Examples of ShEquity’s investees addressing climate change, healthcare and food security challenges include:
Backing women entrepreneurs and innovators has the great potential of accelerating the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As demonstrated by ShEquity portfolio companies, women-owned businesses are making tremendous strides in sectors as diverse as health, digital technology, agriculture, transportation, and clean energy.īy leveraging the talents, skills and innovation of women entrepreneurs, we can bring needed actions to global challenges such as climate change as well as healthcare and food security. Gender-lens investing is much needed and timely not least because female entrepreneurship is on the rise globally – and Africa has the highest percentage of female entrepreneurs in the world, with one in four women running their own business. That ecosystem is a key to unlocking the potential of African female-led and owned businesses. ShEquity is committed to providing smart investments to female-led and owned businesses and to building a female-focused investment ecosystem that economically empowers African female innovators and entrepreneurs. This is where the investor platform, ShEquity, steps in. Women entrepreneurs deserve equitable access to financial and technical support.
Even when women join forces, analysis of start-up financing deals shows that since 2013 only 3% of funding went to all-women founding teams. It also suggests that Africa’s untapped female economy is worth $15 trillion. The World Bank estimates that only 2% of global private equity goes to women-led start-ups and that the global gap is $1.7 trillion, with Africa accounting for $42 billion. One of those is the vast gender financing gap. Yet many face institutional, cultural and structural challenges. It can be hardly surprising therefore that so many of Africa’s climate solutions are coming from women entrepreneurs. It is a sector that accounts for 14% of total GDP and 43.8% of total jobs. There are also many more women than men employed in agriculture – Africa’s largest single industry by value and jobs. Their roles as primary caregivers and providers of food and fuel make them more vulnerable when flooding and drought occur. Women are more affected by climate change than men – 80% of people displaced by it are women. One of the lesser discussed characteristics of climate change is its unintended but innate gender bias. Pauline Koelbl, founder and managing partner at ShEquity