Five women founders have been named winners of the inaugural Tech FoundHER Africa Challenge, taking home more than $100,000 in equity-free funding at an event held at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Backed by Naspers and Prosus, the program targets one of the continent’s most persistent gaps, the chronic underfunding and underexposure of women-led technology businesses. The announcement marks both a showcase of African innovation and a test of whether a new model of corporate support can repair past missteps.
From Naspers Foundry to Tech FoundHER
The new initiative arrives in the shadow of Naspers Foundry, a R1.4 billion venture fund launched in 2019 with the ambition of transforming South Africa’s startup landscape. By the time the fund was wound down in 2023, however, data from the Competition Commission showed that only a small fraction of its R700 million deployed had gone to founders who were women or people of color, sparking public criticism in a country defined by sharp inequality. The Commission also highlighted the absence of a mandate to support historically disadvantaged founders, and SweepSouth, co-founded by Aisha Pandor, remained the fund’s only investment in a startup with a woman of color on the founding team.
A Targeted, Grant-Based Challenge
Tech FoundHER, launched in September 2025, represents a deliberate break from that model, emphasizing grants rather than equity, a pan-African footprint rather than a South Africa-only focus, and an explicit commitment to women in leadership. The African edition followed a pilot earlier in 2025 in India and drew more than 1,160 applications, sourced in partnership with Lionesses of Africa, a network of 1.8 million female entrepreneurs. Naspers South Africa CEO Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa frames the challenge as a way to deliver not only capital, but also networks and market access, which she argues are essential for women-led startups to scale.
Winners Show Breadth of African Innovation
First place went to Kenya’s Esther Kimani for Farmer Lifeline, which uses solar-powered, AI-enabled devices to detect crop pests and diseases early and help smallholder farmers cut losses. Nigeria’s Folayemi Agusto secured second place with Tix Africa, a self-service platform for event ticketing, sales, and payments, while joint third place went to Kenya’s Margaret Wanjiku of Pollen Patrollers, developing smart beehive technology, and Democratic Republic of Congo-based founder Jenny Ambukiyenyi Onya of Neotex.ai, which builds AI tools for small livestock farmers. The AI for Good category was awarded to South Africa’s Gender Rights in Tech, led by Leonora Tima, which provides technology and data tools to support survivors of gender-based violence.
Tackling a Multi-Billion Dollar Gender Funding Gap
The focus on women founders aligns with research showing that women-led startups in Africa receive less than 3 percent of venture capital, despite women making up a significant share of the continent’s entrepreneurial base. Various studies estimate that closing the roughly $42 billion financing gap for women entrepreneurs could unlock hundreds of billions of dollars in additional GDP, turning inclusion into a macroeconomic opportunity. Naspers and Prosus executives, including Chief Sustainability Officer Prajna Khanna, position Tech FoundHER as a way to give women-led companies the access, capability, and visibility they need, with eligibility criteria that require at least one woman founder, a tech-focused or tech-enabled model, pre-Series B stage, and clear revenue traction.
From Equity Stakes to Equity-Free Capital
The move from Foundry’s equity-based investments to non-dilutive grants reflects both strategic and practical considerations inside Naspers. Mahanyele-Dabengwa has publicly acknowledged that early-stage founders often need real equity or grant capital rather than debt, and equity-free grants reduce dilution fears while simplifying governance and compliance demands that can slow corporate venture deals. At the same time, the Tech FoundHER prize pool of just over $100,000 is modest compared to the tens of millions that Naspers previously committed through large equity rounds, raising questions about whether the new approach can move the needle at scale.
Signals for African Venture Capital
For founders, the immediate value of Tech FoundHER lies in the combination of funding, mentorship, and access to the wider Naspers and Prosus ecosystems, which can be as important as the cash in unlocking customers and follow-on capital. The program, however, also underscores a broader tension in African venture, where large corporate investors are de-risking and stepping back from direct equity exposure at the same moment local founders are calling for more patient, substantial capital. As Naspers shifts toward grant-making and ecosystem support, it leaves open the question of who will fill the gap in later-stage, high-ticket funding for African tech companies.
Tech FoundHER Africa is both an attempt at course correction and a real boost for a select group of women founders working on high-impact technologies. The challenge demonstrates that with relatively small sums of equity-free capital, corporates can surface strong startups, provide meaningful visibility, and begin to address structural imbalances in who gets funded. Whether this model becomes a durable pillar of Naspers’s strategy and expands to deliver material, long-term impact across the ecosystem will determine if it is remembered as a turning point or a well-intentioned experiment.