Financing Female Entrepreneurs Africa: 39th AU Summit

• Despite billion dollar commitments, data shows that financing female entrepreneurs Africa is decreasing. Leaders at the 39th AU Summit explored the reality of funding female founders and the gap between pledges and disbursements.

As expected, the 39th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government unfolded with the usual pomp and colour, bilateral handshakes and declarations on continental unity.

But for a critical mass of African leaders, policymakers, and investors, the real business of reshaping the continent’s economic future took place not in the main plenary, but in a series of high-stakes side events centered on a single, pressing question: Who is financing Africa’s women?

The conclusion of the summit, held in mid-February 2026, leaves behind a paper trail of renewed pledges, but more importantly, a stark ledger of accountability. While the main assembly grappled with infrastructure and security, the side-event circuit delivered a verdict on the state of financing female entrepreneurs Africa.

The message from Addis Ababa was clear, so far, continental frameworks have done little to move capital, and without a radical overhaul of investment mechanics, from the composition of investment committees to the structure of financial instruments, the gap between rhetoric and reality will continue to widen.

This analysis, drawing on summit outcomes, fresh data from think tanks such as the African Private Capital Association (AVCA), and insights from stakeholders at the “Gender Commitments” meetings, reveals a continent at a crossroads. Africa has the tools for change but lacks the political will and structural alignment to deploy them at scale.

The Accra Model on Financing Female Entrepreneurs Africa

The focus of the gender agenda was the High-Level Breakfast Meeting on Financing and Reaffirming Africa’s Gender Commitments, convened by Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama in his capacity as the AU Champion for Gender Development Issues and Financial Institutions.

President Mahama, who arrived in Addis Ababa with a specific mandate to lead discussions on gender and financial inclusion, used the platform to launch what is being termed the “Accra Reset”. The strategy is built on five core pillars: political leadership, resource mobilization, policy coherence, accountability, and strategic partnerships.

“Advancing gender equality is not merely a moral obligation; it is a strategic imperative for Africa’s sustainable development and inclusive growth,” Mahama told the assembled heads of state.

But the Ghanaian leader moved swiftly from the philosophical to the fiscal. In a bid to outpace the slow implementation that has plagued past commitments, he unveiled a tangible national example: Ghana’s allocation of 401 million Ghanaian cedis (approximately $32 million) in the 2026 budget to capitalize a Women’s Development Bank.

This institution is designed as a wholesale lending mechanism targeting the informal sector. It aims to provide affordable credit, financial literacy training and enterprise support to women traditionally locked out of the formal banking system.

“We must think about gender parity in school enrollment and improve the completion rate for girls,” Mahama noted, linking education finance to later economic activity, “but we also need to ensure that when those girls graduate, they have access to capital, not just micro-loans, but real growth capital”.

This announcement served as a direct challenge to other member states. Ghana’s three-point call to action seeks to:—

1. Adopt gender-responsive budgeting with minimum allocations by 2028;
2. Ratify the AU Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (a treaty adopted in 2025 but moving slowly toward ratification); and
3. Guarantee equal access to finance, assets, and markets.

What Data Gender Finance is Showing Policymakers

While politicians spoke of commitments, the corridors hummed with the release of new data that quantified the staggering scale of the failure. The summit occurred against the backdrop of recently published research that strips the optimism from the “gender-lens investing” movement.

According to the 2026 report by Africa: The Big Deal, the share of funding going to gender-diverse teams (startups with at least one-woman founder) has plummeted by over half from 18 per cent in 2021 to just 8 per cent in 2025. Even more devastating for the narrative of entrepreneurial equality, all-female teams continue to receive less than 1 per cent of total venture capital on the continent.

This data, presented in side discussions, paints a picture of structural regression, not progress. The report noted that solo women founders and all-female teams are stuck at the bottom of the funding pyramid. While the headline dollar amount invested in women-led firms rose slightly from $152 million to $275 million, this increase is dwarfed by the overall market growth, meaning women are treading water in an expanding ocean of capital.

