Fem Bosses; Meet June Akinyi Arunga, A Kenyan-born Media Boss & The Founder/CEO of Quest Media LLC
Kenya is fast becoming a common name in many people’s mouth internationally. From this East African economic giant we have seen high profiled names such as Lupita Nyong’o, Barrack Obama, Uhuru Kenyatta and now June Akinyi Arunga. This article looks at the great achievement made by June Akinyi Arunga who was born in Kenya back in 1981. She studied law at the University of Buckingham.
June Arunga believes that Africa’s biggest challenge is codifying everyone’s property rights and contractual agreements: this will enable the average African have a fair chance at good healthcare, housing and education. With this core belief, she decided to set herself out on a mission through her career in law, making BBC TV documentary films, becoming a public policy advocate and then later she settled on building a mobile phone based platforms.
She is one of the founding equity partners in Black Star Line SA (BSL SA): which is a technology solution company that provides solutions to the field of mobile phone payments and money transfer services which is mainly geared towards addressing issues facing the African market. This company was founded back in 2007 to cater to the need of the large majority of the African population that does not have access to formal banking services. The BSL SA headquarters is in Accra, Ghana.
Arunga is also the founder of the Open Quest Media Africa. A company that develops digital tools geared towards flattening the information asymmetries and the cost of transaction in Africa’s informal trading markets and leveraging this expertise to advance the client’s competiveness and profitability by using customized automated business processes. Ms. Arunga is also the Chairperson of the Quest Media Foundation: an organization focused on trade and advocacy of property rights.
In the year 2011, Ms. Arunga featured in the Forbes Magazine’s 20 Youngest Powerful Women in Africa, and the year before that she was recognized in the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company. In addition to this Ms. Arunga has been linked to several high profiled jobs and institutions; for instance she featured in four documentaries talking about wealth, property, trade and migration in Africa. She also appeared in numerous radio and television programs on a number of issues related to public policy. At one time she served on board the advisory committee of University of the People, she is also on the advisory board of Global Envision, Moving Picture Institute and the International Policy Network (based in London) and Instituto Bruno Leoni (in Milan). All these organizations have a common thread running through them, and that is Arunga’s ability to link the need to have a robust protection mechanism for the property rights of the people in Africa thus ensuring justice and the empowerment of the Africans.
Some of her powerful documentary films on BBC TV that gave her much international lime lights are as listed below:
- Globalization is Good: The Daily Mail terms this film as a “powerful polemic”. It featured Johan Norberg a renowned Swedish economic historian and June Arunga playing the role of a young advocate championing the fight for reduction of trade barriers in Africa.
- Africa: Who is to Blame?: It’s a 60 minutes long documentary produced and aired in 2005 by BBC World. It was hosted by former Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings and June Arunga. The show undertook the task of answering who is the cause of Africa’s numerous political and economic problems.
- Pangea Day: It aired on the 10th May 2008 with Jason Silva, Lisa Lang, Max Lugavere and June Akinyi Arunga. It was a world multimedia event that was showed in Kigali, Cairo, Los Angeles, London, Rio de Janeiro and Mumbai with an audience running into million from all over the world and it was shown in seven different languages. It also featured high ranking speakers like CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Dave Stewart and company, Queen Noor of Jordan, Iranian rock phenoms Hypernova and Gilberto Gil.
- The Devil’s Footpath: In this documentary, Ms. Arunga travelled from Cairo to Cape Town covering more than 5,000 miles taking 6 week on a soul searching journey which cut through 6 conflict-raven nations thus spanning the African continent.
- Africa’s Ultimate Resource: Is a short 18 minutes documentary where Ms. Arunga interviews African immigrants focusing mainly on why educated people search for jobs overseas.
These are some of the contribution to technology, business and political growth of Africa that Ms. June Akinyi Arunga has made. She truly serves as a role model to young black women all over the world and women in general.
