As the African start-up ecosystem continues to grow and investment options for entrepreneurs widen, more homegrown initiatives are being established to focus on women founders to propel their businesses. Due to the startling statistics obtained from various media articles about women-founded businesses, one of such reported that women founders only got 2.2% of the $8.5Billion funded by venture capital investors in 2017. To support women founders and encourage them to build thriving businesses, Ventures Dialogue – a platform for education, collaboration and dissemination of investment opportunities tailored to meet the specific needs of African founders and entrepreneurs is partnering with the African Technology Foundation (ATF) on its DEMO Africa event by organizing the Tech in Heels event, to ensure women entrepreneurs are at the forefront of startup funding and investment opportunities and that there are at least 2 women founders or co-founders out of the 10 finalists contesting at the DEMO Africa event scheduled to hold in Morocco later this year (October 18th – 19th 2018). DEMO Africa is the launch pad for African technology and trends, attracting a global audience of over 2,000 people to experience the finest African innovations as they venture into the markets. Selected startups are introduced to an audience of investors, corporate acquirers, strategic partners and global media practitioners.
Tech in Heels (TIH) is a 2-day program specially designed to provide female founders with business essentials to promote their start-ups and a platform to project their businesses to an international audience through an opportunity to pitch at the Demo Africa event.
The first day of the TIH event is the female founders Bootcamp, which will have experts, who have been carefully selected from different relevant industries, share their knowledge and their unique experiences via a mix of hard and soft skill workshops to prepare the founders for the TIH pitch session taking place the next day.
