A BRIDGE TO AFRICA!

Patricia Inonge Zita Mweene is a Danish-Zambian system entrepreneur and jewellery designer working at the intersection of African resources, skills, design and markets.

She founded Design Thinking Africa, where she develops work-based training and enterprise models that connect local skills and natural resources with economic opportunity. Her current work in Zambia centres on the Mukuni Design & Innovation Hub (Skills. Design. Production. Enterprise.), with the Mukuni Gems Ecosystem as its first commercial initiative. The Hub is the physical platform for gemstone cutting and jewellery manufacturing, work-based training, design and product development, craft and material innovation, enterprise development, and market access, so that more value from Zambia’s resources is retained and commercialised locally. The Mukuni Gems Ecosystem is the initial commercial and training programme within the Hub; the Goldsmith & Lapidary Atelier is the specialist production and training facility that delivers it.

Dette er noget af det som vi vil drøfte på Afrikaselskabets kommende møde tirsdag d. 13 oktober kl 17-18.

Patricia is also the Founder and Creative Director of INONGE ZITA, a Copenhagen-based fine jewellery brand combining Scandinavian design with Zambian gemstone heritage. Her work gives her a practical perspective on the journey from raw material to finished product, and on how design, manufacturing, branding and markets determine where value is captured.

She holds master’s degrees in Project Management and Information Management & Finance and has studied jewellery and diamonds at the Gemological Institute of America.

For the Danish Africa Society, Patricia will explore a central question: what happens when a country owns its natural resources but not enough of the value chain that follows extraction?

Her talk, Zambia, Privatisation and the Future of African Resources: The Case for the Mukuni Gems Ecosystem, examines why privatisation and skills training alone did not create the downstream industries many expected, and what it takes to move from extraction towards local ownership of finished products, brands and markets, with the Mukuni Design & Innovation Hub as the platform and the Mukuni Gems Ecosystem as the first proof of the model.

På tirsdag har DU mulighed for at få og give masser af erfaringer, kontakter m.v., - Africa is not the future, it’s now!
Med venlig hilsen,

Bestyrelsen

Tilmelding senest mandag den 12. oktober 2026