5 Women Making great Impact in Africa’s Fintech Industry

Female ‘techpreneurs’ are taking their place in Africa’s male-dominated fintech boom, but gender bias makes it harder for them to access finance and grow their businesses.

Africa has double the average rate of women-led fintechs. Less than 5% of funds went to fintechs led only by women. Female techpreneurs face lower valuations, more oversight.

From 2013 to 2021, less than 5% of the total $12.6 billion in funding to Africa’s tech startups went to all-female founding teams compared with 82% to all male-ones, data shared by Briter Bridges showed.

Below are the list of 5 Women Making great Impact in Africa’s Fintech Industry

Fara Ashiru Jituboh:  She is a Nigerian-born and US-based entrepreneur had always yearned to make an impact in her home country. With a background in Computer Science at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, she has gained a wealth of experience working with multiple Fortune 500 companies.

Fara Ashiru Jituboh is the co-founder and CEO/CTO of Okra, Inc., a fintech Nigerian-based startup that allows for the exchange of real-time financial information between customers, applications, and banks. Jituboh is a software engineer and entrepreneur, who is fluent in over 20 programming languages.

Chilufya Mutale: She the current Co-Founder and CEO of PremierCredit Zambia. She previously worked at BlueOrange Finance Group as a Director, Financial Services Consultant.

Chilufya Mutale attended Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. She is an expert in fintech start-ups, inclusive digital financial services, consumer lending and SME finance. She specialises in human-centred product development, risk-based pricing model designs and implementing programs supporting customer financial literacy and inclusion. 

Odunayo Eweniyi: Ms. Eweniyi is the co-founder of several tech start-ups, including Piggyvest, FirstCheck Africa and PushCV. Odunayo Eweniyi is Co-founder and COO of PiggyVest. She previously cofounded pushcv.com, one of the largest job sites in Africa with the largest database of prescreened candidates.

She has 5 years’ experience in Business Analysis and Operations and is a graduate (first class) of Computer Engineering, Covenant University, Nigeria.

She works to support the inclusion of women in technology by working with hubs and female-focused networks, including For Creative Girls, GreenHouse Labs, She Leads Africa, Itanna.

She is also the cofounder of the women’s community, Wine and Whine Nigeria.

Meghan McCormick: She is the Co-founder & ceo of OZÉ, a fintech company in Ghana that equips African entrepreneurs to make data-driven decisions to both improve their business performance and access capital.

Meghan started her work as a Community Economic Development Volunteer in the Peace Corps in Guinea. During her service, she founded Guinea’s first business accelerator, Dare to Innovate, and scaled it to be French-speaking Africa’s most active small business accelerator.

Meghan previously worked as an Innovation Strategist at Monitor Deloitte. She has an MBA from MIT and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Yvonne Johnson: She is the Co-founder/CEO of Indicina – a FinTech infrastructure start-up focused on Africa.

Yvonne Johnson is a strategic thinker with a demonstrated ability to influence change by leveraging innovative solutions.

She comes with over a decade of leadership experience supporting executive management on strategy within Financial Services.

Most recently, Yvonne led the Strategy team of a Tier 1 Nigerian banking group. She received her MBA at the Kellogg School of Management where she graduated on the Kellogg Dean’s List and was a recipient of the Donald P. Jacobs International Scholarship.

Yvonne is also an early stage investor/adviser in Pan-African technology start-ups, notably Andela and Flutterwave.