The financing gap facing African women is worth $42 billion, according to The African Development Bank. Finance institutions that claim to operate from a gender-neutral standpoint fall into the trap of inbuilt sexism in our economy and financial systems. There is a problem and operating like there is no problem only perpetuates the problem. Hence the necessity of gender-lens investing.

​​Despite Africa boasting the world’s highest rates of women entrepreneurs, women still face barriers to accessing financial capital and services to run their businesses. A 2018 report by the International Development Research Centre found that this is due to societal biases, legal restrictions, lower income rates, lower levels of education and financial literacy, lower access to financial tools and women’s self-selection out of the credit market. While financial inclusion is a widespread problem on the continent, Findex data from 2014 showed that 70% of women in Africa were financially excluded compared to 61% of men. For start-up level entrepreneurs, research conducted in the US showed that even when the pitch content was the same, investors preferred start-up pitches made by men over those made by women. In 2019, less than 5% of VC funding for African start-ups went to companies with women founders/co-founders. The financing gap facing African women is worth $42 billion, according to The African Development Bank.

The best statistics for women’s representation in general funds comes from the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), where women account for 30% of its beneficiaries. The foundation, with 45% of its executive leadership as women, recently partnered with the EU to train and fund 2,400 female entrepreneurs with a contribution of €20 million. Nkem Onwudiwe, head of marketing at TEF said: “We are democratising luck and giving African entrepreneurs the opportunity to transform their lives, communities and Africa at large.” Nora Chaynane, a 2020 TEF alumna and founder of Shine Space in Morocco, confirms the difference that investors like TEF can make to one’s business. “Being a female business owner certainly adds more challenge and pressure at raising capital, whether it’s from the government or other sources. In addition to the discriminatory challenges, women-owned businesses do not receive adequate capital most of the time. I chose the private sector for its availability, accessibility, low risk and fast process.” 

Gender-lens investing is therefore a missing link in African entrepreneurship. In light of major deals such as Goldman Sach committing $10 billion to invest in one Million Black women, here are ten African funds betting exclusively on African women.

FirstCheck Africa

FirstCheck Africa is writing first checks for audacious female founders with bold ideas, at a ridiculously early stage. “Women in African tech are over-mentored and under-funded,” they rightfully insist. They are investing $15,000 - $25,000 in exchange for modest equity to women in African tech who meet their criteria (smart women with bold, scalable, for-profit ideas to solve important problems). They also provide 12-month hands-on support in raising pre-seed funding, building peer and investor networks in and outside Africa. In order to achieve this goal, they are also building a First Check Africa Investor Collective by helping millennial and mid-career women in Africa learn about tech and angel investing through workshops, events. 

The female-focused angel fund was founded in March by Eloho Omame (Managing Director, Endeavor Nigeria) and Odunayo Eweniyi (Co-founder & COO, PiggyVest). Inspired by female-led investor communities like Portfolia, Operator Collective, All Raise, they argue that the best way to support female founders is by committing risk capital and working with the women to polish their minimum viable product (MVP), build early traction and be competitive enough in raising further funding rounds, even from global funds. Their first-year goal is to invest in up to six women in 2021 and pitches are accepted here on a rolling basis. 

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF)

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) is a grant making foundation that supports local, national and regional women’s organisations working in three of its focus areas: body and health rights; women’s economic security and justice; leadership and peace. Since its inception in 2001, it has granted $8,902,980 to 126 women’s groups in 32 countries. It does not fund for-profit initiatives and is particularly interested in innovative projects addressing the needs of and involving women and communities most affected by inequality and injustice. 

ShEquity 

ShEquity is providing smart and sustainable investments for African women on the move. It is a catalyst fund that provides seed capital, business development and operational support, and then matches de-risked investment-ready businesses led by African women with a high-value network of investors. Its business development programme covers financial management, go to market strategy, branding and marketing, governance structure, HR/team management, leadership development, networking opportunities, founders’ personal development and soft-skills development.

Hailed by the former president of Mauritius, H.E. Ameenah Fakim, as “exactly what is needed in Africa’s ecosystem,” ShEquity is an investment option for investors looking to achieve the triple bottom line in Africa: financial, environmental and social returns. It was founded by Pauline Koelbl, an innovation expert in developing and emerging economies. In March, the fund launched the ShEquity Business Accelerator in Accra, Ghana, to support 30 African female entrepreneurs yearly in agribusiness, healthcare, technology, renewable energies and the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industries. So far it has invested in three companies: Ecodudu, an insect-based feed manufacturer in Kenya; Superfluid Labs, an AI and data start-up in Kenya; and WidEnergy, a clean energy company in Zambia. 

Mama Moni

Mama Moni is a Nigerian fintech social enterprise that empowers low-income women in rural and urban slum communities with no credit history and collateral who find it near-impossible to access funds for their businesses. Working as both a peer-lending and donation platform, they provide them with loans from individuals all around the world who seek to do good. They also provide business tool-kits for beneficiaries and vocational training skills for a wider cohort of women.

Nkem Okocha, founder of Mama Moni, was inspired by her personal experience growing up with a widowed mother who had no reasonable source of income and struggled to take care of four children. Okocha launched Mama Moni through training, support and funding from the Tony Elumelu Foundation entrepreneurship program and began with a grant partnership from the US Consulate in Nigeria to empower 1200 women in Lagos. In the first three years, Mama Moni impacted over 4000 low-income women and recently has been pivotal for women rendered destitute by the COVID-19 pandemic. Okocha has a 10-year goal to empower over 10,000 low-income women across 20 states in Nigeria.

The African Women Ecopreneurs You Should Know (Part 2)

Africa Trust Group

Africa Trust Group is an early-stage fund syndicate based in South Africa, committed to investing in African women. With a key focus on industries in social-impact technology, infrastructure development, manufacturing, media and communications, it bridges the finance gap for women through a three-pronged approach of early-seed capital, entrepreneur development, and business research and advisory.

The Africa Trust Group manages the following funds:

Enygma Ventures Fund: The first VC focused on investing in women (or majority-women) owned businesses in Southern Africa. It currently has 11 entrepreneurs on its investment portfolio and invests between $500 000 and $1 million.

Shift Fund: Focused on investing in entrepreneurs and innovators in Africa creating solutions that will help redefine our post-pandemic world.

The Empress Fund: An angel investment fund offering women entrepreneurs in Southern Africa diverse tailor-made financial solutions, including collateral-free loans, equity, quasi-equity from $1000 - $20,000. Investors of all genders are welcome and investments start from $1000. 

Urgent Action Fund-Africa (UAF-Africa)

UAF-Africa is a subsidiary of the Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights, founded in 1997 in the United States. In 2001, UAF-Africa was created to provide financial support, technical support and research to ensure women's rights are incorporated into conflict prevention, social and environmental justice initiatives in Africa. It is supported by several national and international institutions from the Kenya Human Rights Foundation, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and received around $1 million dollars from the Sigrid-Rauss Trust between 2005 and 2015. 

UAF-Africa is a feminist focused platform and prioritises values of collective care and protection, pan-African solidarity and feminist philanthropy. Its grants have been used to organise the Feminist Republik Festival in Naivasha, Kenya, which brought together 300 African women human rights defenders, health practitioners, scholars and donors in December 2019. It also helped to fund the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action’s Africa regional planning meeting in February 2019 in Kenya.

Alitheia IDF 

With a target fund size of USD $100 million, Alitheia IDF is one of the four subsidiary funds of the Nigerian Alitheia Capital, and was jointly created with the South African IDF Capital. Alitheia IDF was seeded by the African Development Bank (AfDB) in 2015, and counts FinDev Canada, Open Society Foundation, Bank of Industry Nigeria, Shell and Telkom among its investors. It invests in SMEs that are majority-owned, majority-run or mainly created to serve women. It currently has investments in six countries: Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Lesotho. It focuses on agribusiness, consumer goods, health, education, financial and business services that are achieving solid financial returns and tangible social impact. Instead of an impact investment fund, it positions itself as a standard private equity fund capitalising on a funding gap that will lead to a positive outcome for African women entrepreneurs.

