Backing Africa's Backbone

Hey, Sheriff here 👋 

If you’re reading this, Happy International Women’s Week.

I’ve been spending the week catching up on all the incredible things women have done across Africa, and I can let you in on this one secret for free: they could never fit in one email.

This week, though, I’ll be diving into one small part of the story.

Let’s dive in.

In 2015, Hilda Moraa sold her first company for $1.7 million at age 26. 

Her company, WezaTele, helped Kenyan firms like Coca-Cola distribute their goods faster and more simply.

When she sold it, she had the choice of never working again.

It’s a choice most people would make. Instead, she took another swing at building a company. 

This time, she turned her attention to lending, specifically to the kind of businesses banks overlook: small-time entrepreneurs, market vendors, and retailers.

In 2016, she launched Pezesha, a platform connecting overlooked SMEs to affordable loans.

Since then, Pezesha has provided 500,000+ loans to small businesses in Kenya and Uganda. 

But this story isn’t just about Pezesha. 

It’s about the people who run most of the businesses Pezesha funded, and most of all the businesses started across Africa: women.

The backbone no one funded

Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of female entrepreneurship in the world, with roughly one in four women starting or running a business. 

Globally, it’s one in six women. 

Women make up 58% of Africa's self-employed population, and conduct 70% of Africa’s informal cross-border trade.

This isn’t a recent trend, though.

West Africa’s biggest and oldest open market, Oke-Arin Market, has thousands of shops owned by women. 

And for centuries, women have commanded many business areas, from food to textiles.

And yet, the economic data still tells a story of undervaluation. 

While women start 60% of Africa’s small businesses, they only contribute 33% to its GDP.

The problem is…capital is not gender-blind in Africa.

According to the African Development Bank, African women face a $42 billion financing gap, despite being nearly 60% of the self-employed population.

In 2024, female CEOs in African tech received just 2% of total startup funding that flowed into Africa.

That’s $48 million out of approximately $2.2 billion, the lowest share on record.

The irony? When women run businesses, they get better results.

Women are 2.5 times less likely than men to default on their loans.

And BCG found that women-founded startups generate 78 cents in revenue for every dollar of funding raised, compared to just 31 cents for male-founded startups. 

Even though the African founder class is male-dominated, women have built durable companies. 

• Odunayo Eweniyi co-founded PiggyVest right out of college, now Nigeria's largest digital savings platform.

• Temie Giwa-Tubosun built LifeBank to speed up blood and oxygen delivery in medical emergencies, a company that has since expanded across Nigeria and is saving lives daily. 

• Rebecca Enonchong turned AppsTech into one of Africa's leading enterprise software companies and became one of the continent's most prominent tech advocates.

These might look like outliers at first, but they represent a norm the numbers often refuse to see. 

Interestingly, the trend isn’t simply that there’s a growing crop of female founders, but also that there’s a tech sector centered around women altogether.

Let’s go see the world of Femtech

Simply put, Femtech is a new sector focused on solving problems that primarily affect women. 

It’s a fast-growing segment worldwide. 

Globally, it’s valued at $39 billion, and could hit $97 billion by 2030. 

But in Africa, the numbers tell a story of contradiction. They’re abysmal, yet show so much potential. 

For instance, only $10 million in tracked funding reached femtech companies in 2023, according to UNICEF. 

Seventy-five percent of femtech companies worldwide are currently based in the US or Europe.

And yet, when UNICEF launched its first global call for femtech proposals, over 50% of the 1,100 submissions came from Africa.

There was, and still is, a strong demand for capital from  African femtech companies. 

The capital just never came for a long time…until recently.

In 2024, while the total funding for Africa tanked, femtech funding rose to $152 million.

By 2025, it doubled to $257 million.

Programs like the IFC's She Wins Africa, accelerators like HealthTech Hub Africa, and investors like FirstCheck Africa and Jaza Rift Ventures have also started quietly building the scaffolding the ecosystem has lacked for years.

And when you look at what the companies they back are building, there are no nice-to-haves.

Because in Africa, survival takes priority

In Nigeria, Whispa Health gives young people anonymous, stigma-free access to sexual and reproductive health consultations, products, and services via a mobile app. 

In a country where one in five women gives birth by 18 and conversations about sex are still treated as taboo, Whispa saves lives by simply making it possible to ask a question without shame. 

It has reached over 30,000 users with teleconsultations, STI testing kits, and access to contraceptives.

In Cameroon, Alain Nteff started GiftedMom in 2012, a low-cost SMS and mobile platform that reminded pregnant women in rural areas about antenatal appointments, vaccination schedules, and danger signs. 

It reached 500,000 mothers across Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, and Nigeria, working with 42 hospitals in eight of Cameroon’s ten regions. 

In 2024, GiftedMom pivoted to Healthlane, an all-encompassing healthtech platform, and raised $2.4 million from investors including Digital Horizon and Sequoia Capital.

In Egypt, DilenyTech built AI-powered breast cancer screening tools.

Its product was the first Arabic-English breast cancer risk assessment calculator. 

DilenyTech’s technology grew to have active users across three continents and held three US patents.

It was eventually acquired by a US firm in 2022.

Kasha, a Rwandan healthtech, built a platform that gives women access to health and personal care products, from contraceptives to sanitary pads, through discreet, last-mile delivery.

It reached women in communities where buying these products publicly carries stigma. 

Lastly, there’s YeneHealth in Ethiopia.

It’s the country’s first femtech startup, and it uses AI to help women track their menstrual cycles and ask questions about their health in any language. 

It also has an e-pharmacy that offers discreet deliveries. 

These examples matter because they reveal what’s actually being built. An analysis found that about 81% of funded African femtech startups still focus on pregnancy and fertility. 

These areas are understood by investors and fit into many global health agendas. 

However, other areas like pain management, menopause, PCOS, and endometriosis remain “ghost markets”: massive pools of unmet clinical need that are functionally invisible to capital. 

And even outside of health, like in trade and education, femtech activity is tame. 

The challenge isn’t just getting more money into femtech. But whether the money goes into solutions fixing problems beyond reproduction.

Looking at the economic significance of women in Africa and the rise of femtech, one thing is clear.

Backing women is alpha

Here's the bottom line.

When more capital flows to women, great things happen.

Women typically reinvest up to 90% of their income in education, health, and nutrition, compared to about 40% for men, according to the African Development Bank. 

When you fund a woman-led startup in Africa, the capital doesn't just compound financially. 

It compounds socially, across entire households, communities, and generations.

The startups building for African women aren't just doing good work. 

They're betting on the continent's most productive, most capital-efficient, and most underinvested market. 

The founders solving for maternal health, menstrual dignity, financial access, and reproductive autonomy aren't building nice-to-haves. 

They’re building the foundation that’ll help Africa’s most economically important demographic do more. And that deserves more attention, not less.

Do you know any other femtech startups building in Africa?

Let us know here.

That’s it for this week. See you on Sunday for a breakdown on This Week in African Tech.

Cheers,

The Tech Safari Team

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