Tag Archives: 000 women

AMA, Business, Health

African Media Agency scoops SABRE Western Africa award with mental health campaign

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ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, 25 March 2026 -/African Media Agency(AMA)/ – African Media Agency (AMA) has won the 2026 Africa SABRE Award in the Western Africa category. The ceremony took place on March 17 at The Venue Melrose Arch in Johannesburg, South Africa. This accolade recognises the Abidjan-based pan-African firm’s high-impact Public Relations campaign for Bluemind Foundation, a mental health advocacy organisation founded by Marie-Alix de Putter. Through strategic narrative crafting, AMA scaled Bluemind’s ‘Heal by Hair’ initiative into a global movement, turning African hair salons into hubs for mental wellness.

AMA’s Mandate to take an African Solution for Mental Health Global
As the mental health crisis affects 13.9% of the world’s population, including nearly 150 million people in Africa, AMA’s work for ‘Heal by Hair’ positioned the training of hairdressers as certified Mental Health Ambassadors as a scalable, African-born solution that can be applied anywhere around the globe.

However, to reach the goal of supporting one million women across Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, and Togo by 2030, Marie-Alix de Putter’s initiative required a strategic shift from a local grassroots effort to a visible, continent-wide movement. This pursuit set high objectives for AMA to achieve global visibility and leverage international media recognition, consequently helping Bluemind Foundation secure the funding and strategic frameworks necessary for sustainable expansion across the continent and beyond.

Visibility and Impact
Relying exclusively on earned media, AMA successfully elevated Bluemind Foundation’s credibility and visibility among funders, partners, and policymakers, with coverage generating an estimated 353 million views worldwide.

AMA’s Partnerships and Funding Impact
“To move the needle on funding for Bluemind Foundation, we had to do more than just get publicity. We had to prove we deeply understood the mental health sector and the specific needs of women in these markets,” African Media Agency Founder & CEO Eloine Barry explained.

“It was essential for our agency to lean into our expertise in Francophone Africa. This regional experience was a strategic tool to align Bluemind’s vision with what global partners actually care about. For us, it really wasn’t just about a headline but about building the credibility that turns a story into a funding partner’s will to renew funding, so an African solution to mental health can scale globally.”

Indeed, the compound effect of widespread media exposure helped Bluemind Foundation to establish strong partnerships with 27 organisations and structures, including the Ministries of Health in Togo and Côte d’Ivoire, Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), and researchers from DIAL – University Paris Saclay and Santa Clara University to conduct the rigorous evaluation of the programme’s effectiveness. Meanwhile, Fund for Innovation in Development (FID) renewed its support for Bluemind Foundation with Stage 2 funding to enable a larger-scale impact evaluation in Togo from 2025 to 2027.

This visibility translated into measurable community impact, including a 104% increase in trained hairdressers, a 180% rise in certified mental health ambassadors, and an estimated 212,000 women reached directly.

Bluemind Foundation’s Founder and President, Marie-Alix de Putter says, “AMA understood early that Heal by Hair was not just an innovation but a shift in how mental health is addressed and how mental wellness is promoted. They held the narrative to that level from our launch to the pages of The New York Times and everything in between. I’m grateful for their intelligence, discipline, and care.”

Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA)

About African Media Agency (AMA)
African Media Agency (AMA) is a women-owned, award-winning pan-African agency providing high-impact strategic communications globally. The firm specializes in reputation management, digital strategy, and content development to drive measurable results.

AMA’s expertise spans across sectors like finance, health, and technology, and the creation of compelling narratives for diverse audiences. Headquartered in Abidjan, the agency has offices in Accra, Johannesburg, Durban, and New York, maintaining a presence in 30+ African markets.

