African Female CEOs Raised Only 7% Of $4.3bn Funding In 2021

…As Male CEOs Raised 73% Of Total Funding

African female CEOs raised only less than 7% funding in 2021 while male CEOs raised the rest of the funds.

Recall that last year, Techuncode reported that African start-ups raised about a total of $4.3bn in rounds.

This sum was far above the initial margin which financial and economic experts had set for the continent.

However, in as much as the continent hit that margin, a sad reality soon reared its ugly head.

That obvious and screaming reality was in the area of gender imbalance among male and female CEOs raising the funds.

Here is a breakdown of how the start-ups raised the funding in 2021 according to gender.

It will surprise you that of the total funding, only $286m was raised by start-ups led by female Chief Executive Officers (CEOs).

That is surely very poor.

That amount represents a meagre 7% of the total funds that came into the continent. Similarly, out of the less than 7%, only 1% was raised by single female founders and female-only founding teams.

By this, it means only 1% start-ups were founded by single female CEOs alone as well as those co-founded by two or more females CEOs.

By implication, it implies that the remaining 6% out of the 7% funding was raised by start-ups led by teams of both female and male CEOs.

According to a report by Thebigdeal.substack, single female founders and all female founding teams raised just only $41m, representing (.95%).

Conversely, the report said 93% of the funding in Africa in 2021 was raised by start-ups led by male CEOs.

This percentage amounted to about $4bn.

Also, it said single male founders and all-male founding teams raised a whopping sum of $3.5bn, representing (82%).

It said this development is a direct consequence of the gender profile of the founding teams.

Meanwhile, a  report equally says that male single founders and exclusively male founding teams raised $3.5bn which amounted to 82% of the total $4.3bn raised.

Also, the bulk of the funding by male CEOs came in the second quarter.

While the gender raised $0.5bn in Q1 and $2bn in Q2, it also raised $0.8bn and $221m in Q3 and Q4 respectively.

Conversely, single female founders and all-female founding teams alone raised $41m.

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This is out of the total $286m raised by all female CEOs (including those co-raised by male CEOs too).

A breakdown of the fund runs thus:

The single female founders and all-female founding teams raised the $32m in Q1.

They also raised only $8m in Q2 and a meager $2m in Q3.

Meanwhile, gender-diverse founding teams (male and female founders) raised a total of $750m, representing 17% of the total fund raised.

The implication is that despite the huge start-up growth in Africa, there are either few females in the game or fewer females leading few start-ups.

This development, surely, calls for more females to either establish their own companies and raise more funds or for more females to lead more start-ups in Africa.

Hopefully, in 2022, we would have more female CEOs raising more funds and trying to close the imbalance.