Although female-led startups in Africa are outpacing their male peers in both growth and revenue, women remain underrepresented in senior roles where investment decisions are made, according to a report by the African Private Capital Association (AVCA)
- •In 2024, female-founded companies generated more than double the revenue of male-founded peers at the Founder level and posted 32% year-on-year growth at the CEO level.
- •This was more than six times the growth of male-led firms despite raising 23 times less capital, highlighting that commercial performance does not always align with who controls funding.
- •Women are most visible in consumer-facing industries such as retail, hospitality, and services, while capital-intensive sectors including energy, infrastructure, telecoms, and industrial goods remain overwhelmingly male.
Across Africa, women make up 44% of the private capital workforce and 38% of investment teams, outperforming the 35% global average. Nearly two in five African venture-capital firms and one in three private-equity firms have gender-balanced senior management.
Yet representation thins sharply at the top as firms managing more than US$1 billion, women hold fewer than 20% of investment committee seats, while smaller firms under US$50 million report gender parity across teams and committees.
Female founders and CEOs dominate the earliest stage of private capital, with nearly 60% of women-led companies receiving venture capital funding, and mixed-gender teams similarly clustered at 65%. Representation drops sharply as companies mature, with just over a third reaching the private equity stage, and virtually none appear in real estate or infrastructure.
This mirrors patterns inside private capital firms, where women comprise 45% of junior staff and 35% of senior leaders in venture capital, but see steep attrition in capital-intensive sectors like infrastructure and private debt, dropping to 9% and 18% at senior levels.
According to the report, investment committee composition strongly influences investment targets. Male-dominated committees back only 8% of female-led companies while female-majority committees back 48% of such firms.
Regionally, West Africa accounts for nearly 40% of all female-founded portfolio companies, while East Africa hosts roughly a quarter of female chief executives in private capital–backed firms. These regions also show the strongest conversion of female founders into senior leadership, indicating that women are not only starting businesses but sustaining control as firms scale.
Southern Africa, despite deep capital pools, accounts for only about one-fifth of female-led companies, and North Africa lags due to low female labor force participation despite a high number of female university graduates.
