When Funke Opeke built West Africa’s first private submarine cable connecting the region to Europe in 2010, she didn’t just lay fiber optics across the ocean floor. She laid a blueprint for what African women could achieve in technology—quietly, powerfully, and against overwhelming odds.
More than a decade later, the story of women in African tech is one of spectacular paradoxes: a continent where women earn 47% of STEM degrees—the highest in the world—yet receive just 2% of tech startup funding. Where female entrepreneurs launch businesses at higher rates than anywhere else globally, yet hold fewer than 12% of tech leadership positions. Where innovation blooms in the hands of women who code in twenty languages, design life-saving medical devices, and build fintech platforms serving millions—all while navigating systemic barriers that would break lesser spirits.
This is not a story of victims. This is a story of warriors, innovators, and architects of the future, told in full color—the brilliant highs, the crushing lows, and everything tangled in between.
Part I: The Highs—When African Women Tech Rises
The Education Triumph Nobody Talks About
Africa leads the world with 47% of STEM university graduates being women, surpassing Europe at 42% and North America at 39%. In Tunisia, women constitute 62% of STEM students. This isn’t an accident—it’s the result of deliberate policy interventions like Tunisia’s 1991 Education Act that made basic education compulsory for all children regardless of gender.
The numbers tell a story of ambition realized: women constitute 30% of professionals in Sub-Saharan Africa’s tech sector, marginally ahead of the 28% global average. These aren’t just participants; they’re innovators reshaping entire industries.
The Founders Who Are Changing Everything
Meet some of the women rewriting Africa’s tech story:
Miishe Addy founded Jetstream Africa to eliminate the nightmarish bureaucracy of cross-border trade in Africa. Her platform has revolutionized how SMEs navigate international commerce, turning what once took weeks into streamlined digital processes.
Odunayo Eweniyi co-founded PiggyVest, Nigeria’s leading savings and investment platform with millions of users. She’s not just building wealth management tools; she’s fundamentally changing how young Africans think about money.
Hilda Moraa created Pezesha, a peer-to-peer lending platform addressing the $42 billion financing gap for African women entrepreneurs. She previously founded Weza Tele, becoming one of the first African women to successfully exit a tech startup when it was acquired in 2015.
Nneile Nkholise leads 3DIMO, using digital manufacturing and 3D printing to produce custom medical devices across Africa. She’s literally printing solutions to healthcare access problems.
Blessing Abeng co-founded Ingressive for Good, which has trained over 130,000 African youth in tech skills, backed by Google’s parent company Alphabet. The organization partners with Coursera, DataCamp, and Meta to democratize tech education.
Ire Aderinokun, co-founder of BuyCoins (now Helicarrier), navigated Nigeria’s complex cryptocurrency regulatory environment to build one of the country’s premier digital finance platforms.
Maya Horgan Famodu has set a number of records. She is believed to be the youngest Black woman to launch a tech fund. Beyond venture, she co-founded Ingressive for Good, a nonprofit that has trained hundreds of thousands in technical skills, and Ingressive Advisory.
These women aren’t outliers. Founders like Judy Njogu-Mokaya of VunaPay and Nelly Chatue Diop of Ejara are transforming financial access, trade, and farming practices while mentoring the next generation.
The Entrepreneurship Edge
Africa stands alone: Sub-Saharan Africa boasts the world’s highest rate of women entrepreneurs at 27%, with Uganda at 34.8% and Botswana at 34.6%. This isn’t just about necessity entrepreneurship—it’s about women seizing the tools of technology to build at scale.
The Mastercard Index reveals that Africa has more women starting businesses than anywhere else on Earth. And when they get funded, they outperform: research shows that for every dollar of investment, women-founded startups generate 78 cents in revenue compared to just 31 cents for male-founded startups.
The Ecosystem Builders
Beyond individual success, African women in tech are building the infrastructure for the next generation:
- She Code Africa provides training, mentorship, and community for women across 20 African countries with over 17,000 members
- Wetech is a non-profit organisation founded in 2019. It is headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria and focuses on Women in Technology. Gabriella and Flora Uwadiegwu co-founded WeTech.
