In the first half of 2021, African startups raised $1.19 billion. However, female CEOs raised just 14% of the financing, up from 2% for the same period last year.

In this period, three countries – Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa accounted for up to 70% of all startup funding, with 303 startups raising $1,184,220,000, a 68% increase from $701.5m raised by 397 startups in 2020. The African Development Bank puts the funding gap for women entrepreneurs in Africa at $42 billion.

But Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem has also always had a gender gap problem, leading to the dearth of funding in women-led businesses. Yet, regardless of the lack of gender diversity on investment boards,funding gap, or even an unconscious bias, many female African tech entrepreneurs continue to impact the industry remarkably. For example, a report by The Women in Tech Africa Summit 2019 showed that despite receiving 50% less venture capital funding, global technology firms led by female entrepreneurs typically achieve a 35% higher return on investment than those managed by men.

The women on this list comprise those who have constituted significant development in African tech, while simultaneously inspiring young girls to do the same. Through funding, training, leadership or innovation, their names have become synonymous with groundbreaking tech innovations and transformations that have opened their countries, and the continent, to the global community. Here are the top ten African Women at the forefront of Africa’s digital transformation:

OdunayoEweniyi(Nigeria)

In any way we choose to define it, Odunayo Eweniyi, the co-founder and COO of Piggyvest, truly stands out. Here are a few of her accomplishments: She was recognised as one of Time Magazine’s 2021 Time 100 Next; Bloomberg’s Bloomberg 50 in 2020; Forbes Africa’s list of 20 New Wealth Creators in Africa 2019.

She was also listed by Vogue Magazine as one of the 6 women at the forefront of West Africa’s tech boom in 2020. She is the founder of FirstCheck Africa, a female-led, female-focused angel fund and investor community, and the co-founder of PushCV, a platform that connects top employers to recruiters.

Blessing Abeng(Nigeria)

Quite simply, Blessing Abeng is the person you call when the vision for the business is vast, but the growth path appears uncertain. With Disha, a tech product for creators and businesses eventuallyacquired by a unicorn or Ingressive For Good, she brings an unrivalled knowledge of the African techmarket and a commitment to organic business growth built on a deep understanding of the African consumer.

Blessing Abeng is co-founder and director of communications of Ingressive For Good, an Edtech non-profit organisation that intends to empower one million African youths, provide 5000 jobs and award $1m in scholarship by 2025 across the continent. Since its launch,Ingressive For Good has trained up to 70,000 Pan-African youths in technical skills, grown a community of over 80,000 young people, deployed 5,000 unlimited Coursera accounts, completed a 3,000-member tech training cohort with 80% employment after graduation, and awarded over $46,500 in scholarships.

She has also trained over 5,000 creators in branding, communications, marketing and business. In addition, she currently curates and nurtures a growing community of over 40,000 individuals inspired by her strides. Like she recently commented in an interview, her experience with many young entrepreneurs and large companies has led her to believe that Nigeria could become a global leader in technology, just as it does in music.

Rebecca Enonchong(Cameroon)

Rebecca Enonchongis the founder and CEO of AppTech, a company that has stood for more than two decades. AppsTech offers implementation, training, and application management services, with clients in more than 40 countries across three continents. She is also the co-founder of I/O Spaces, an inclusive co-working space in the Washington DC metro area. In addition, she sits on the board of numerous organisations, including WHO Foundation, AfriLabs Foundation, ActivSpaces and more.

She has a rich and extensive career portfolio – one that clearly puts her ahead of the pack in the tech industry. So far, her work has earned her a spot on Forbes’ list of 10 Female Tech Founders to Watch in Africa; Black Enterprise – 2014 Women of Power; New African’s 50 Leading Women in Business in 2013, IT News Africa’s 10 Africans making waves in technology, and many more.

Maya HorganFamodu(Nigeria)

A Nigerian writer recently referred to Maya Famodu as a tech sensation – it will be difficult for anyone to argue with that. Maya HorganFamodu is a venture capital investor, founder and partner at Ingressive Capital, a $10million venture fund focused on early-stage African tech and provides market entry, technology research and market operations services for firms and businesses expanding into Africa. She also co-founded Ingressive for Good, a non-profit initiative that provides micro-scholarships, technical skills training, and talent placement.

Maya moved to Lagos, Nigeria, in 2014 to launch the first $50M VC fund but encountered a lot of resistance as she was barely a year out of college and had minimal experience.Over the years, Ingressive Capital has more than doubled the assets under management it started out with by investing in pre-seed and seed-stage technology companies in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Egypt. She is said to be the youngest person – and the youngest black woman – to launch a tech fund in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Ingressive has backed companies like Bamboo, which gives Africans unrestricted access to invest in global capital markets. It has also funded Paystack; 54gene, the first African genomics research, services and development company; Vesicash, which provides secure digital escrow services for Africa and OZÉ, which enables small businesses and local ownership to grow with technology, particularly in emerging markets, among others.