Max Cuvellier Giacomelle, the author of the research, acknowledged the grim task of presenting these numbers. He pointed out that only 2.2 per cent of total funding went to startups led by a woman CEO, the lowest proportion recorded since tracking began in 2019. The primary bottleneck, the research concludes, is “check size.” Women can access seed funding, but they are systematically locked out of the massive, multi-million-dollar growth rounds that define the ecosystem.

The AVCA Paradox: Diverse Committees, Homogenous Capital

If the funding gap is widening despite years of advocacy, where is the blockage? A nuanced answer emerged from a new report by the African Private Capital Association (AVCA) released in January 2026, which was hotly debated at the summit’s finance side-events.

AVCA’s data reveals a fascinating paradox: Africa leads the world in the diversity of its investment professionals. Women make up 44 per cent of the total workforce in Africa’s private equity ecosystem and 38 per cent of investment professionals, figures that far exceed the global average of 35 per cent and completely outstrip Europe’s 24 per cent. Furthermore, women hold 33 per cent of seats on Investment Committees (ICs) in Africa, nearly triple the global average of 12 per cent.

This should, in theory, translate into more capital for women. And to a degree, it does. AVCA found that firms with majority-female investment committees allocate capital to women-led companies at a rate of 48 per cent, compared to a dismal 8 per cent among male-dominated firms.

So why does the aggregate data still look so bleak? The answer lies in firm size and asset concentration. The highest gender diversity is concentrated in smaller, emerging fund managers who control relatively small pools of capital. The largest firms, which deploy the lion’s share of capital on the continent, remain predominantly male-dominated at the decision-making level.

“The new data suggests that Africa has laid a foundation for gender diversity that is stronger than many developed markets,” the AVCA report notes. “The challenge will be ensuring that the strategies championed by a cohort of female-led firms… will be adopted by the continent’s largest capital allocators”.

This creates a two-speed economy: a dynamic, diverse, but undercapitalized layer of gender-lens funds, and a top tier of giant, traditional funds where the old boys’ network still determines where the millions flow.

The Gender-Lens Pioneers: Proof that Performance Pays

Against this bleak macro backdrop, the summit provided a platform for the “cohort of female-led firms” to demonstrate that investing in women is not charity, it is a superior returns strategy. The side events highlighted a growing ecosystem of fund managers who are closing the gap, one deal at a time.

These include Aruwa Capital Management, founded by Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes, which raised $35 million in 2025 and focuses on businesses providing essential goods and services to women. Its portfolio includes major investments in Koolboks and OmniRetail.

Alitheia Capital, co-founded by Tokunboh Ishmael, manages the $100 million Alitheia IDF fund, the largest gender-lens private equity fund in Africa. Its investments in SweepSouth and Reelfruit have become case studies in how backing female-led or female-centric businesses yields growth.

Janngo Capital, founded by Fatoumata Bâ, closed its second fund at approximately $78 million in 2024. It operates with a mandate to invest 50 per cent of its capital in women-led businesses and has backed giants like Sabi.

These funds are proving the thesis that AVCA’s data supports: between 2023 and 2024, female-led portfolio companies grew their revenue by 32 per cent, while male-led peers saw growth of just 14 per cent. They also employ more women, creating a virtuous cycle of economic inclusion.

The UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), in a Growth Gateway report released just before the summit, validated these strategies, recommending that Limited Partners (LPs) “back female fund managers, who are more likely to invest in women,” and consider “patient capital, blended structures and targeted technical assistance” to close the gap.

How WASH Relates to Gender Finance

The discussion in Addis Ababa wisely expanded the definition of “gender finance” beyond venture capital and tech startups. At the 42nd Gender Is My Agenda Campaign (GIMAC) meeting, experts reframed the debate around infrastructure.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) presented new findings, that 68 per cent of Africans lack access to safe drinking water. This is not merely a public health crisis; it is a direct tax on women’s economic productivity.

