The tech space in Africa has grown tremendously over time and in 2022, they raised over $3 billion to create tech products. However, women make up only 30% of professionals in the African tech ecosystem. That is why in this article, we’ll be spotlighting some of the most outstanding leading women voices in tech, appreciating them for the work done and the impact made from Africa to the rest of the world.
1. Yanmo Omorogbe
Nationality: Nigerian
Industry: Fintech
Bio: Co-founder and COO, Bamboo. She previously worked as an investment analyst and then investment associate at African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIM).
Bamboo is a digital investment platform that gives Africans real-time access to the global market via buying shares from big tech companies like Google among others and trading US stocks with ease simply with their mobile phones and computers.
Bamboo raised $15M in series A funding in January 2022 to expand its growth and penetrate new markets while creating more products.
2. Jessica Anuna
Nationality: Nigerian
Industry: Fintech
Bio: Founder and CEO of Klasha, a financial technology company that builds cross-border commerce solutions. It got $2.4m in seed to scale.
Jessica founded klasha and became its chief executive officer in 2018. Klasha is based in Nigeria and San Francisco, USA, and is backed by Techstars. It was founded as a technology company that specialises in building software to power African commerce.
Klasha incorporates several features and a new business model that enables Africans to make payments and get the goods they want (as long as they aren’t perishable), regardless of their location.
Klasha Checkout, one of their product offerings, allows merchants in the diaspora to collect payments from Africa in local currencies.
3. Cynthia Wandia
Nationality: Kenyan
Industry: Fintech
Bio: Cynthia Wanda is the Co-founder and CEO of Kwara. Herself and David Hwan founded Kwara in 2018.
Kwara is a Fintech company with the mission to deliver a secure, delightful and affordable online and mobile banking experience for cooperative financial institutions and their members.
It’s a secure and affordable banking platform for Savings and Credit Cooperatives (SACCOs) and their members who are often excluded by traditional banks. The company secured $4m in a seed round to build Neobank for credit unions.
4. Ruth Iselema
Nationality: Nigerian
Industry: Fintech
Bio: Popularly known as Bitmama, Ruth is among the phenomenal female Web3 voices we celebrate today. Ruth raised $2m for her startup, Bitmama (a crypto-fiat exchange that allows traders to buy and sell Bitcoin and other digital assets), and took it beyond leaps and bounds.
Bitmama allows you to buy, sell, and swap Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum, Celo, USDT, Celo, XRP, Usd Coin (USDC), Stellar Lumens (XLM) and other cryptocurrencies instantly with an easy-to-use and user-friendly crypto app.
5. Tebogo Mokwena
Nationality: South African
Industry: Financial Services
Bio: Tebogo Mokwena – Oftentimes mistaken for a South African first-class cricketer who goes by the same name by Google query, is the CEO and Co-founder who raised $1.1m pre-seed loan for Akiba Digital; a Fintech company.
In addition, Akiba Digital went forward launching an SME platform called Insyts that allows SMEs in need of funding to apply for business financing seamlessly and monitor their financial health on one platform.
In July 2021, the young technopreneur launched a Mandela Day campaign to help 67 SMEs to rebuild after a social upheaval that took sway in South Africa. What a rush!
6. Oluchi Enebeli
Nationality: Nigerian
Industry: Data & Tech
Bio: Oluchi Enebeli prides herself primus inter pares, as Nigeria’s first female blockchain engineer. Sequel to this, she has worked with some of the biggest and sought-after blockchain brands in the world including Binance, Crypto.com, Bundle, and recently launched Nestcoin.
She is the Founder of Web3 ladies, an African start-up aimed at onboarding 100,000 ladies in Africa to Blockchain technology. Oluchi and her team successfully onboarded over 2000+ ladies into the Web 3 Space in 2022.
7. Jihan Abass
Nationality: Kenyan
Industry: Insurtech
Bio: Born in 1993/1994, Jihan Abass is a Kenyan Entrepreneur and businesswoman who is the founder and CEO of Lami Insurance Technology, an insurance company that successfully raised $1.8m in seed funding.
This is an insurance technology company based in Nairobi, Kenya. It was founded to help increase Africa’s Low insurance coverage and insurance penetration.
The Griffin Motor App is Lami’s flagship product which has shortened the purchase process of car insurance to less than 2 minutes.
8. Ire Aderinokun
Nationality: Nigerian
Industry: Cryptocurrency
Bio: Born on the 3rd of march,1992, Ire is Nigeria’s first female Google Developer Expert.
She’s a self-taught front-end developer and user interface designer.
She built her first website at the age of 13. It was a fan site of Neopets where she had learned her first basic HTML codes.
Now, Ire organises Frontstack, a conference for frontend engineering in Nigeria and is the COO and co-founder of HeliCarrier; prev BuyCoins.
9. Affiong Williams
Nationality: Nigerian
Industry: Agrotech
Bio: Born in 1987, Affiong is a Nigerian entrepreneur from Cross River State. In 2012, she started off ReelFruit, her own Agribusiness in her apartment in Surulere, Lagos State, Nigeria, with an initial savings of $8,000.
Affiong was listed by Forbes among Africa’s Most Promising Entrepreneurs in 2015 and her company won the prestigious bold woman award in 2015.
