A group of African female founders has launched the Africa Female Founders Collective (AFFC) to bridge the gap in female funding on the continent.
This initiative is meant to create more opportunities for female founders or female-led businesses to receive adequate funding in the African tech ecosystem.
According to a report by Africa the Big Deal, start-ups with a solo female founder or an all-female founding team raised only 2 percent of all the funding last year, while 85 percent went to solo male founders or all-male founding teams.
Ibijoke Faborode, founder and chief executive officer of ElectHer, said the female collective not only views the role of women in the business space as critical but also sees women in leadership as vital to a thriving economy and society.
“But limited access to funding, among other factors, ensures that women in business do not fully showcase their potential,” she exclusively told BusinessDay.
According to Faborode, female founders stand a better chance with investors when they are part of a collective. In the collective, they find support, mentorship and other women who keep them accountable and inspire them to achieve more.
Blessing Adesiyan, founder of Caring Africa, and one of the pioneers of AFFC, said there are different reasons why the gap in funding exists in the first place. She emphasised that while there are more women in the market space, they do not show up where investors can find them.
“This is because of the reality that many women are caregivers. Hence, while the men are seen as providers, the women have to stay back and take care of the home and other obligations.”
“For women to take their rightful place in the business, the issue of caring needs to be solved. Women should have support at home, which gives them time to pursue their goals and objectives,” Adesiyan said.
According to Ingressive Capital, a seed-stage VC, funding to female-led startups has been consistently low due to a lot of reasons,
“One of the ways to navigate this is to have more female investors both as VCs, policymakers, and even angels in the industry who can help to develop more inclusive and less-biased processes for fundraising to ensure that founders are not marginalised based on gender,” it stated.
Commenting on other funding options for female founders, Jumoke Olaniyan, senior vice president of business development at FMDQ Securities Exchange Limited noted that there are diverse funding channels at an entrepreneur’s disposal.
She highlighted the financial market as a resource where founders can tap into various funding options tailored to their growth requirements. “Investors are looking for new opportunities and where to put money,” Olaniyan said.