Media Contact:
Amy Minnie
Account Manager
amy@africanmediaagency.com

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AMA, Business, Health

MARIE-ALIX DE PUTTER JOINS PRAXIS, GLOBAL NETWORK FOR HIGH-IMPACT LEADERSHIP

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LOME, Togo, 27 February 2026 -/African Media Agency(AMA)/ – The Bluemind Foundation announces that its Founder and President, Marie Alix De Putter, has been selected to join the Praxis Africa Accelerator, an internationally recognized ecosystem supporting founders committed to building organizations that change systems, not just outcomes.

Praxis brings together entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders who view enterprises and organizations not merely as economic instruments but as architectures capable of sustainably transforming social systems. Rooted in a tradition of rigorous ethical and spiritual reflection, the ecosystem supports leaders for whom faith is an inner discipline in service of the common good.

This selection comes at a moment of strategic acceleration for the Bluemind Foundation, a pioneer of an innovative community-based mental health model deployed in Francophone Africa, notably in Togo, Cameroon, and Côte d’Ivoire.

A SYSTEMIC APPROACH TO MENTAL HEALTH

French-Cameroonian, Marie-Alix De Putter has developed over the years a thesis that has become central to her work: mental health is health; it is a social, cultural, and political infrastructure. Her work raises a crucial question of public governance: what becomes of a society when psychological suffering remains invisible, underfunded, and politically marginalized?
From this inquiry, she founded the Bluemind Foundation and designed innovative community-based interventions that bring care to where trust already exists, build bridges with public systems, and make mental health legitimate, measurable, and fundable.
The Heal by Hair program, which trains hairdressers as mental health ambassadors, exemplifies this socially rooted engineering, designed from the outset for institutional integration.
In less than five years:

  • Over 300,000 women have received early support;
  • Public campaigns have reached more than 350 million people;
  • Strategic partnerships have been established with universities, governments, and international institutions;
  • A scientific evaluation protocol, supported by the Development Innovation Fund, is currently underway in Togo
Marie-Alix de Putter and the ambassadors at the University of Lomé in October 2025. © Bluemind Foundation

INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION AND A NEW PHASE OF STRUCTURING

Joining the Praxis program represents international recognition of the model developed by the Bluemind Foundation.

It will strengthen governance structures before scaling, deepen sustainable funding and public integration mechanisms, and embed the Foundation within an international network of impact funders, granting access to patient capital aligned with its mission. At the same time, it will enhance coherence between organizational culture, performance, and institutional accountability.

The Foundation is preparing for regional scale-up, with an ambitious multi-country impact goal by 2030: • 5,000 trained hairdresser-ambassadors;

  • 3,000 active community hubs ;
  • Over 5 million women and youth with structured access to mental health support. To meet the extensive needs in West and Central Africa, the Bluemind Foundation is entering a new phase of capital structuring for broader deployment, combining philanthropic funding, institutional partnerships, and sustainable public integration mechanisms.

From Lomé (Togo), the Foundation is structuring an African model designed for the realities of the continent and the world, with a clear mission: to make care accessible to everyone, everywhere, every day.

A UNIQUE VOICE IN CARE GOVERNANCE

Marie-Alix de Putter’s path was forged by an experience of devastating personal loss. While four months pregnant, she lost her husband to assassination. That rupture became the lens through which she understood everything that followed: when care systems are absent or inaccessible, suffering is never private—it becomes economic, institutional, and political.

Her approach combines systemic design, scientific rigor, strategic storytelling, and institutional negotiation. An author with three Master’s degrees and an Executive MBA, trained at Harvard Business School and Oxford, Marie-Alix de Putter regularly speaks in academic, economic, and political arenas on public health, leadership, and organizational transformation.

Her leadership has been recognized as a Desmond Tutu Fellow (AFLI), Best Woman Leader in Africa (AIFA), one of the 30 Most Innovative People in Africa (Quartz), and with inclusion in the Biographical Dictionary of French Protestants. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Le Monde, BBC, The Guardian, Vogue, Jeune Afrique, Der Spiegel, and other major international media.

