IFC EDGE’s Women in Green Building Competition winners

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, announced three winners of its Women in Green Building Competition at the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA) Green Building Convention 2024 held in Cape Town last week.

This is the third year of the Women in Green Buildings Competition, run by IFC in partnership with the GBCSA, recognising women for their contributions to sustainable construction and their roles as EDGE Experts, and designed to inspire more women into leadership positions in a sector that is still largely dominated by men.

As part of the process, many female professionals from South Africa’s construction sector, including architects, engineers and quantity surveyors, are offered the opportunity to increase their green building design skills. Forty-five women entered the competition this year. Twenty-eight women received Design for Greater Efficiency training and the 10 finalists received EDGE (Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies) Expert training. Three of those 10 finalists received their winning awards at the GBCSA Convention.

Lenore Cairncross, IFC EDGE’s Green Building Lead for Africa, commented: “I am delighted to be honouring the winners of our third annual Women in Green Building Competition, as part of our ongoing commitment to foster an environment of equality and progress in the green construction and property industry. I believe we need the vision, perspective and outlook that women bring to help tackle the climate change challenge and to transform carbon-intensive construction practices.

“IFC EDGE is committed to decarbonising the African built environment and supporting women in the sector through targeted training programmes, including this competition, which has grown year on year. There are many opportunities for growth and personal achievement in the green building sector, but we also need visionary executives to provide women with opportunities to grow and advance their professional careers.”

South Africa leads Africa in the effort to reduce building emissions and energy use and integrate women into the green buildings sector, boasting the most EDGE certified floorspace on the continent at 5.3 million square metres (the equivalent of about 620 football fields). There are 619 EDGE Experts across Africa, about a quarter of them women – but in South Africa, more than 45% of the country’s 127 EDGE Experts are women.

Introducing this year’s competition winners

Sibusiso Ndlovu won first place in the competition. She is a qualified chartered accountant and a certified director with the Institute of Directors in South Africa, with a passion for property and green building finance and extensive experience across the banking, property and fund management industries as a fund manager, dealmaker and structured property finance consultant. She is currently a business development manager at Fortress Real Estate Investments, responsible for structuring and deal-making as part of the Corporate Finance team.

Theuna Stoltz, a dynamic female architect who graduated with a master’s degree from UFS in 2016, won the second award. She has worked on a wide range of projects including residential, commercial, mixed-use and urban regeneration, and is currently an associate and professional architect at GASS Architecture Studios, where she oversees projects from concept design to completion. Among her notable projects is the regenerative campus, Green School South Africa which, once EDGE certified, will be the first building in Africa to be Living Building Compliant. As part of her ongoing commitment to environmentally conscious design, Stoltz says she is striving to create spaces that not only minimise their ecological footprint but also foster a connection to nature. She believes designers play a vital role in creating spaces that influence the everyday life of users and their surroundings, emphasising sustainability and resilience.

Avuyile Kewana won the third award. She is a climate change, sustainability and built environment professional with over five years’ experience in diverse sectors such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, energy and resource efficiency in buildings. Currently an assistant professional officer: Energy in buildings for the City of Cape Town, she is working toward addressing climate change through net-zero carbon strategies in municipal, existing and new builds in Cape Town by driving regulatory change, education and other mechanisms to achieve a city-wide zero carbon objective for the built environment. Kewana says she is deeply passionate about urban sustainability and drawn to the idea of effectively reducing the impact of negative climate change impacts on the environment and promoting sustainable development by mainstreaming the environment through sustainable economic development plans and policies. She strongly believes in the role of government, private organisations and communities to drive and harness a sustainable future for all.

Ahead of the award ceremony, Lisa Reynolds, CEO of GBCSA, gave a keynote address, focusing on the importance of women’s leadership in achieving net zero and the current landscape of green building in Africa, and introduced the panel discussion “Women leading the charge to Net Zero”, which was hosted and moderated by Cairncross.

The panel discussed challenges and opportunities in achieving net zero, financing and risk management for green projects, gender-specific challenges and support systems, and personal experiences and advice for aspiring women, featuring guests Portia Letlape, head of Product: Home Loans at Absa; Lizeri Serfontein, project manager at Rabie Properties; Maygan Naicker, head of Projects & EDGE Expert at Nedbank; and Aisha Shaikh, owner and principal sustainability consultant, Skyline Projects & Consulting.

Reynolds commented: “I believe the sustainability space is an ideal one in which women can strive, thrive and succeed. The Women in Green Building competition is a perfect springboard into this space. GBCSA is proud to be partnering with IFC EDGE in this competition for the third year, and even prouder to host the awards ceremony at our annual convention, and to celebrate the launch of the winners. This is just the beginning. Next is to expose the winners to new career and job expansion opportunities, and to support them in their future careers in green building.”

The IFC EDGE platform is an international green building certification that considers improved savings in energy, water and embodied carbon within the building materials to facilitate the design of more resource-efficient projects, helping property developers build and brand green in a fast, easy and affordable way. It currently dominates the residential green building certification market, with more than 90% of residential certifications in South Africa (Estate Intel Africa’s Green Building 2022 Fact Sheet).

EDGE Experts are industry professionals trained to help developers, owners or larger project teams understand the EDGE standard, software and certification system, including advice on green design and assistance with preparation of an application for EDGE certification.