Dancer, mother and now business owner Anna Nalumansi is the founder of lifestyle brand Nalu Afrika (previously Mama Afirika).

Before starting Nalu Afrika, Anna was a dancer and worked in the fitness industry. Despite first thinking of the idea for her business over 4 years ago, she started my business in 2018 during maternity leave. She says "during my maternity leave when I had my daughter, I wanted to do something that would be flexible and allow me to work from home as a single mother, so I felt like this was the time to go for it". 

The idea came to her after her final year of studying a dance degree at university, in which she worked on a solo performance based on cultural identity. In the dance piece, she explored her own cultural identity, the journey that she made from Uganda to the UK and growing up in a small countryside town. With hardly any people of colour, she felt she slowly became more westernised in different ways but after moving to London and being surrounded by all kinds of different cultures, she was then set on a journey of reconnecting and embracing her culture. Nalu Afrika is part of that journey. With Nalu Afrika, Anna can hold on to her cultural identity as well as embracing the culture that she lives in now by combining unique African prints with contemporary fashion.