10. Fara Ashiru Jituboh
Nationality: Nigerian
Industry: Fintech
Bio: Fara Ashiru Jitubor is the CEO & CTO of Okra Inc Nigeria, a software engineer with proficiency in over 20 programming languages and has worked with top tech companies like Canva, Tech Hustle and the like.
With Okra Inc Nigeria; Africa’s first API Fintech connector, Fara is making waves in the Fintech Industry in Africa.
Forbes described Okra as an outlier as it grew rapidly in less than six months after launch with a total of $4.5m raised in its pre-seed round. Fara has been featured in Bloomberg and was the cover for Forbes Africa’s “The new Tycoons,” 2020.
11. Adaora Nwodo
Nationality: Nigeria
Industry: Tech Entrepreneur
Bio: Adaora Nwodo, also known as Big Nenz, is a Software Engineer at Microsoft, award-winning writer, International speaker, Digital creator Entrepreneur, and Vice President of Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, Nigerian chapter.
As a Digital creator, Adaora helps over 6,000 software engineers to kick-start their journey through the tech content she posts on her Youtube channel; AdoraHack. Also, she publishes articles that border on software engineering, productivity and career growth on her blog.
She is the COO of Lend a hand of hope initiative; a non-governmental organization focused on empowering people in rural communities through education and relevant skill acquisition.
In March 2022, Adaora won the young CISO Network excellence in disruptive Tech, cloud and embedded device security award for her work in building and advocating for Disruptive technology on the cloud. Adaora has been featured on Tech point Africa, Tech cabal and the Punch newspapers.
12. Ada Nduka Oyom
Nationality: Nigeria
Industry: Tech Entrepreneur
Bio: Ada Nduka Oyom is the founder of She code Africa. She is an award-winning Software Developer, Developer Relations lead, Community expert, open-source advocate, and an International speaker.
ShecodeAfrica is a non-profit organization that focuses on empowering and celebrating young girls and women in Tech across Africa. The community has an active membership of 27,000 members from across 20 African countries.
Ada has received multiple tech awards and as a Developer Relations Ecosystem Community Manager at Google, she works consistently to maintain and improve the experiences by coordinating and overseeing some of the Google Developer outreach or support programs like Google Developer Groups (GDGs) and Google Women Techmakers (WTM) initiative in the Sub-Saharan Africa region.
13. Sarah Menker
Nationality: Ethiopia
Industry: Tech Entrepreneur
Bio: Sarah is the Founder & CEO of Gro Intelligence; an analytics start-up deploying artificial intelligence systems for food security and climate stability solutions closed an $85 million Series B round.
Gro, which is private, has raised more than $125 million in funding and has offices in New York, Singapore and Nairobi, Kenya, drawing from thousands of data sources all around the world.
14. Ugwem Eneyo
Nationality: Nigerian
Industry: Energy
Ugwem Eneyo is Nigerian-American (Nigerian by heritage and born in Illinois, United States of America). She is an engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur, currently serving as the co-founder and CEO of SHYFT Power Solutions (formerly known as Solstice Energy Solutions).
SHYFT is a venture-backed, award-winning energy technology company, building patented distributed energy resource management systems for Africa’s fastest-growing power companies.
It has raised $4.5 million so far and it is focused on the digitization of energy to optimize distributed energy resource performance and operational efficiency in emerging markets.
15. Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson
Nationality: Nigerian
Industry: HealthTech
Bio: Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson is the Chief Executive Officer of Healthtracka; a health tech startup decentralizing access to medical diagnostics in Africa, through at-home testing.
Ifeoluwa, in an interview with TechCabal, explained that her dad suffered a stroke which led to his demise and that led her to birth Healthtracka. Today, Healthtracka offers health screening tests and ensures that test results are properly reviewed, confirmed accurately by medical professionals, and made available to clients within 48 hours.
The business raised $1.5 million in seed funding in 2022, eight months after its participation in the Techstars Toronto accelerator program held in October 2021.
16. Sonya Kuhnel
Nationality: South African
Industry: CryptoCurrency
Bio: Sonya is an entrepreneur and the founder of the Blockchain Academy, where she provides training and consulting on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies worldwide, in order to educate individuals and organisations on how to innovate and better prepare for the future.
She’s also the Co-founder and Director of Bitcoin Events, organisers of Africa’s first and largest, Blockchain and Bitcoin Africa Conferences since 2015. With an outstanding record of 15000 delegates from 165 countries, 300 speakers and 100 sponsors participating in the events and conferences.
17. Tarneem Saeed
Nationality: Sudanese
Industry: E-payment
Bio: Tarneem is the CEO of Alsoug. She is one of the most powerful businesswomen in the country. Alsoug is Sudan’s largest online marketplace, offering e-payment and logistics services.
In six years only, Tarneem Saeed made Alsoug the country’s leading e-commerce startup, notably by raising $5 million from venture capitalists.
Despite the persistent challenges female entrepreneurs face in Sudan, Tarneem Saeed is determined to go much further in developing Alsoug. She is getting ready to break into the fintech market with a national payment system that will allow for quick, easy, and secure transactions for all Sudanese.
18. Ethel Delali Cofie
Nationality: Ghanaian
Industry: IT
Bio: Ethel Delali Cofie is an IT professional, entrepreneur and consultant for IT projects. She is from the Republic of Ghana. She is the founding member of Women in Tech Africa, an organization working for the empowerment of African women by enabling technological sources.
Ethel is a multiple tech award winner and continues to blaze the trail in her country.
