She Wins Africa Program Expands to 1,000 Womenpreneurs

• The She Wins Africa initiative will increase the number of femalepreneurs served from 100 to 1,000 in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Female-owned businesses from the initial cohort received more than $4 million in funding, surpassing projections

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, and the Abdul Samad Rabiu Africa Initiative has launched an ambitious Programme to assist women entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The "She Wins Africa" Programme aims to provide funding assistance to 1,000 women business owners with $4 million from these two organisations.

The program’s expansion was announced during the recent closing ceremony of the pilot phase, where organisers highlighted the results of the pilot phase and its increasing institutional support.

In addition, increase in the number of women receiving financial assistance, the She Wins Africa Programme has also been helping women-led businesses in a variety of African countries grow their operations, investment readiness and access to financial markets for one year.

At the event, the IFC representative highlighted that supporting just 100 women was not enough to meet the need in a region with Africa's size and entrepreneurial opportunity.

This success of this initial cohort, particularly with regard to capital and market access, evidenced the necessity for increasing support.

The next phase will be more strategically focused and have a more concentrated initiative on startups, growth companies and scale-ups and provide customized technical assistance and direct access to capital via funds and partner banks.

Participating startups rose over $4 million dollars in outside financing with 17 women-led businesses receiving outside investment through this program.

The program also provided substantial technical support, including advisory services, investor interactions across both regional and international markets, and mentorship designed to build both business fundamentals and investor confidence.

According to Programme organisers, the upcoming expanded phase will be the first of four projects planned for the She Wins Africa Programme.

It is expected that the various phases of scale-up will create deeper regional impact, strengthen investment pipelines, and facilitate greater access to financing and technical support for female entrepreneurs.

The next phase will focus more on scale-ready businesses; however, the continued support of early stage businesses will allow more women-owned MSME's to have significant impact on promoting economic growth in Africa through inclusion.