In 2022, just 20% of African tech startups with funding had female founder

Just 20.2% of the 633 funded ventures in 2022 had a female founder, down from 21.5 percent in 2021, illustrating the worsening gender gap in African IT.

According to Disrupt Africa, a startup news and research platform, the eighth edition of the annual African Tech Startups Funding Report was just published.

In spite of a global decline in investment, the study describes a remarkable 2022 in which more entrepreneurs raised more money than ever before. In all, 633 businesses raised $3,333,071,000 in total in 2022. This showed a tremendous increase. In 2021, there were 564 financed companies, a 12.2% rise, and the total amount of capital acquired climbed by 55.1% to US$2,148,517,500.

Nonetheless, despite an increase in total numbers, female representation has essentially decreased. Just 128 of the 633 financed African tech businesses have at least one female founder, a little increase from 121 in 2021 but still a fall in proportion to 20.2% from 21.5. Only 128 of the 633 funded African tech startups have at least one female founder.

Given that many African ecosystems lack a critical mass of ventures raising, it is challenging to compare too many of them in this regard. Nonetheless, we may examine Africa’s top seven financing destinations because each of these countries had at least 20 financed initiatives.

With at least one female co-founder in 26.4% of companies, Kenya was the “best” performer in terms of female representation among sponsored enterprises. With 25.9% of the vote, Morocco also did rather well, while South Africa received 23.1%. Nigeria (20.6%) and Tunisia (21.7%) slightly exceeded the average. Egypt (13.7%) and Ghana (17.4%) fare poorly.

Thereby, not an encouraging sign. But some areas saw more promising prospects. The challenge of non-African entrepreneurs getting investment in Africa is widely known, but it is steadily getting better. There was at least one local in the founding team of 600 of the 633 financed businesses in 2022, up from 500 (88.7%) in 2021.

Hence, local participation is increasing, despite the fact that 33 financed businesses in 2022, or 5.2% of all startups, were exclusively started by foreigners. In contrast, 568 (89.7%) had entirely local founders, up from 471 (83.5%) in 2021, where 65 (10.3%) had at least one expatriate in its founding team.