- Women in Tech Africa operates chapters in 12 countries with over 5,000 members globally
- African Girls Can Code Initiative equips girls aged 17-25 with coding, robotics, and digital literacy, providing each graduate with a laptop and six months of internet access
- Developers in Vogue in Ghana creates career support communities for skilled female developers
Fifteen women entrepreneurs recently won grants from UNESCO and the OCP Foundation after completing a three-month AI training program, creating solutions from smart fertilizer sensors to apps combating gender-based violence.
When the World Takes Notice
Women in Tech Africa received the 2018 United Nations Equals Award for Leadership in the Women and Technology Space. The recognition isn’t charity—it’s acknowledgment of real impact.
Rebecca Enonchong, founder of AppsTech, was named one of Forbes’ top female tech founders in Africa. She sits on boards, leads incubators, and has built the African Business Angel Network—creating the very infrastructure that funds the next wave of innovation.
The victories are real. The progress is measurable. The impact is undeniable.
But this is only half the story.
Part II: The Lows—The Brutal Reality of Building While Female
The Funding Apocalypse
If the highs are inspiring, the lows are enraging.
In 2024, female CEOs in African tech received just 2% of total funding—$48 million—while male CEOs secured nearly $2.2 billion. This 2% figure is the lowest since 2016 and represents a devastating drop from 8.2% in 2023.
Breaking it down further: Solo female founders raised only $21 million, gender-diverse teams $123 million, while solo male founders raised $430 million and all-male teams secured $1.6 billion.
This isn’t a funding gap. This is a funding chasm.
Despite women comprising 58% of Africa’s self-employed population and Africa having the highest rate of female entrepreneurial activity globally at 24%, only 11.1% of surveyed African startups have a female CEO, and just 17.3% have at least one female co-founder.
The “She’s Probably the Tea Girl” Problem
Fara Ashiru Jituboh, co-founder of the now-shuttered fintech startup Okra, knows this humiliation intimately. People undermine her in meetings, assuming she’s support staff rather than a technical founder—she’s asked where the tea is when she’s actually one of the speakers.
This isn’t isolated. Many women in tech report discrimination ranging from unequal pay to sexual harassment, with stereotypes perpetuating that women are not as competent or skilled as men in technical fields.
The condescension is systematic. The bias is institutional. Research in South Africa found that ingrained societal views portray the tech sector as inherently masculine, combined with biases about women’s technical skills and leadership abilities.
When Whistleblowing Costs Everything
For Black women in tech particularly, speaking truth to power carries unique consequences. Black women whistleblowers face more intense backlash when reporting wrongdoing, with public scrutiny focusing on their motivations rather than the problems they’ve exposed.
Dr. Timnit Gebru, a leading AI ethics researcher, was ousted from Google in 2020 after refusing to retract research on the risks of language models. What followed was a campaign of racist and sexist harassment that she described as having a specific strand of vitriol unique to being a Black woman in tech.
The Violence Nobody Wants to Discuss
A study across five Sub-Saharan African countries revealed 28% of women reported experiencing online violence, while globally 38% of women face it—rising to 58% for young women aged 15-25.
This violence takes forms as varied as they are devastating: doxing, harassment campaigns, stalking across platforms, non-consensual intimate images, deepfakes, and coercive control. A UN-referenced study of 51 countries found 38% of women had personally experienced online violence.
The digital revolution that promised liberation has also weaponized misogyny at scale.
The Motherhood Penalty in Code
Motherhood remains a key obstacle to women’s career advancement in tech, with the progression into senior leadership hindered by stereotypes about women’s homemaker role.
Wamide, a Nigerian tech professional, had to quit a job she loved because the long commutes after having her child took a toll on her health. She left without having another job lined up because being there for her family mattered more than career progression.
Solape, founder of Hervest, admits the balance isn’t always there: There are days she misses PTA meetings and others when she’s the first to arrive—she describes it as not easy but “it is what it is”.
Employers are reluctant to hire married women and mothers not only due to perceived skill gaps but because of intensive engagement in unpaid care work. The tech industry’s long-hour culture collides brutally with societal expectations that women bear primary responsibility for childcare and family life.
The School-to-Work Leak
Here’s the paradox that keeps development economists awake at night: Africa produces the world’s highest percentage of women STEM graduates, yet women in African tech face a steep drop-off from the classroom to the boardroom, with representation plummeting after graduation.
