South Africa: Nneile Nkholise, the entrepreneur who uses technology for animal husbandry

From mechanical engineering to biotechnology and animal husbandry… in her ten-year career, Nneile Nkholise has experienced a huge shift in her professional career that has been quite beneficial. In 2021, she was awarded the « Margaret Entrepreneur Africa Award » at the Digital Women’s Days (DWD) for her project « 3DIMO » which automates the analysis of livestock data to monitor animal health. 

Nneile Nkholise is an entrepreneur with an atypical background. Though she is a mechanical engineering graduate, the young South African woman finally converted to biotechnology and the design of innovative solutions for animal care. With a degree in mechanical engineering from the Central University of Technology in Bloemfontein, South Africa, she began her career in 2011 as a mechanical engineer in the public works department in her country. In 2015, she decided to embark on entrepreneurship. That same year, she co-founded iMed Tech, a biotech company specialising in the design of customised medical solutions, ranging from the manufacture of medical prostheses, breast prostheses, to bio-implants.“By launching iMed Tech, I wanted to confirm a theory that women have the power and potential to run companies in the medical technology sector. And not just ordinary companies, but companies that will become multinationals,” she tells Resilient Digital Africa. In 2016, she was recognized as the best female innovator in Africa by the World Economic Forum. And in 2017, the Office of the President of her country saluted her project and named her the Young South African woman of the Year. She won other awards.  In 2018, she was listed in Forbes Africa’s 30 under 30 and recognised as one of the top 100 young Africans by the Africa Youth Council.

From biotechnology to animal husbandry

Despite this success, the young South African had other ambitions. In 2018, she embarked on a new entrepreneurial adventure and founded « 3DIMO », a company that automates the analysis of livestock data to monitor animal health.

At the outset, the company focused on sports tech and designed software to provide coaches with insight into players’ performance, allowing them to predict risks of overload. The company was doing very well until the Covid 19 pandemic hit the sports sector in 2020. Faced with the new situation, she decided to reorient the company’s activities. She turned to animal husbandry, motivated by her previous experience in cattle breeding and aware of the challenges encountered in this field. She therefore concentrated her efforts on livestock breeding, an area with a fairly large market. It offers a solution that automates the analysis of animal data and generates a universally traceable digital identification of each animal linked to a breeder. This allows farmers to record data such as animal vaccinations, animal movements, stock control, etc.

It also provides an online marketplace for the sale of livestock directly to farmers, allowing small-scale farmers to access the market and have traceability of their livestock trade.

In 2021, during the « Journées de la Femme digitale », she was awarded the Margaret Entrepreneur Africa Prize, a distinction which rewards women entrepreneurs in Africa and Europe whose projects and innovations respond to social challenges.