Anne Shongwe | |
|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) Shongwe in 2012 | |
| Born | Anne Muthoni Githuku 1964 (age 59–60) Kenya |
| Other names | Anne Githuku, Anne Githuku-Shongwe, Anne Muthoni Githuku-Shongwe |
| Occupation(s) | International civil servant and entrepreneur |
| Years active | 1993–present |
| Known for | Afroes |
Anne Shongwe (also known as Anne Githuku-Shongwe, born 1964) is a Kenyan international civil servant and entrepreneur, who has lived for three decades in South Africa. Since 2022, she has been the director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) for Southern Africa. She was born in Kenya and then completed a bachelor's degree at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, and a master's degree at American University in Washington, D.C. She spent fifteen years working with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and then launched a digital gaming development business to create a learning platform for teaching life skills to youth through mobile phones. Using sponsorships from various corporations and NGOs, Shongwe was able to distribute games as free downloads with a focus on Africa. Her games were designed to teach youth about human rights and social responsibilities. She aimed through the games to have youth question their beliefs in regard to topics such as sexual consent, exploitation and violence; environmental protection; and conflict resolution.
Shongwe's first two games, Champ Chase and Teka Champs, led to her selection as a finalist in the Cartier Women's Initiative Awards in 2010 and allowed her to open a second office in Nairobi. Her next games Haki 1: Shield and Defend and Moraba each won their categories at the World Summit Youth Awards in 2012 while Moraba also won a Meffy Award from the Mobile Entertainment Forum in London. Shongwe was selected that year for Paris's Netexplo Award and as a finalist for the Mobile Premier Award in Barcelona, Spain. In 2013, she was named a Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the Schwab Foundation and World Economics Forum. Haki 2: Chaguo Ni Lako won the PeaceApp Award in 2015 from the UNDP and United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. That year she launched Job Hunt, a game designed to teach players about financial literacy and employment.
In 2016, Shongwe returned to the United Nations and worked for five years as the Southern African Representative for UN Women. Her office was headquartered in South Africa and her responsibility included implementing programmes to promote women's empowerment and equality throughout Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, and South Africa. Much of her work focused on educating women about reproductive health and HIV/AIDS and the role power inequalities play in increasing sexual exploitation, unintentional pregnancy, child marriage, and infection from sexually transmitted diseases. She also focused on the development of women-owned businesses and reducing inequalities in the workplace. In 2022, she began working for UNAIDS with the goal of eradicating AIDS in Africa by 2030 by ensuring that those infected with HIV received treatment and were therefore unable to transmit the virus.