Women hold less than 12% of tech leadership positions and just 10% of CEO roles in tech startups, with the lowest representation in software development at 8%.
This “leaky pipeline” isn’t natural attrition. It’s systematic exclusion dressed up as meritocracy.
When South Africa Became a Case Study
Only 23% of tech jobs in South Africa are held by women—56,000 women in 236,000 ICT roles. Despite more women than men having post-secondary education in the country, they’re significantly more likely to be unemployed and looking for work.
Fully one-quarter of South African respondents report that women are often or always prevented from taking paid employment by their husbands or family members. The barriers aren’t just in boardrooms—they start at home.
Part III: The In-Between—Navigating the Messy Middle
The Networking Paradox
Networking is everything in tech. It’s how you find jobs, close deals, meet co-founders, and raise capital. But for African women, networking spaces can be minefields.
For African women, adequate work-life balance is a struggle, especially in a field as engaging as tech, with challenges ranging from internalized repression to systemic discrimination and institutional gender bias.
The solution? Many women have built their own tables. Iwalola Sobowale, Head of CX Research at Moniepoint, emphasizes joining communities and reaching out to peers. But this creates a catch-22: you need a network to build a network, and women’s professional networks are often smaller and less established than men’s.
Around 40% of venture capital investors in African startups had at least one female founder or partner, but this often represents only a single female leader on a predominantly male team.
The “Act Like a Man” Myth
Some experts suggest women should adopt more masculine communication styles in the workplace. Sobowale strongly disagrees, believing instead in assertiveness combined with politeness rather than mimicking stereotypically male behavior.
She’s seen the advice telling women to write emails in a “bossy” tone like men, but she advocates for a different path: being direct while maintaining warmth. The challenge? Women who are direct are often labeled difficult. Women who are warm are considered weak. The window for “acceptable” female behavior in tech is narrow and constantly shifting.
The Prioritization Tightrope
During periods focused on career growth, there will definitely be an imbalance between work and personal life, but there should also be time to rest, play, and recharge. For Sobowale, this means occasionally dedicating a day to being a “couch potato” with a book.
For mothers, the calculus is even more complex. Sobowale has a non-negotiable: dedicating time after school to chat with her children about their day. She describes it as working hard at goals for a period to enjoy better work-life balance guilt-free during a later phase.
This is the unsexy reality: women in tech aren’t just coding and pitching. They’re calculating—can I make this meeting and still pick up my kids? Can I afford childcare if I take this role? Will missing this conference hurt my career? Will attending it hurt my family?
The Mentorship Mirage
The lack of mentors and role models for women in tech has been identified as one of the key barriers to their progress and growth. But here’s the problem: the women who’ve “made it” are so overextended that they struggle to mentor effectively.
Every successful woman in African tech gets dozens of mentorship requests. They’re expected to be on panels, give talks, judge competitions, mentor cohorts, and somehow still run their actual companies. The few who exist are being asked to do the work of many.
Programs like the Moremi Initiative Mentoring Programme and African Tech Vision Mentorship Programme are trying to formalize this, but the ratio of mentors to mentees remains woefully inadequate.
The “Prove Yourself Twice” Tax
Once hired, women in African tech report high job satisfaction but face significant headwinds in advancement, with about a quarter citing gender bias and limited opportunities for skills development as major obstacles.
This manifests in subtle ways: being interrupted in meetings, having ideas credited to male colleagues, being asked to take notes while men lead discussions, being excluded from informal decision-making spaces (golf courses, after-work drinks, WhatsApp groups).
And then there’s the competence tightrope: women need to be visibly excellent without appearing threatening. Too competent and they’re “aggressive.” Not competent enough and they confirm biases.
When Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast
In some countries, it’s not unusual for women in tech to take supporting roles within projects to accommodate social norms just to do their jobs. One woman researcher reported having to train a less experienced male colleague to interview participants or perform training so that male stakeholders would participate.
Let that sink in: a woman expert training a man to deliver her expertise so men will listen.
This isn’t just inefficient. It’s insane. But it’s reality for many African women working in conservative environments where a woman’s technical authority is inherently questioned.
