The headline session will feature a fireside conversation with Julia Collins, who will share valuable insights on her experience as a successful serial tech entrepreneur. The event is expected to be the largest gathering of women in tech in Africa.

With the current global macroeconomic environment in mind, the theme for the 2023 Africa Tech Female Founder Summit is Building Resilience: Adapting to New Realities, which addresses head on the challenges African founders and operators are currently facing, as well as providing timely and practical advice and support from experienced global and African business leaders.

Julia Collins, the first black woman to build a unicorn, will give this year’s keynote, as well as host a masterclass session on Getting to Product Market Fit.

Julia is now building Planet FWD, a leading decarbonization platform for consumer companies.

She will be joined on the day by Cikü Mugambi [Kobo360], Enas Siam [FlexStock], and Thomas Njeru [Pula], who will hold a panel on “When the going gets tough”, whilst Tokunbo Ishmael [Alithea Capital] will discuss the Importance of Investing in Women.

In addition, this year, the Africa Tech Female Founder Summit will host a number of masterclasses held by TLcom Partners such as Eloho Omame, as well as a special focus on Building and leveraging Networks by leading Executive Visibility expert Glory Edozien.

Having hosted the summit with 150+ African female founders and operators in Nairobi in 2022, this year sees the event move west to Lagos, Nigeria.

Applications to attend the event are now open.  

Speaking on the upcoming event, Omobola Johnson, Senior Partner at TLcom Capital, says,

“2023 has been a challenging year for founders across the continent, so this year we will be gathering our community of women in tech in Africa to share experiences, learn from experts in their fields and develop coping tactics that will help build resilient businesses to weather this current climate. We want to discuss in depth what resilience means and how it can be infused into businesses, their leaders, and their teams.” 

Andreata Muforo, Partner at TLcom Capital, adds,

“At this year’s Africa Tech Female Founder Summit, we will not only be discussing business survival but also business growth; there are opportunities for founders, even during more turbulent economic times. We’re excited to be hosting the continent’s largest gathering of women in tech, bringing some truly experienced and inspiring speakers to the table. We want all attendees to leave with not only a vision and renewed sense of community support but also with actionable insights that will benefit their businesses”.  

TLcom’s TIDE Africa Fund II, which is one of the most active funds across Africa, boasts a leadership team which is 60% female.

The firm has actively supported female founders not only through its annual summit but notably through its track record of investing in some of Africa’s top female-led startups, such as Okra and Pula. In 2022, TLcom also doubled down on its drive to address the severe funding gap for Africa’s female tech entrepreneurs with a co-investment commitment to support the launch of FirstCheck Africa’s debut fund.

Currently, TLcom manages total commitments of approximately $350mn and holds several African startups in its portfolio, including Andela, Ajua, Autochek, Ilara Health, Kobo360, Okra, Pastel, Pula, Seamless HR, Shara, Terragon Group, Twiga Foods, uLesson and Vendease.

With an on-the-ground presence in Kenya and Nigeria as well as offices in the UK, the firm invests across all stages of the venture capital cycle with a focus on Seed and Series A.

TLcom also invests across a wide range of industries, including agriculture, education, fintech, data analytics and logistics, targeting high-growth, tech-enabled startups across Africa.

Pastel, which was initially known as Sabi Cash, was founded by Abuzar Royesh, Olamide Oladeji and Izunna Okonkwo. The new funding will enable its product-led growth approach to gain the attention of more customers, push forward the expansion of its product offerings, development of more productivity and finance management features and tools around group savings, loans and payments for small businesses.

The seed round was led by pan-African venture capital firm TLcom Capital and included VC firms such as Global Founders Capital (GFC), Golden Palm Investments, DFS Labs, Ulu Ventures, Plug and Play, and Soma Cap. 

Pastel has a goal to build digital tools to unlock the potential of small businesses in developing countries. The company seeks to be a global leader in the micro, small, and medium businesses space, building tools that allow businesses to increase sales, process payments, access financial solutions and immerse themselves in the digital economy.

Sabi Cash, the company’s flagship product, different from B2B e-commerce marketplace with the same name Sabi, is a digital bookkeeping app where small businesses can monitor and manage their transactions and customers, get insights into their cashflows, issue receipts, and effectively manage customers who owe them.

The bookkeeping and customer relationship management Pastel launched last year recorded over 100,000 merchant sign-ups by December 2021, said Okonkwo. The free app currently has more than 45,000 active merchant users. 

Pastel has recently added more features for merchants to capture more value in this chain. However, unlike other platforms that have bundled several features into one app, Pastel chose a different strategy and made each product standalone: Quick Receipt and Pastel Financing.

The Quick Receipt app provides businesses with simple invoicing and receipts tools and over 60,000 active merchant users. On the other hand, the Swift Money app, which leverages local saving groups called ajo in Nigeria to provide financing for businesses, has been stealthily built for the last three months through Pastel Financing.