SheAscends: New Accelerator for Women Entrepreneurs in Lagos

• SheAscends is an emerging female-dominant accelerator group in Lagos, Nigeria
• The initiative is geared towards enabling women to explore their financial accessibility
• It offers support to women in scaling impact-driven businesses

SheAscends is a brand-new accelerator program designed to help growth stage women entrepreneurs in Lagos, Nigeria. The program is powered by the Funke Jones Foundation and is designed to ensure that women entrepreneurs are empowered with financial opportunities and investment preparedness.

The program offers real-world training to equip women entrepreneurs with specific skills needed to enhance their impact-driven business scaling.

To achieve its goals, the program takes on a structured approach where some businesses are chosen to participate through workshops and mentorships to experts in the respective fields.

These will help ensure that entrepreneurs involved in the program have acquired the systems to help them build their businesses.

The objective of the SheAscends initiative is to assist 100 businesses in surmounting the existing huddles through the building of capabilities as well as capital. There is availability of growth capital per qualified participant to the tune of ₦1,000,000 per business.

Also, the initiative has provided growth capital to the point where the businesses will be able to access as much as ₦100,000,000.

The entrepreneur will also benefit from mentorship with other successful businessmen who have already built similar business ventures in their respective fields.

Additionally, there will be exposure for their business through showcases in various forms of media, as well as other opportunities to collaborate with other business partners.

The overall purpose of the program is to help entrepreneurs build successful businesses that compete globally in tackling pressing issues in Africa. So far, the initiative has trained over 7,000 entrepreneurs while funding over 100 ventures across Africa, including Ghana, Kenya, and Egypt, in 46 countries.