Female Founders in Africa Receive Less Funding Than Men: Report

By: WE Staff | Wednesday, 21 January 2026

• Women-founded startups in Africa receive much less venture capital investment than those founded by men
• Only 10% of startups founded by women in Nigeria received funding between 2019 and 2023

There has been a big gender funding gap in the African venture capital market, with female founders receiving some crumbs from the capital corrective cloth compared to their male counterparts.

Per data from TechCabal Insights, female-led startups have raised $48 million in funding, compared to over $2 billion for their male counterparts. Furthermore, female startups accessing funding in Nigeria account for only 10 percent between 2019 and 2023.

Contrasting reports by the African Private Capital Association, released in January 2026, however, tell a different story.

According to the report, while men still dominate capital allocation, there has been an increase in female participation in investment decisions across Africa, with the number surpassing the global average.

In a report titled Gender Diversity in African Private Capital, leveraging data from 218 investors managing almost 2,000 portfolio companies, the AVCA found that a staggering 44 percent of the entire workforce in the African private equity industry consists of women, and 38 percent of the workforce in the sectors that the investors fund.

This is remarkably higher than the global average of 35 percent and the 24 percent average in Europe. Additionally, 33 percent of Investment Committee members in Africa are women, which is more than twice the average of 12 percent for the global industry.

In addition, the report highlights the link between the composition of Investment Committees and the allocation of funds.

Female-majority Investment Committees allocate more money to female-led companies, with 48 percent of their portfolio investments allocated to these companies, as opposed to 8 percent allocated by male-majority Investment Committees.

What the report indicates is that gender diversity is more evident in smaller, privately managed venture capital funds that control less capital and, consequently, have less control over the capital flows.

Larger firms, which are male-dominated in their investment teams, control the bulk of the capital that goes to Africa.

Aside from the moral justification that can be made regarding the importance of gender diversity, the report contains economic statistics that demonstrate the financial success of female-led companies in their portfolio, which had a 32 percent cumulative revenue gain from 2023 through 2024, outpacing the 14 percent gain led by male-led companies. This shows that the Continent is set to overtake many developed countries in the level of gender diversity within the private equity and venture capital sectors at a very fast rate.

Moving forward, the task at hand will be ensuring the approaches undertaken by female-led companies to tap the current gender funding gap are adopted by the larger capital allocation decision-makers on the continent.