Startups co-founded and led by women continued to be underrepresented, especially in later-stage financing.In an analysis done by Africa: The Big Deal, the research observed that of all the equity deals tracked since 2019, about 2,808, worth over $14 billion, 25 per cent have involved a start-up with at least a female co-founder (which also means that in three out of four cases, the founder or founding team is exclusively male).
Africa: The Big Deal noted that while 25 per cent is encouraging, these female co-founded start-ups have only attracted 17 per cent of the funding over the period. In other words, “when they managed to raise, they raised on average 1.5x times less than their exclusively-male (co-)founded counterparts.”
Further, the report noted that if the focus is on the gender of the CEO (technically a subset of female co-founded start-ups, as the CEO is almost always one of the co-founders), only 13 per cent of the deals have involved a start-up with a female CEO since 2019.
“They claimed just over five per cent of the funding though, which means that when a female CEO managed to raise, they raised 2.5x times less on average than their male CEO peers… Has this improved over time? Nope.
“Last year saw the worst ratios since we started tracking the data in 2019 (14 per cent of deals, three per cent of the funding). And the 2025 numbers so far (Jan-May) look even worse, with nine per cent of the deals and 0.9 per cent of the amount raised going to female-led ventures.
“But now that we have a sample large enough (at least when the deals are ‘labelled’, which interestingly enough, is only about half of the time), we have the opportunity to disaggregate by stage and see what it tells us”, the analysis stated.
What this revealed, according to Africa: The Big Deal is that the issue is particularly prevalent for later-stage rounds, saying that the more progress is seen on the funding journey, the less female-led and female co-founded ventures are represented.
“For instance, if we look at Series B and Series C deals together (to address the fact that the Series C sample* is rather small) – we’re talking about 106 deals with an average value of $40 million, only 14 per cent involved female co-founded ventures, who raised just 11 per cent of the total amount. And only five per cent were female-led and raised just four per cent of the total invested. In comparison, at the pre-seed stage, 28 per cent of the deals (and 24 per cent of the amount invested) involved female co-founded start-ups, including 15 per cent (10 per cent) with a female CEO,” it stated.
Concluding, the analysis revealed that ‘this is a pipeline issue,’ and not a valid excuse to justify the chronic underrepresentation of women.
It noted that after all, investors have managed to fund 700+ rounds involving a female co-founded venture since 2019 (two a week on average over the period) and allocate $2.4 billion to them.
The issue though, according to it is that as they mature, female co-founded and female-led start-ups struggle more than others to attract funding, especially large and very large tickets.
“To look at it positively: early-stage investors have been building the deal flow. They could do more – we’re far off from gender equity – but there’s somewhere to start. And now there’s a missed opportunity that smart later-stage investors will surely know to grasp, eventually,” it stated.
