When Nour Emam, Co-Founder and CEO of Egyptian femtech platform Daleela by Motherbeing, recounts a moment from her entrepreneurship journey, it encapsulates the daily deep-seated challenges female founders face.
“One moment that sticks with me was during a pitch where, despite solid traction and user growth, an investor asked, ‘But how do you know Arab women even want to talk about these topics?’” she tells WT.
This loaded question wasn’t just about market validation, Emam says, but a subtle reminder of the systemic bias that boxes women, particularly those daring to disrupt sensitive sectors like women’s health.
For Emam, a notable entrepreneur, doula and reproductive health activist whose company confronts taboo topics around sexual and reproductive health among women, the question was less about risk assessment and more about challenging centuries of silence and stigma surrounding women’s bodies.
Africa is paradoxical. It leads the world in female entrepreneurial activity, with women representing 26% of total entrepreneurial endeavours. And yet, female-led startups remain grossly underfunded. In 2024, while male-led ventures attracted around USD 2 B, per one research, female-led startups secured a mere 2% of that.
Another research estimates a staggering USD 42 B funding gap for Africa’s women entrepreneurs. Such figures paint a picture of a market rich in potential yet strangled by entrenched biases and an ecosystem that still largely sidelines women.
More than a Capital problem
Akinyi W. Ooko Ombaka, Head of Portfolio Success at Madica, explains that the challenges are rooted in a web of intersecting issues. “The challenges faced by women-led businesses intersect and compound across multiple channels,” she notes.
Investor bias, she explains, often pigeonholes female founders into ‘traditional’ sectors like education or care economies, which are viewed as less catalytic for rapid growth. Yet, beyond the bias, Ombaka argues that the real game-changer is access to networks; be it mentorship, sponsorship, or robust community connections.
“From a strategic and cultural perspective, we’ve failed to address these challenges as an investment community because our interventions do not take diversity, equity and inclusion seriously. Tactically, we haven’t invested the resources to back these founders in a meaningful way,” she adds.
Madica’s approach, however, offers a counter-narrative. With a portfolio that includes over 50% female founders, Ombaka says Madica has honed a rigorous due diligence process and crafted an 18-month support program tailored to each founder’s specific needs. But she candidly admits that such an intensive, hands-on approach is resource-heavy, and few funds have the capacity—or the will—to replicate it.
Ombaka challenges top African VCs to radically change their playbook. “The numbers already demonstrate that having diverse teams and investing in women-led businesses is not only smart but also profitable,” she says.
“Investing in African businesses requires more—more time, more capital, more support. If you aren’t willing to play the long-term game, you’re in the wrong place or you haven’t found the right partners to do it.”
For Ombaka, acknowledging what hasn’t worked is the first step toward actionable change. “We must be actionable in our approach by sharing more instances of what’s working and tag-teaming best practices to build upon,” she stresses, hinting at a collaborative future where co-investment and founder-first approaches become the norm.
A Founder’s Battle
For Emam, the journey is as much about building a community as it is about securing funding. Reflecting on the investor’s question about Arab women’s willingness to engage with taboo topics, Emam is unapologetic.
“If I were a man building a crypto app or a logistics platform, I wouldn’t be asked to prove that my audience was ready for innovation. But as a woman building for women, I’m expected to justify our right to speak openly about our health,” Emam asserts. Such biases, she adds, are not merely annoying but actively stymie progress and reinforce an inequitable status quo.
Emam’s response to these challenges is both practical and empowering. “Build your audience before your investor deck,” she advises emerging founders. By fostering a community and accumulating tangible user engagement, female founders can create an unassailable narrative that data and human stories alike support.
Her journey with Daleela by Motherbeing, which uses an AI-powered assistant to empower Arab women in managing their sexual and reproductive health, is a testament to this strategy. Her approach has not only built credibility but also forced investors to confront their preconceptions with hard evidence: millions of views, thousands of comments, and robust conversion rates that tell a story of significant market demand.
Emam, recognised as one of the BBC 100 Most Influential Women of 2024, is also pragmatic about the current VC ecosystem. “The short answer is: we need both,” she explains when asked whether women should entirely retreat from the traditional VC model.
While alternative funding ecosystems—bootstrapping, revenue-first models, community-driven funds—are proving their worth, abandoning the VC route altogether would mean ceding influence in shaping the future of tech investment. Instead, the goal, she believes, should be to redesign the table.
“That means more women writing checks, more funds prioritising gender-lens investing, and more founders holding VCs accountable for their pipelines,” Emam suggests.
Numbers That Speak
Broader industry data underscore these personal accounts. African startups have seen funding declines across the board with male-led ventures continuing to pull in billions, while female-led initiatives languish.
Studies from Disrupt Africa reveal that out of nearly 2,600 startups surveyed, only 17.3% had at least one female co-founder, and a mere 11.1% were helmed by a female CEO. In Nigeria alone, only 10% of funded startups were female-founded, receiving just 0.7% of the total deal volume in a market worth USD 600 M.
The disparity becomes even starker when dissected further. Female CEOs received just USD 48 M in funding in 2024, per The Big Deal, while solo male founders raised USD 430 M and all-male teams secured USD 1.6 B.
Such figures are not isolated anomalies but part of a broader trend that sees less than 5% of Africa’s tech funding going to all-female founding teams over nearly a decade. These statistics reveal an ecosystem where impressive entrepreneurial activity by women is systematically undermined by inadequate access to capital.
However, compared to other regions, Africa does present a slightly better picture. A 2024 Pitchbook report noted that companies founded solely by women in the US and Europe received only 2% and 1.8% of total capital respectively, while Africa’s figure hovered at 8.2%. This relative advantage, however, does little to mask the overall systemic exclusion that women face globally.
Toward a More Inclusive Future
The conversation around gender funding gaps in Africa’s tech ecosystem is not solely about lamenting the status quo. It is also a call to action for all stakeholders, from investors to founders to policymakers.
Initiatives like Madica, which offer comprehensive support and clear investment theses focused on underrepresented founders, demonstrate that change is possible when the right mix of resources, mentorship, and strategic clarity is in place.
Both Ombaka and Emam stress that the road to parity is paved with honest introspection and radical rethinking of existing models. They opine that investors must be willing to reallocate resources, share success stories, and challenge their own biases, while founders are encouraged to leverage community support and build compelling narratives that defy stereotypes.
As Emam succinctly puts it, “In 2025, storytelling is a growth strategy. Don’t just pitch investors—create content, own your voice, build public proof. That credibility compounds faster than you think.”
The stakes are high. With studies estimating that achieving gender parity could boost global GDP by up to USD 12 T, the economic imperative to empower female entrepreneurs is undeniable. The challenge is to transform these figures into actionable change.
