South African female founders of colour confront career, funding challenges

Original Story Published by: Joanne Carew, CIO, www.cio.com
Photo Source: ©CIO

(Above) Baratang Miya

Africa leads the rest of the world when it comes to female business owners. In fact, women in Africa are more likely to be entrepreneurs than their male counterparts. And yet, conversations with South African female founders of technology companies reveal that the business world is still not wired to support them.

Almost 50% of the women in the non-agricultural labour force are entrepreneurs, but female-led businesses earn 34% lower profits, on average, than companies steered by men, according to a World Bank report on women’s businesses in Africa.

Meanwhile, the impact of the pandemic on the fortunes of female founders of business in Africa isn’t entirely clear, but the disruption likely hit women worse than men. For example, venture capital (VC) funding for female-founded companies fell dramatically in 2020 across the world, according to Crunchbase.

“I definitely think that investors tend to have a risk perception around women,” says Dr. Aisha Pandor, co-founder of SweepSouth, an online platform for booking, paying for and managing home cleaning services. Add a pandemic to the mix, with so much disruption and uncertainty, and you can understand why investors would default to what they know, Pandor says. “Naturally, funding for women will dry up.”