According to one of its co-founders, Tokunbo Ishmael, their ideal beneficiaries are companies with a proven and marketable prototype or solution that customers have begun to pay for. Their average ticket size is between $3 and $5 million per investment.

The African Women Ecopreneurs You Should Know (Part 1)

C-Credit Ltd

C-Credit Ltd is a savings and loans cooperative in Cameroon, created by and for women in 2000. It is representative of rotating credit and savings associations (ROSCAs) indigenous to Africa, and currently practiced among racialised and marginalised groups and populations all over the world, more so during the pandemic. However, C-Credit Ltd is unique in its number (1200, as at 2015) and in its utilisation of equity funding from women-focused investors (which constituted 10% of its total assets in 2015). Its members are rural and semi-urban women entrepreneurs who own micro and small businesses. It provides women with loans, financial services and management skills to improve their economic outlook. In a research interview with Michael Ngoasong as part of the 2020 book Global Handbook of Impact Investing, the CEO of C-Credit, Germaine Obili, emphasised that C-Credit was also about breaking “the cultural backgrounds and barriers that we have in our society today [which] hinder many women from getting involved in businesses.”

Rising Tide Africa 

Rising Tide Africa (RTA) is an investor community of African women. It aims to train women to become sophisticated angel investors as much it focuses on investing in early-stage tech-enabled start-ups that are primarily female-owned, female-led or with a gender-diverse leadership and management team. Members of the RTA community are required to invest a minimum of five million Naira (around $12,000) annually. Their motto is “If you empower a woman, you empower a nation.” 

It was founded by Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien a social entrepreneur and CSR expert, and Yemi Keri, information technology expert who were inspired by the Rising Tide Europe movement and the Lagos Angel Network (LAN) to which they belonged. For them, the community is a means to harness their network, their capital and the culture of informal/familial investment that already exists in Africa. 

In addition to financial investments, RTA conducts masterclasses for business owners on navigating entrepreneurship and attracting capital; and runs a bi-annual pitch day event for investment-ready entrepreneurs to connect with their investor community. The network was an early investor in Bankly, a cash digitisation savings product; the Ghana-based Ozé; and Migo which raised a $20M series B round in December 2020, to expand from Nigeria to Brazil.

Dazzle Angels

Dazzle Angels is funding women-led ‘zebra’ companies which it defines as companies that improve society and are profitable. Focusing on early-stage technology-enabled businesses led by South African women, its goal is to solve radical gender inequality in early-stage investment management and deployment.

Dazzle Angel was founded in 2019 by four women: Alexandra Fraser (founder of Fraser Consulting), Adi Zuk (co-founder of JAG Method), Lee Zuk (COO of JAG Group), and Charlotte Luzuka, and currently has 12 angels, all women. Its first investment went to Sorted, a vehicle-licencing platform that automates the process of licence renewals for both individuals and businesses. So far in 2021, it has already made its second and third investments on CreditAIs, a Fintech company that provides predictive insights through machine learning and SV Capital, South Africa’s first crowd-investing fund manager. 

African gender-lens investment initiatives that have been created by traditional finance institutions include: The African Development Bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) (which received a pledge of $251 million from G7 leaders in 2019); the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa’s The African Women Leadership Fund (AWLF); Standard Chartered Bank’s Women in Technology Incubator in Kenya and The Bank of Ghana’s Innovative Microfinance and Access Bank’s Better Mama, Better Pikin (which reduced infant and maternal mortality in participating constituencies in Nigeria by 2% in its first year).

Funding initiatives created by women-focused NGOs include:

This list is by no means exhaustive. For an even longer list of funds, including global institutions, seeking to support African women’s economic empowerment, check this list organised by Vuyolwethu Dubese.