She.Leads.Africa: An Online Community for Young, Ambitious, Female Entrepreneurs

She.Leads.Africa is an educational platform dedicated to helping female entrepreneurs in Africa reach their business goals and dreams. Empowering young women all over the continent, SheLeadsAfrica or SLA brings together a community of female entrepreneurs for a multitude of reasons, including, seeking event information, events to attend, building networks in the world of business, and most notably finding resources on funding and encouraging financial literacy. 

Venture funding can be hard to come by on the continent due to a disproportionate amount of startups being founded and nurtured outside of Africa. According to Weetracker, 2019 was a record-making year for African VC funding with $1.34 billion raised and 75% of that number going towards startups in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. While about 6% of the startups that received funding accounted for about 83% of the total investments. 
These numbers start to pale once female-led start-ups are accounted for. According to Digest Africa, only 34 female founders of African descent were able to raise a little over $1M in funding in 2019.

Although Africa has the largest percentage of female entrepreneurs on the planet, most of these businesses are one-person operations with little opportunity for scalability.  Funding isn’t all that is needed when starting a business, opportunities to grow and learn as an entrepreneur are essential, this is where SLA comes in. From advice columns about how to start your business to guides on personal finance and asset management, the platform provides support to women looking to start and grow their businesses.

SLA hosts an annual SLAY Festival dedicated to celebrating community, culture, and innovation in the hopes of encouraging a greater pan-African network of young female entrepreneurs. This year’s SLAY Festival will be held on March 7th 2020, in Johannesburg, South Africa. You can find tickets and learn more about the community at https://sheleadsafrica.org.