Ann Cotton

Ann Lesley Cotton OBE (born 1950) is a Welsh entrepreneur and philanthropist who was appointed an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2006 Queen's New Year Honours List. The honour was in recognition of her services to education of young women in rural Africa as the founder of Camfed.

Camfed Innovation and Activities Camfed's goal is to replace the existing cycle of poverty and inequality with a new cycle of empowerment and opportunity. The organisation's approach is to not only support girls and young women through school, but also on to new lives as entrepreneurs and community leaders. To complete the "virtuous cycle", graduating students become CAMA alumnae, many of whom return to school to train and mentor new generations of students. Camfed started out by supporting 32 girls through school in Zimbabwe in 1993. Since then it has expanded across 2,295 communities in five sub-Saharan countries. Over the past 17 years, 1,065,710 young people directly benefited from Camfed's programmes in Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. More than 3 million children have already benefited from Camfed's programmes in a network of 5,085 partner school

Camfed won the International Aid and Development Charity of the Year award in 2003. In 2014, Camfed was recognised by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for best practice in taking development innovation to scale.

Background Cotton was born in Cardiff, Wales, and was educated at Howell's School, Llandaff. For more than three decades, Cotton has been focused on improving opportunity for children at the margins of education. She began her career in a London school by establishing one of the first centres for girls excluded from mainstream education. She is a noted speaker on international platforms, including the World Economic Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative and the Skoll World Forum. In 2014 she addressed the US-Africa Summit hosted by The White House, George W. Bush Institute and US State Department.

Cotton has won numerous awards for her work, including an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Cambridge; being appointed an OBE in 2006 in honour of her advocacy of girls' education in Africa; the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship; Woman of the Year in the UK; and UK Social Entrepreneur of the Year. In November 2014, Cotton was awarded the WISE Prize for Education, becoming the fourth WISE laureate alongside Vicky Colbert, founder of Escuela Nueva in Colombia, Dr Madhav Chavan, co-founder of Pratham in India, and Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founder of BRAC in Bangladesh.