As Ms. Zuzana Schwidrowski, Social Economic Development Director at the ECA, noted, inadequate Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) access shapes education outcomes, safety, and health. For millions of women, the daily chore of water collection replaces hours that could be spent in paid work or running a business. The ECA estimates that an additional $30 billion per year is needed by 2030 to achieve SDG 6 on clean water and sanitation.

This intersection of infrastructure and gender was echoed by former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who participated in a fireside chat with Namibia’s President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. Sirleaf specifically drew attention to the vulnerability of women in the informal sector. “Who gets victimised? The one who suffers most,” she said, pointing out that women trading in markets need access to finance but also protection from exploitation and violence.

The AU Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls, which Mahama is pushing for ratification, is therefore framed not just as a legal instrument but as an economic necessity. Violence, Mahama argued, “costs Africa billions annually in health care, lost productivity, and justice expenditures”.

The Gap Between Pledge and Disbursement

A recurring theme throughout the side events was the gap between pledge and disbursement. The GIMAC meeting introduced a practical tool dubbed the Financing and Accountability Clinic to address this challenge.

This initiative trained young women and youth advocates in the technical skills required to track, question, and influence WASH investments. As ECA officers Edna Akullo and Judith Beatrice Auma Oduol highlighted during the training, “commitments without financing and financing without accountability will not deliver gender justice”.

This focus on tracking is critical. Africa currently invests between $10 billion and $19 billion annually in WASH, but the need is far greater. The same principle applies to venture capital. The Africa: The Big Deal data shows that while grants (which are easier to track and publicly account for) went to women at a rate of 20 per cent in 2025, equity remains elusive.

The summit called for gender-disaggregated data to be standardized. Without it, governments and investors can claim progress without ever proving where the money landed.

Gender Finance: The Side-Event Results of the 39th AU Summit

As the Heads of State departed Addis Ababa, the “Gender Commitments” meetings left behind a clear, if daunting, roadmap for the year ahead. If the 39th AU Summit is to be remembered for more than its rhetoric, three specific outcomes must be pursued.

• First, the ratification rush. President Mahama has set a hard deadline for economies, asking leaders to sign and ratify the AU Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls by the end of 2026. This is the stick to accompany the carrot of development finance. Nine member states still need to ratify the Maputo Protocol, and the clock is ticking.
• Second, the replication of the Ghana Model. The Women’s Development Bank is a test case. If Ghana successfully deploys its GHS 401 million and demonstrates lower default rates and higher growth among female borrowers, it will create immense pressure on other treasuries to follow suit. The call for gender-responsive budgeting by 2028 is now on the record.
• Third, the institutionalization of “2X” criteria. The FCDO report and AVCA data both point to the need for Limited Partners, the institutions that invest in funds, to demand gender metrics. “Adopt 2X-aligned portfolio targets and require measurable KPIs for women’s economic empowerment across the investment journey,” the FCDO guide recommends. If the big money flowing into African funds from pension funds and development finance institutions starts to demand diversity at the General Partner level, the composition of Investment Committees will shift.

Financing female entrepreneurs Africa

The 39th AU Summit may be known in policy circles as the site of the “Addis Reckoning”, a moment when the continent finally looked at the numbers and admitted that the path to Agenda 2063 runs directly through the wallets of its women.

The conversation has evolved. It is no longer about empowering women as a charitable act, but about unlocking the most underutilized growth asset on the continent. The presence of data from AVCA, the UK government, and Africa: The Big Deal has injected a dose of realism into the proceedings.

The 39th AU Summit “Gender Commitments” meeting made it clear that frameworks such as the African Women’s Decade on Financial and Economic Inclusion (2020-2030) are meaningless without the capital to back them.

For the female entrepreneurs in Lagos, Nairobi, and Johannesburg, the summit’s outcome is simple: Will the billions follow the rhetoric? As President Mahama noted, “frameworks matter, but political will matters more”. For a winning outcome in 2026, the will must be measured not in speeches, but in disbursements, in ratified treaties, and in the changing composition of the continent’s largest investment committees.

Read also: The silent struggle: Women entrepreneurs in Africa and the financial divide