Part IV: The Support Systems—What’s Actually Working
Despite the obstacles, infrastructure is emerging:
Funding Alternatives
- Tech FoundHER Africa Challenge: Received 1,163 applications in one month, with five winners sharing over $100,000 in equity-free grants plus mentorship from the Naspers and Prosus ecosystem
- Lionesses of Africa: A network of 1.8 million women entrepreneurs providing connections and opportunities
- Women-focused VCs: Though still rare, funds specifically targeting female founders are growing
Skills and Training
- African Girls in Tech: A five-month program providing training, mentorship, and career prospects with goals to equip 500,000 African girls by 2030
- DEEP (Digital Employability and Entrepreneurship Program): 85% of apprentices find employment after completion, with many earning exponentially higher incomes
- Training in product design, cybersecurity, blockchain, data science, and more
Community and Advocacy
These organizations are creating spaces where women can learn, connect, and grow without constantly defending their right to be there. They’re proof that when you create systems designed for women’s success, women succeed.
Part V: The Path Forward—From Celebration to Transformation
What’s Working
- Education First: Tunisia’s mandatory education policy shows that early intervention works
- Ecosystem Building: Organizations like She Code Africa prove peer support accelerates progress
- Alternative Funding: Women-focused grants and challenges are creating pathways outside traditional VC
- Authentic Leadership: Women who lead as themselves, not as imitations of men, inspire others
What Must Change
On Funding: The 2% must become 20%, then 50%. This requires:
- Quotas for women-led startups in VC portfolios
- More women in decision-making roles at investment firms
- Alternative funding mechanisms that don’t rely solely on pattern-matching VCs
On Culture: Creating bias-free work environments requires structured return-to-work programs, mentorship, upskilling opportunities, and childcare assistance. Companies must move beyond diversity statements to actual structural change.
On Policy: Governments must:
- Enforce gender equity laws in hiring and promotion
- Provide tax incentives for companies with diverse leadership
- Fund childcare infrastructure that enables women to work
- Criminalize online gender-based violence with real enforcement
On Mentorship: We need to professionalize and compensate mentorship. Expecting successful women to mentor for free perpetuates unpaid labor.
The Opportunity Cost We Can’t Afford
When we exclude women from tech, we don’t just lose their individual contributions. We lose entire categories of innovation. Technology made by women has women in mind—and in Africa, where women are primary economic actors, this matters profoundly.
We lose fintech solutions designed for informal economies where women dominate. We lose healthtech that addresses maternal mortality. We lose agritech that understands women’s role in food production. We lose edtech that recognizes girls’ different educational barriers.
The cost of exclusion is measured not just in individual careers derailed but in societal problems unsolved.
Conclusion: The Future is Being Built Right Now
Stand in any co-working space in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, or Kigali and you’ll find her: headphones on, laptop open, building. She might be 22 or 42. She might have a CS degree or be self-taught. She might have raised venture capital or bootstrapped with savings from her day job. She might be coding an app, designing a platform, or pitching to investors who will underestimate her.
She is tired of being the only woman in the room. She is tired of having her competence questioned. She is tired of the funding gap, the bias tax, the mentorship shortage, the work-life impossibility, the online harassment, the glass ceiling that’s really a labyrinth.
But here’s what makes the story of African women in tech ultimately one of hope rather than despair: She keeps building anyway.
Not because the barriers aren’t real—they are brutally, exhaustingly real. But because the alternative is unacceptable. Because her daughter deserves a different reality. Because the problems she’s solving are too important to abandon. Because she’s glimpsed what’s possible when women have the tools, capital, and freedom to create.
The highs in African women’s tech journey are spectacular: world-leading STEM graduation rates, entrepreneurship that outpaces the globe, innovations solving real problems, ecosystems being built from nothing.
The lows are crushing: 2% funding rates, systemic bias, online violence, motherhood penalties, the school-to-work leak, the competence tightrope, the endless demand to prove worthiness.
The in-between is where most African women in tech actually live: navigating contradictions, making impossible choices, building networks from scratch, mentoring while still learning, celebrating small wins while fighting for systemic change.
This is womaning in tech in Africa: imperfect, inspiring, infuriating, and absolutely essential.
The future of African technology is being built right now by women who refuse to wait for permission. The question isn’t whether they can do it—they’re already doing it. The question is whether the ecosystem will evolve fast enough to support them, fund them, follow them.
Because ready or not, African women in tech are building the future. The only question is whether the rest of us will be wise enough to get out of their way—or better yet, get behind them.
