Madica providing support to help African businesses achieve profitability – Brenda Wangari

In a recent interview with Guardian Nigeria, Brenda Wangari, the Head of Portfolio Success at Madica, shared insightful perspectives on the company’s mission to empower African businesses.

As a key leader in Madica, Brenda said she is dedicated to providing strategic support that enables startups across the continent to achieve profitability, generate employment, and drive industry disruption.

Her role is pivotal in fostering innovation and growth within Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, making her an influential voice in the ongoing transformation of the continent’s business landscape. She shares insights into the company’s vision for the business ecosystem.

Can you provide an overview of Madica’s investment programs for pre-seed stage tech companies?
Madica is an investment program that invests up to $200k in mission-driven founders and offers them structured support for a period of eighteen months. This support takes various forms like the hands-on support through our select group of mentors who guide our founders through strategies and tactics for their businesses.

We also offer our founders with access to executive coaching to grow their leadership skills as individuals and team leaders. We also organise immersive trips to various ecosystems worldwide; we have been to London and Cape Town. Most of our interventions are designed to meet the needs of our founders and are customizable based on this.

What are the top three highlights you would emphasise from the report?
Sector diversity – The best performing sectors in terms of diversity are legal tech, e-health, HR & recruitment. While fintech is leading in terms of number of startups and investments, the number of female founders and CEOs is still relatively low.

Increase in female CEOs and founding teams – while still very low, there has been an increase in the number of females in founding teams and holding CEO positions.

Smaller ecosystems outperform the larger ones from a diversity perspective, with greater ratios of female leaders in markets such as Zambia, Rwanda, and Senegal than in traditional hotspots such as South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya.

What are the main challenges women face in technology careers in Africa, and how can these be overcome?
Women need access to networks, world-class support and most importantly funding to build and thrive in their careers. We believe that tackling these challenges requires an ecosystem approach as various actors are required to structure and implement interventions to tackle these challenges.

What initiatives is Madica implementing to support women in the ecosystem?
We are active collaborators and partners with communities dedicated to supporting women, such as Women Who Build Africa, which recently released a groundbreaking documentary showcasing the women driving the tech ecosystem, from founders to investors to corporates.

We are passionate about telling the success stories of women in the ecosystem because we believe that what people don’t see doesn’t exist. There are many women actively making a positive impact but people might not necessarily know about them so we are keen to partner with more initiatives telling the stories of these women.

For founders within the Madica ecosystem, we intentionally provide support that pushes them towards building solid businesses that can achieve profitability, create jobs, disrupt industries and provide returns for their investors.

How can the ecosystem achieve a more inclusive environment for women in the tech industry in Africa?
We all have to collaborate to achieve an inclusive ecosystem. Some challenges are more straightforward to tackle, but the most pressing ones are systematic biases, which have kept women from the tables where decisions are made about them. Female-focused funding interventions like women-focused funding programs empower women founders with connections to investors to fund their businesses, creating jobs that women can tap into.

What steps is Madica taking to close the digital gender gap and ensure equal access to digital tools, education, and opportunities for women?
We believe in the power of open-source tools and publications such as Disrupt Africa’s Diversity Dividend report. They help paint a clear and more sober picture of the ecosystem, which helps guide various interventions crafted with women in mind.

Further down the line, we are looking into creating open-sourced quality educational content. We will also remain true to our mission of funding female founders building tech businesses across the continent.