Beyond visibility: What Africa’s digital economy owes its women leaders

By Kadi Diallo, Head of Content for Africa Tech Festival

Look across Africa’s technology sector today, and you’ll find women shaping its future from every direction. They’re running technology and data functions inside leading banks, telecoms operators and public institutions. They’re founding high-growth ventures in health, agriculture and financial services. They’re helping write the policies that guide digital transformation. The leadership and the talent are here. What’s needed now is for the rest of the ecosystem to catch up.

There’s real reason for optimism. A recent report by the African Private Capital Association shows that Africa’s private capital industry already outperforms global benchmarks in gender representation at the fund level, with women holding well over a third of investment professional and investment committee roles. And where committees are more balanced, they back women-led businesses more often, and those businesses tend to grow faster than their male-led counterparts. It’s a pattern worth building on.

The pipeline is growing too. The third edition of Disrupt Africa’s Diversity Dividend: Exploring Gender Equality in the African Tech Ecosystem reports that the share of African startups with at least one female co-founder has climbed from under 15% three years ago to close to one in five today. Yet women-led ventures still receive only a small slice of startup funding, despite consistently strong performance. Africa is clearly producing exceptional women founders. What hasn’t kept pace is the capital reaching them.

Mentorship and visibility programmes deserve real credit here. They’ve opened doors, built networks, and helped many women in tech get to where they are today. Africa Tech Festival will continue to champion that work because…