She Wins Africa is a programme designed to help women entrepreneurs across sub-Saharan Africa by offering training, mentoring and networking opportunities that will help their startups succeed.
African women have the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity in the world, estimated at 24%, and are more likely to start businesses than their counterparts in other regions of the world. However, several factors persistently hamper the potential of female founders and entrepreneurs in Africa. These include lack of access to start-up capital, lack of access to start-up support ecosystems and networks that provide capacity-building support, and lack of knowledge and experience to implement gender lens investment strategies between companies and venture capital funds.
She Wins Africa aims to tackle these challenges and improve opportunities for women-led startups to access funding.
The programme will:
- Providing investment readiness training and business skills training, which will help women-led startups improve their chances of accessing funding.
- Provide capacity building for funds and Venture Capital in gender lens investing to help accelerate investments in startups and women-led companies, including ten startup support organisations.
- Capacity building for accelerators and ESOs to support the incubation of early-stage startups and support the development of a strong pipeline of invested startups.
- Facilitate matchmaking and pitching events between female founders and investors to facilitate the flow of funds to women-owned businesses.
Applications are now open for the first She Wins Africa programme.
Potential participants must fulfil the following criteria:
- Age: 21+
- Sex: Female
- Years in business: 1+
- Headquarters: Sub-Saharan African country.
- Industry: Agnostic with technology as a central component.
- Previous participants in similar IFC programmes are not eligible to apply.
- Language: Fluent in English.
- She Wins Africa participants must be available to attend online training sessions and travel to networking events over the next 12 months. Please note that IFC will only cover flight and hotel expenses for the duration of the programme.
See the online application form here
