AEEI has launched its first research report – Women angel investors in Africa: barriers and enablers

The past two years have not been easy for African economies. After the shocks of the pandemic, new conflicts outside of Africa started driving inflation and disrupting supply chains, while the global “investment winter” eventually impacted the continent. But it has been impossible to dampen the rising optimism of an African entrepreneurial ecosystem that is increasingly confident, increasingly connected and increasingly successful.

The ecosystem has been bolstered by the growth of investment funds: there are seven times more active investors than there were in 2015, according to Briter, and many of these new funds are local. The benefits of home-grown early-stage facilities is that investments are made by fund managers close to the problems and on terms that make sense in the African context. An important part of this increasingly rich early-stage investing landscape are the angels – individuals with higher risk and innovation appetites than institutional investors. The establishment of the African Business Angel Network in 2015 and the African Angel Academy in 2020, have stimulated the growth of the angel investing community significantly over the past decade.

African Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Investors (AEEI, the nonprofit arm of Viridian) has worked extensively with the African Angel Academy, as well as on projects with African hubs and entrepreneurs. Through our work in the African entrepreneurial ecosystem, we noticed that there are unique challenges faced by women angel investors on the continent. We also know that women angels are considerably more likely to apply a gender-lens investment strategy, and therefore play a key role in reducing the existing gender-based disparities in early-stage investment across Africa.

AEEI wants this continent, and every person in it, to flourish economically. We are patient but persistent, and we are insistent on results. So we proposed to ARISE a research project that delves into what the challenges facing women angels are, and how they can be overcome.

By leveraging our pan-African network of angel investors, we set out to do the following:

1. Determine what are (and are not) the barriers that women angel investors in Africa face.
2. Recommend ways to best support women angel investors in Africa, with these capabilities and constraints in mind.

This research report has revealed many surprising and not-so surprising insights: we hope you enjoy exploring these. We plan to apply the lessons learned in our own work in supporting women investors and entrepreneurs, and we invite you to do the same.

This research was made possible with funding from ARISE, a collaboration between Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, 2X Global, and Criterion Institute, supported by Global Affairs Canada | Affaires mondiales Canada.

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