CHART: Why Are the African Women-Led Startups Facing a Funding Disparity?
As women-led startups mature, the funding thins out.
For all the buzz about gender inclusion in tech, the numbers tell a really different story, especially as African startups grow beyond early stages.
New data from Africa: The Big Deal shows that between January and May 2025, just 9% of funded startups had a female CEO, and they attracted only 0.9% of total capital — roughly $9.5 million out of the $1.055 billion raised so far this year. That’s down from 3% in 2024 which was already a record low since tracking began in 2019.
When you zoom out to the broader trend, it gets clearer that women-led or co-founded ventures are getting filtered out as they scale.
Since 2019, only 25% of African startups that raised funding had a female co-founder, and those pulled in just 17% of the $14 billion+ total (about $2.4 billion). Female-led startups, meanwhile, landed just 13% of the deals since 2019, but only 5% of the capital (roughly $700 million).
What this means is that when female CEOs do manage to raise, they raise 2.5x less on average than their male-led counterparts. And the gap widens with every funding stage.
At pre-seed, female-led and co-founded startups are more visible, accounting for 28% of deals and 24% of capital. But by Series B or C, that drops sharply to 14% of deals (and 11% of funding) for female co-founders, and just 5% of deals (and 4% of funding) for female CEOs—across 106 late-stage rounds averaging $40 million each.
Kelechi Edeh
What we're seeing here isn't a pipeline issue. The pipeline exists as 700+ female co-founded ventures have raised capital since 2019. The problem is what happens after. As women-led startups mature, the funding thins out. The data shows they’re not just underrepresented; they’re consistently overlooked in the large, late-stage funding rounds that drive real scale.
Why? It could be a mix of old habits and structural headwinds. Female founders often lack access to the investor networks that fuel big-ticket rounds. There’s also persistent bias around what “scalable leadership” looks like. And in many cases, cultural norms may still cast doubt on women managing major capital — even when the track record is there.
And that’s the gap and opportunity growth-stage investors need to step into. Early-stage capital laid the groundwork. Now it’s time to back these ventures all the way, with capital, visibility, and women-focused programs that don't stop at seed.
One wonders if the rest of 2025 would bring a shift or just more of the same.
Kelechi Edeh
