Women in Tech Need Access to Decision-Making Power, Not Just Seats at the Table

February 19, 2026 | 4 minutes read

For years, conversations around women in tech have focused heavily on representation. How many women are in the room, how many are hired, how many are visible. In an episode of the Hubtel podcast, Marjorie Saint-Lot, Global Digital Transformation and Market Expansion Strategist, who also sits on the Hubtel board as a Non-Executive Director, challenged that narrative, citing that representation without real influence is not enough.

“The next layer for women isn’t visibility,” she says. “It’s access to risk.”

Marjorie brings over 20 years of experience across Africa, Europe, and North America, with leadership roles at companies like Uber and Orange, and now as Founder and CEO of Yarey Consultancy Group and Fanga. Her career has spanned telecoms, mobility, fintech, and board leadership, each chapter shaping her views on scale, trust, and inclusion.

Leadership Is About Livelihoods, Not Metrics

Early in her career, Marjorie believed leadership was largely about hitting metrics. That belief changed during her time in Haiti, where she pushed for an anti-seismic head office despite cost pressures. Two years later, an earthquake struck.

“Eight hundred people were in that building,” she recalls. “That decision saved 800 lives.”

For her, leadership stopped being about CapEx targets and became about responsibility, influence, and long-term impact.

Trust Scales, Popularity Doesn’t

When asked what matters more in tech: reliability or trust, Marjorie was very clear.

“Trust is what scales. You don’t grow by being liked.”

In her view, reliability is simply one of the outcomes of trust. Without it, products fail to scale, brands struggle to endure, and ecosystems collapse under pressure.

This belief extends to her broader approach to growth. Global playbooks, she argues, often fail in African markets.

“Local nuance matters. Culture, behaviour, sociology, these things don’t copy and paste.”

Building New Tables, Not Asking for Seats

One of the most striking moments in the conversation comes when Marjorie was asked whether she prefers having a seat at the table or building a new one.

“I’ll build my own table,” she says. “Real inclusion isn’t about access. It’s about reshaping how decisions are made.”

For women in tech, the challenge is not competence or ambition. It is access to risk, access to capital, access to decision-making power, and crucially, access to failure.

“Men are allowed to fail. Women often aren’t. Without that safety net, you can’t stretch, experiment, or scale.”

The Real Power of Financial Inclusion Is Quiet

Marjorie explains that the true impact of financial inclusion isn’t flashy or attention-grabbing. Rather, it’s in the seamless, everyday experiences it enables.

When systems work as intended, payments are reliable, and people can make decisions with confidence.

“When inclusion works, it’s boring,” she says, “because the real success is invisible, quietly improving lives and giving people the freedom to focus on what matters most.”

Why Hubtel’s Role Matters

As a member of Hubtel’s Advisory Board, Marjorie is particularly excited about the company’s focus on infrastructure and local relevance.

“Hubtel is building real infrastructure for tomorrow. Combine that with local understanding, and that’s incredibly powerful.”

She believes Africa’s next major leap will come from interoperability, platforms, and connected ecosystems, not standalone apps. In fact, she sees Africa as having the potential to lead this shift, if policy, governance, and innovation grow together.