Africa Investment Forum: Celebrating and Promoting Women as Investment Champions – today and beyond

A few, if any, will disagree that empowering African women financially, makes economic sense, and that unlocking their potential as entrepreneurs of impact, accelerates Africa’s economic growth. And yet, African women remain the most saddled with challenges that obstruct them from excelling and contributing fully to the continent’s development agenda.

Although the World Economic Forum Report (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report 2022 revealed that Sub-Saharan Africa has bridged its gender gap by 67.9% (its highest score in 16 years) – ranking the region ahead of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia – the report however soberingly also states that at the present rate, it will take 98 years to close the gender gap in the region.

And according to the African Development Bank (AfDB), women entrepreneurs and businesses currently operate over 40 percent of the continent’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and yet, the funding gap between male and female businesses stands at US $42 billion across the business value chains.

With such disconcerting facts, the importance of commemorating the just-concluded International Women’s Day, and by extension marking March as Women’s Month, cannot be over-emphasised.

This year’s global theme for Women’s Day was centered around ‘Embracing Equity’, to encourage important conversations about equal opportunities for women across all sectors, question why in 2023 the gap remains wide and enabling environments that could help bridge it, remain inadequate.

Enter a platform like the Africa Investment Forum (AIF), which is finding ways of dismantling the status quo by empowering women in new and innovative ways through its grounding-breaking initiative – the ‘Women as Investment Champions’.

As a flagship initiative of the African Development Bank, with seven other founding partners, the AIF is recognized as Africa’s premier investment marketplace, and supporting women businesses and entrepreneurs is a key aspect of its Mandate. The AIF 2021 Virtual Boardrooms held in March 2022 were the first Boardrooms where gender deals were presented as a specific category to investors. A total of eight deals with a combined value of US $ 4.856 Billion were presented to investors in various sectors, including Health, Creative Industry, and Manufacturing. And at the 2022 Market Days that took place in November 2022 in Abidjan, further reinforced the Women as Investment Champion pillar within the AIF, with additional deals presented for investment dialogue in sectors such as Information Technology.

Accelerating gender parity and economic empowerment

The annual International Women’s Day is always a key date for shining a spotlight on, not only the challenges that women face in various fields, but also the successes and opportunities offered by platforms such as the AIF, in accelerating gender parity and the economic empowerment of women.

This was evident at a special event the AIF organised for Women as Investment Champions on 8 March in Abidjan, to mark the 2023 International Women’s Day. The event brought together prominent Côte d’Ivoire-based women entrepreneurs and investors. An intimate, yet lively event, offered the invitees the chance to discuss their entrepreneurial journeys, their trials, and triumphs, as well as the hindrances they face, more so in terms of scaling up their businesses. Their rallying chorus was that an initiative such as the Women as Investment Champions inspires hope for bigger business visions and commercial success.

In brief remarks, Chinelo Anohu – AIF’s Senior Director, told the intimate gathering: “I am gratified to see the champions in this room. Women who are doing marvelous things, who are doing big things; women doing small things in a big way, and big things in an even bigger way…the AIF stands ready to assist everyone in this room and to learn from everyone in this room. Together we can lift each other up and support each other.”

In an exclusive March 2023 Cover interview with New African Woman Chinelo – the brains behind the Women as Investment Champions pillar – explains the AIF’s approach to supporting women-led businesses: “What we found is that most of the time when talking about women businesses, there is almost always an automatic shift to SMEs [Small and Medium Enterprises] and subsistence businesses. While that is in itself laudable, we encourage the women to lay the foundations that will support eventual scaling. And it can be done, and it is being done.”

Advancing and championing women businesses

Indeed, since its inception in 2019, the Women as Investment Champion initiative has ardently been advancing and championing women businesses in Africa, to scale and grow their operations and helping them meet their highest potential. According to the AIF, engaging and partnering with key female figures that are leading the field, is core to how it works with the women businesses it supports. “The nature of assistance the AIF offers transcends through to the financial support required, for example, the newly established AIF Advisory Support Facility, with funds so far received from the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA). The fund is to assist in advancing women deals to bankability, ready for investor dialogue,” read a brochure that was distributed at the event.

Guests at the event included United States’ Ambassador to Cote d’Ivoire – Jessica Davis Ba who remarked: “As for the United States we are there to support women, to encourage them, to form partnerships, to learn from them and also to exchange with them and to see how we can better open US markets to them and to encourage investment into Cote d’Ivoire and the region. She said adding: “Because investing in women brings empowerment which brings prosperity in families, communities, countries, and the world.”

Also on the guest list were Laure Olga Gondjout – former Gabonese Minister of Foreign Affairs; Patrica Pokou-Diaby Founder and CEO of Plot Enterprise Ltd, Ghana; Oumou Coulibaly – CEO of Ivoire Win and a prominent Ivorian cocoa processor; Massogbé Touré – Founder and CEO of the SITA Group, Kadidiatou Fadika-Coulibaly – CEO and Partner at Hudson & CIE and Roselyne Chambrier Chalobah, Country Head and Managing Director of Arise RCI.

“Women are the pillars of our African societies. It is important to make their voices heard, voices that make a difference. When you empower women economically, they invest back in their families, in communities and countries flourish. I believe that vocational training help to break some boundaries, I believe in industrialisation of Africa as the next priority agenda to create value locally and impact,” Roselyne, who is also President of WIC Capital an investment fund dedicated to financing women-owned businesses, tells us adding:

“Over the last decade, in my work, I witnessed how instrumental diversification towards more industrialisation is. I hope the AIF will support initiatives and incubators to develop women champions in agro-industries and processing industries. They can succeed as entrepreneurs, prosper in the workforce and spur economic growth. My aspiration as a leader is to continuously enhance opportunities for women to participate meaningfully in the economy and value creation.”

Young, female and driven

Also standing out on the night were three innovative young Ivorian female entrepreneurs who spoke enthusiastically about their bar-raising businesses: Salimata Toh, CEO of Agribana, spoke about this ingenious company, which transforms banana tree trunks into biodegradable bags. Ardent environmentalist Edith Kouassi is a co-founder EcoPlast Innov – a start-up specialising in the recycling of plastic waste and used tires into paving stones, pellets and other building materials. An awardee of the ‘Citizen Award for Ecology 2022’ for her commitment to ecology, as CEO of EcoPlast Innov, she has also spearheaded partnerships with some Abidjan-based businesses, including Société Générale West Africa, supporting them in their CSR approach to reducing their carbon footprint. And there was also Ahoua Touré, CEO and founder of Maison Manjou, a 100 percent Ivorian-run luxury cookies, herbal tea and gastronomy enterprise, changing the face of catering in the country.
Also attending the cocktail and dinner event, were Swazi Tshabalala, Senior Vice President of the African Development Bank Group; Beth Dunford – AfDB Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development; and Esther Dassanou, Coordinator of the Bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA).