Female tech founders can now apply to attend the second Africa Tech Female Founder Summit to be held virtually on 27th October, 2020. The event is organized by TLcom, an Africa focused venture capital firm. The first inaugural event was held in 2019.
TLcom has called for applications for the event that will feature speakers from across Africa’s Female Tech scene including Hilda Moraa of Pezesha, Wambui Kinya of Andela and Fara Ashiru Jituboh of Okra.
This second summit summit is themed Reset – Survive – Thrive“ with an aim of equipping female tech founders to achieve commercial success and scale in the long-term despite the impact of the global pandemic. The event features a number of panel sessions and workshops. It will gather female entrepreneurs from across the continent to experience the power of connecting and learning from and being a resource to each other.
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Attendees will also get access to business and fundraising advice directly from investors at TLcom, Aruwa Capital and the IFC (International Finance Corporation), in the newly-launched “Ask Me Anything” Q&A session.
Omobola Johnson, Senior Partner at TLcom Capital, spoke on the event saying, “For the African entrepreneur, resources and support are limited in comparison to other regions but as a sector, we must address the tough reality that this is even worse for female entrepreneurs on the continent. With this in mind, the second Female Founder Summit is a firm commitment from TLcom that we cannot and will not ignore these discrepancies.”
“We want to play our part in levelling the playing field and through the Summit, we continue to establish a network for Africa’s most thoughtful and innovative female founders to access strategic and operational support as they push to achieve massive value generation.” he added.
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In October last year, TLcom held its inaugural Female Founder Summit in Lagos as a closed event with 50+ female tech entrepreneurs and executives in attendance. Key speakers at the event included Funke Opeke of Main One, Odunayo Eweniyi of Piggyvest, Miishe Addy of Jetstream and Isis Nyong’o of Mum’s Village. This year’s event marks TLcom’s return with an exclusive focus on female founders within African tech.
“We know only too well the benefits of a diverse ecosystem, not only due to the fact that half of our senior team is female, but also through the quality of female entrepreneurs we’ve engaged with over the last years. We recently invested in a female-led startup in Okra and we view the second Female Founder Summit as a robust commitment towards strengthening our pipeline of female founders.” Andreata Muforo, Partner at TLcom Capital said.
“Founders who attended last year’s Summit have shared how they have been collaborating after the event as mentors, clients, service providers to each other, and even merging of companies between two of the attendees. Our focus this year will be ensuring the next crop of female entrepreneurs emerge to become even more empowered to execute the next phase of their business strategies.” he added.
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TLcom’s TIDE Africa Fund, one of the most active funds across Sub-Saharan Africa, secured an additional $31mn investment in February 2020, bringing its total to $71mn. In recent months, the VC firm has reiterated its commitment to investing in African tech despite the impact of COVID-19 and is set to announce new investments in the next few months.
Currently, TLcom manages a total of about $200 million commitments with eight African startups in its portfolio namely Andela, Ajua, Kobo360, Okra, Shara, Terragon Group, Twiga Foods and uLesson.
The firm has presence in Kenya and Nigeria with offices in the UK. It invests across all stages in the venture capital cycle of a wide range of industries including agriculture, education, data analytics and logistics.
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