of Validation
Winning the AfricArena Startup Award this year was a defining milestone. It validated years of work and sacrifice, and placed ShareCARD among the continent’s most promising innovations.
“The award didn’t just give us visibility, it gave us credibility. For once, we weren’t just another startup trying to be heard; we were a recognised solution.”
For her and her team, it was more than an accolade. It was a symbol of resilience.
“When I brought the award home, everyone took turns taking pictures with it. It was proof that the sleepless nights and sacrifices were worth it.”
Measuring Impact Through Data and Dignity
ShareCARD measures success in two ways: through data and through dignity.
Data shows how many farmers, students, and families are being reached and verified in real time. Dignity shows up when communities are no longer reduced to photos in donor reports, but recognised as active participants in development.
“Impact is not just about numbers on a dashboard,” she says. “It’s about ensuring Africa’s development has a face, a voice, and proof.”
The Vision Ahead
Over the next five years, the vision is bold: to make ShareCARD the backbone of traceability and accountability across Africa, from agriculture to healthcare, from NGOs to government programs.
She envisions a continent where every last-mile beneficiary is visible in the data loop, where impact isn’t just reported but proven in real time.
“If we succeed, ShareCARD won’t just be a startup; it will be part of Africa’s digital infrastructure, ensuring that every dollar, every seed, and every resource is traceable, visible, and trusted.”
A Journey of Resilience, Purpose, and Proof
From missing job interviews because of poverty to building a company recognised on global stages, her journey embodies the spirit of African entrepreneurship, resilient, dignified, and transformative.
“For me, this isn’t just business. It’s personal. Poverty once silenced me. Now, I’m building tools to make sure no one else is ever left unseen again.”
Discover more from ShareCARD at sharecardapp.com
Explore African startup stories at africarena.com
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