A STRUCTURING MILESTONE

“If redemption were a spectrum, Praxis would sit at its most demanding edge. I enter the inaugural cohort of the Praxis Africa Accelerator with gratitude and gravity, aware that as impact grows, responsibility deepens. At a pivotal moment for the Bluemind Foundation, Praxis strengthens not only our strategy but also our internal architecture—the moral and organizational discipline necessary to scale without diluting meaning and values. This important milestone belongs to every Blueminder who engages, often away from the headlines, where systems are fragile and the cost of inaction is measured in (young) lives.” – Marie-Alix de Putter, President and Founder, Bluemind Foundation

Praxis Accelerator Class of 2026 © Praxis

This selection marks a key step in the Bluemind Foundation’s international positioning and confirms its ambition: to to embed African community-based mental health models — culturally legitimate, scientifically evaluated, and economically viable — into the institutions that shape public life.

Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of Bluemind Fondation

About Bluemind Fondation

The Bluemind Foundation is a pioneering non-profit mental health organization that integrates care into everyday spaces, starting with hair salons, turning everyday spaces into genuine lifelines. It empowers local communities across Africa and beyond through innovative, scalable, cost-effective, evidence-based solutions that change lives where care is most needed. The mission of the Bluemind Foundation is to bring hope, dignity, and mental well-being to everyone, everywhere, every day.

For more information about the Bluemind Foundation and its initiatives: X, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

CONTACTS
+228 99 22 00 87
welcome@bluemindfoundation.org
www.bluemindfoundation.org

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AMA

Benin: 10,000 Women Entrepreneurs Receive Business Development Support

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Washington, USA, 16 January 2026-/African Media Agency(AMA)/-The World Bank approved $100 million in financing from the International Development Association (IDA) to help Benin promote access to finance and growth for women entrepreneurs in both the formal and informal sectors.

The Women Entrepreneurship Development and Access to Finance Program (WEDAF) is a results-based program (PforR). It will support the government in setting up a Women’s Business Center and provide more than 10,000 women-led micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) with access to loans, training, mentoring, and career advice. This results-based program will competitively select a cohort of promising enterprises led or owned by women-Les Agodjié, who are the champions of women’ s entrepreneurship. These Agodjié Champions will benefit from a package of support, including technical assistance, access to tailored financing instruments, investment readiness support, market access, as well as structured mentorship, to position their businesses as flagships of the Beninese economy and engines of job creation.

“In addition to the challenges that all businesses face, women face specific barriers that limit the creation, development, and growth of their businesses. The WEDAF program aims to accelerate the growth of women-owned and women-led businesses and strengthen their role in creating jobs and wealth,” said Mamadou Tanou Baldé, World Bank Acting Country Manager for Benin. “When women entrepreneurs have access to finance, training, and mentorship, their business performance and job creation increase significantly.”

This program benefits from substantial complementary support from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group. The latter will bring its expertise in capital structuring, its ability to mobilize regional investors, as well as its technical expertise, through tailor-made advisory services. It will help overcome capacity, formalization and financing barriers faced by women entrepreneurs. In addition, IFC will offer its own financing solutions, focusing on SMEs with commercial potential, while increasing the number of women-led businesses benefitting. This will involve current and future investments as well as advisory services – such as the Banking on Women program – for the benefit of partner financial intermediaries.

“Only 3.9% of women-managed businesses have access to bank loans, and many operate in a market segment underserved by microfinance institutions or commercial banks. This program is a real opportunity to turn women entrepreneurs into true national champions,” says Vincent Arthur Floreani, IFC Country Officer for Benin.

This program is aligned with the National Policy for the Development and Promotion of SMEs 2025-2035. Its objective is that by 2035, Beninese MSMEs will operate competitively in an adequate institutional framework and a business environment conducive to wealth creation and decent and sustainable jobs.

Contacts
In Cotonou:
Gnona Afangbedji,
+229 01 90 07 4732
yafangbedji@worldbank.org

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