Eloho Omame, Odunayo Eweniyi launch female-focused angel fund – FirstCheck Africa

Eloho Omame, MD of Endeavour Nigeria and Odunayo Eweniyi, COO and co-founder of PiggyVest have partnered together to launch a female-focused angel fund, FirstCheck Africa.

According to Eloho in a tweet, FirstCheck Africa was launched “to invest “ridiculously early” and open door for female founders, and to help women invest in tech.”

“Our vision is an African future that women have an equal hand in leading & shaping through tech & entrepreneurship,” she adds.

Eloho said the idea came up when Odunayo and her were not impressed with level of female representation in African tech and they needed to get involved to fix it.

They pointed out that women were under-represented in the early stage funding ecosystem and this is evidenced by the fact that In 2019, less than five per cent of global venture capital went to female-led companies. This was even worse in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic.

They cited that studies showed that venture fundraising processes favour male founders from very early on, particularly at the pitch stage.

According to FirstCheck, “Women in African tech are over-mentored and under-funded.”

“So many well-meaning programs offer female entrepreneurs mentorship, training and incubation. But this disproportionate focus on women’s capacity over our access to capital and networks ignores the consistent evidence that women-led startups tend to perform better and shifts the burden of fixing the problem to female founders. The stark reality is that even when pitching identical businesses, women are less likely to get funded.”

FirstCheck believes that fixing capital access for female tech entrepreneurs in Africa needs an intentional, female-led approach. So the fund intends to advance equity, capital and leadership for a generation of women in Africa through technology & entrepreneurship.

The angel fund plans to invest up $25,000 in up to six women this year, in women in Africa with bold, entrepreneurial ideas. FirstCheck Africa will also be developing the middle tier of female angel investors, by building a community of millennials and mid-career women that want to learn about tech and angel investing and put their dollars — small or large — behind ventured-backed technology companies in Africa.

FirstCheck Africa is looking for:

• Audacious women in that are determined to launch their first technology-enabled startups; and
• Mission-aligned partners that see the overlooked potential of Africa’s women-led startups.

So women founders are enjoined to get more information about the fund from the website and participate.