African female entrepreneurs need to learn from high-impact mentors

Aside from money, African female entrepreneurs want access to high-impact mentors who are eager to share their network and teach what they know.

Eloho Omame and Odunayo Eweniyi unveiled their female-focused angel investment fund a few weeks into January this year. The angel fund, appropriately dubbed FirstCheck Africa, is on a mission to “advance equity, capital, and leadership for a generation of women in Africa through technology and entrepreneurship.” While FirstCheck claims that African women in technology are “over-mentored” and “under-funded,” early-stage female innovators require assistance. Our ecosystem is still dominated by men, and female entrepreneurs want experienced mentors to help them on their path to success.

When it comes to assisting African female entrepreneurs to flourish, it is critical not to put the wagon before the horse. Of course, backing female-led firms is critical since entrepreneurs require funds to grow. However, it is equally critical to level the playing field by inviting female founders to join active networks and connecting them to successful high-impact mentors.

Mentoring and funding African women in tech must go hand in hand, not one after the other, if Africa is to establish a more equal tech sector. Local and global investors must work together to develop short-term and long-term mentorship programs for underrepresented female founders.

These mentorship programs should teach African women in technology how to network, build social equity, pitch to accelerators or funders with larger check sizes, and much more.

The topic of mentorship is difficult to broach because most female entrepreneurs are concerned in obtaining the funds they require to run their company. But, according to Sohaila Ouffata, a venture capitalist, working with highly skilled and experienced mentors is just as vital as appealing for funding from accelerators and venture funds. As a result, Ouffata established The African Tech Vision (ATV) to create and open up business paths for ambitious African female innovators and senior leaders.

Scaling up the empowerment of African female entrepreneurs

The African Tech Vision is a free entrepreneurial initiative that helps early-stage African female founders realize their ambitions. Over the course of six weeks, selected female founders are partnered with mentors and industry professionals from the local and worldwide startup and technology scenes.

Throughout the program, participants get access to hands-on mentoring and coaching sessions with ATV mentors who have been thoroughly vetted. While most accelerator and mentorship programs take place in person at specific places, ATV launched its first program online in April of this year.

Hosting virtual mentorship sessions allows more African female founders to apply to the program without having to worry about visa applications, travel expenditures, or finding lodging.

“The hands-on mentorship session’s style is built on virtual interactions.” “Most mentors prefer video conversations and structure the session based on the needs of the entrepreneur,” Ouffata stated in an email statement to TechCabal.

“At the start of the program, we met with each entrepreneur to discuss the areas in which they are searching for mentorship. This also serves as the foundation for matching with selected mentors. For example, some entrepreneurs prefer to speak with their mentors several times every week. Others prefer to send queries to their mentors via WhatsApp. We leave the decision to the founders and their mentors because we are a founder-friendly program.”

Every week, ATV provided a mix of recorded and live courses, founder stories (events where experienced founders shared stories of success, struggles, and failures in respective professions), and social activities to its initial cohort. Some of the content models made accessible to the cohort of African female founders in the previous program included ‘Engaging with Mentors,’ ‘Elevator Pitch,’ ‘Investors 101,’ ‘Product Market Fit,’ and ‘Sales Fundamentals.’

Female early-stage innovators from Ghana, Rwanda, Morocco, Tunisia, Ethiopia, and Nigeria were among those in the prior batch. As a result, Ouffata and her team must recruit as many female founders from various African countries as possible before their next program begins in 2022.

Why is The African Tech Vision putting their money on African women?

Betting in African female founders is a personal decision for Ouffata that fits into The African Tech Objective program’s bigger vision.

“The African Tech Vision was formed out of a desire to honor my African background while also creating and opening up business avenues for other African women,” Ouffata explained. “Our vision is to connect female entrepreneurs with experienced international role models in order to inspire and nurture the next generation of African female entrepreneurs with a purpose.”

Without a doubt, ATV’s ambition is daring, but Africa’s male-dominated technology and business ecosystem is no longer something that can be ignored or rationalized. The ATV model is intended to highlight, empower, and support high-impact female founders in Africa.

ATV’s motives for supporting female entrepreneurs are built in economics and nation-building, in addition to sentiments and national pride. Businesses owned or established by women are thought to generate more revenue and be a better investment for a specific group of investors.

Furthermore, women usually reinvest up to 90% of their earnings back into their families and extended communities. This means that more girls and women must participate in the global economy through education, employment, and mentorship.