Nora Bannerman is an accomplished and internationally acclaimed fashion designer and entrepreneur with over forty (40) years of experience promoting indigenous businesses and successfully managing a number of companies. She is the CEO of Sleek Garments Export Limited (Sleek Garments) with her daughter Natasha as COO and her Co-Director of Africa Sleek Institute of Creativity and Technology. In 2019, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group named her as one of the Top 20 Global Female Business Leaders.

Nora served on the Africa Growth Opportunities Act (AGOA) National Implementation Committee that acquired for Ghana, the AGOA VISA which enables the export of over 6,000 Ghanaian products duty and quota free, to the USA market. She is credited with promoting Made-In–Ghana Textiles including Kente, and Clothing in Europe and the US since the 1980’s. Her designs have been showcased on Fashion Runways in Paris, Las Vegas, Dusseldorf, New York, and other fashion cities. Her company, Sleek Garments recently received the ‘Outstanding Textile and Garment company of the Decade’ Award. Sleek Garments has since April 2020, been manufacturing PPE for the Ghana Government to support the fight against COVID-19. Nora received the Woman of Excellence Award in March 2020 for her ‘Outstanding Contribution to the Social and Economic Development of Ghana’. She is listed as one of Africa’s Top 20 Fashion Designers and received a Life Time Achievement Award in 2016 for her work as a Designer, Entrepreneur, Role Model and Mentor.

Nora Bannerman is a member of the Governing Board of Development Bank Ghana.  Has served on the Boards of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre and as a member of the Governing Council of the Akenten Appiah Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development and other Boards. She is also an Executive Member of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) and Chairperson of AGI (Ghana) Industry Awards Committee. Sleek Garments Export Ltd was adjudged the ‘African Growth Opportunities Act’ success story in 2007 for successful exports to the US under AGOA. Interestingly, Nora started her business with her mother’s one sewing domestic machine but now owns with Natasha as her partner, an over three hundred (300) machine garments and apparel manufacturing factory. Nora’s award-winning Sleek Fashion Limited, promoter of African print and batik clothing, executed its first Batik orders comprising 10,000 units of four of her designs for export to US Buyer “Pier 1 imports ” in 1994. She was able to stimulate business activity in a number of local Textile and Garment factories for products exported to US markets.

Another of Nora’s business vehicles and her NGO Sleek Fashion Institute partnered with Sleek Garments to train hundreds of Ghanaian youth under the World Bank/COTVET/SDF Skills Development Programme.  Nora has been recognized by United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) as having developed and run a successful Technical and Vocational

Education and Training (TVET) module that has given many young Ghanaian women from her Training Institute, the needed skills to establish their own businesses. In November 2020, the AGI awarded her company Sleek Garments Export Limited the Honorary Award for “over four decades of entrepreneurial spirit and business growth strategy towards export market development, including AGOA, in Garments and Textiles. Was inducted into Corporate Ghana Hall of Fame in February 2021 for ‘her outstanding contributions and achievements in the Ghanaian Economy.”