Based: Johannesburg
Lerato Mbele Biography
Lerato Mbele is an international broadcaster, TV personality & media consultant with a passion for Africa and it’s development.
She is the co-owner of “Moon Landing Media” (pty) Ltd & proprietor of the African Leadership Dialogues series. She also hosts a daily talkshow & podcast titled “PowerTalk with Lerato Mbele” at Power987 in her native South Africa.
Prior to this Lerato Mbele spent 9yrs as a TV presenter and broadcaster for BBC World News.
She hosted the BBC’s main Africa-focused business shows “Talking Business Africa”, “In Business Africa” and “Africa Business Report”, as well as hosting international documentaries such as “Follow the Food” and programming that linked Africa’s relationships in global trade, commerce and international development institutions.
Lerato Mbele has also been a senior business anchor at CNBC Africa and also a prime time news anchor in her native South African Broadcast Corporation.
She has worked as a foreign policy researcher and advisor, in her capacity as head of multiparty democracy programme at the South African Institute of International Affairs. Here she was Co-editor of the book “Designing Democracy in Africa” with Ayesha Kajee.
Her international journalism has seen her interview global leaders, chief executives and Nobel Laureates – amongst others being Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Sundar Pachai, Christine Lagarde, Graça Machel, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iwesla, Wole Soyinka, Muhammed Yunus, the late Kofi Annan & Wangari Maathai, President Paul Kagame, President Thabo Mbeki, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and others.
She has moderated numerous plenaries at the World Bank, New Development Bank (BRICS), World Economic Forum, UNGA, UNECA, OPEC Fund and AfDB.
Lerato Mbele is a Chevening Scholar with an MSc Development Studies from SOAS at the University of London. She was named aYoung Global Leader in 2014 by the World Economic Forum. Lerato Mbele was recently awarded one of South Africa’s highest honours (2023) the Charlotte Maxeke Women in Leadership for her contribution to media and broadcasting across Africa.
She has appeared on the power lists of the Oprah Magazine, NewAfrican Women, Leading Ladies in Africa, the Star Newspaper, the Mail & Guardian “On the shoulders of giants” catalogue of influential women in South Africa. She’s also a former member of council and board for the University of Cape Town, ranked Africa’s best institute of higher learning.
In March 2023 she was among the first cohort of nine women, to be awarded the Charlotte Maxeke Award for “Women in Leadership” given by the South Africa Ministry of International Relations & Cooperation, in recognition of her broadcast journalism across Africa and the developing world, which has helped to change narratives about Africa.