Maya was listed among 2019’s”10 Inspiring Women Ruling Nigeria’s Tech Ecosystem”. She also appeared on the Forbes Africa 30 under 30 lists in 2018 under the technology category. The fact that she also did it solo is not something that can easily be ignored. One of the key goals is to ensure that brilliant startup ideas in Nigeria blossom to reach their fullest potential.

Judith Owigar(Kenya)

Judith Owigar is a Kenyan social entrepreneur who founded and currently leadsJuaKali, a directory for Kenyan blue-collar workers. She founded the company in 2015, and since then, the company has been pivotal in helping its users secure their livelihood. JudiKali service allows users to create an online profile showing their expertise, connecting them with institutional and individual clients.

The inspiration for her tech initiative stems from her belief that education and exposure are two vital ingredients for success. But, of course, it goes without saying that technology is the glue that brings it all together. This train of thought also led her to create AkiraChix, an organisation whose vision is to nurture women who use technology to develop innovations and solutions for Africa. She founded AkiraChix in 2011.

She serves in the Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions (SPIDER) board, the Lumen Labs board, the Africa WeTech (Women Enhancing Technology) Leadership Council and the St. George’s Primary School Alumni Association.

YanmoOmoregbe (Nigeria)

YanmoOmorogbe is a co-founder and the director of growth at Bamboo,a digital investment platform that curates stock-exchange traded stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), American depositary receipts (ADRs), and represents one of the newer generation of startups keen on helping Nigerians build wealth.

As a Y Combinator company, the company raised a seed round of $1.5 million, indicating growth in profitability and adoption of the platform with thousands of registered users. So far, it has processed trades for over 30,000 people. The company has a pan-African focus and is very focused on giving everyone access to investment options. According to Omorogbe, the goal is to enable investing across Africa, making it simple and easy for a Nigerian to invest in Ghanaian bonds and easier for Africans in the diaspora to invest back home.

NneileNkholise(South Africa)

NneileNkholise is a Lesotho-born medical practitioner who has taken to tech in helping solve health crises. She began her career in 2011 when she was still a mechanical engineer at the Free State’s Public Works Department. Four years later, she is the founder and CEO of iMed Tech, abiotechnology company specialising in the design and manufacturing of custom-made medical solutions to improve the lives of Africans. Nneile holds a strong belief that Africans can take charge in procuring tech-driven health solutions on a global scale.

She is also the founder and CEO of 3DIMO, a community-based investment marketplace for agricultural commodities. It also facilitates the process of investing in specific organically grown crops and animals as assets and earning future returns from the sale of their produce.

ZandileKeebine(South Africa)

Zandile is the founder and CEO of GirlCode, a registered NPO (158-642) aimed at empowering women through technology. Since its inception, the initiative has empowered thousands of young women across Africa. In 2018, GirlCode launched the Digital Academy, the GirlCoder Club, the GirlCode Accelerator Programme, and the GirlCode Incubator initiative. The GirlCode SMME accelerator is a rapid growth program designed to assist female-owned TechSMEs.

Zandile is all about making sure that she uses her platform and whatever resources available to her to nurture and grow young girls’ talent within the continent. As a result, she is also the CEO of Empower Xx, a tech placement company that helps women access some of the most sought-after STEM jobs on the market.

Betelhem Dessie(Ethiopia)

Betelhemis the founder and CEO of iCog, an outfit touted as the first artificial intelligence lab in Ethiopia. At barely 25, Betelhem has received several notable recognitions for her work in tech, including being named the young pioneer in the Ethiopian emerging tech scene by CNN and BBC. Before that, she got government recognition for her work in her community as a child.

She was a partner at Kuda Ventures, a Venture Capital & Private Equity, where she managed Kudu Women, a program by Kudu Ventures focused on investing women founders and cofounders across multiple sectors.Betelhem has four software programs copyrighted to her name, including an app developed for the Ethiopian government to map rivers used for irrigation.

FaraAshiruJituboh(Nigeria)

As the co-founder & CEO of Okra, Fara is leading the next innovation in digital banking in Nigeria – open banking, which is pushing more banks to provide customer data to pioneer open finance in Africa. For customers, the reward is a larger pool ofpersonalised and user-focused solutions.

In 2020,FaraAshiruJituboh raised a $1M pre-seed round for Okra, a Nigeria-based’ super-connectorthat allows the secure exchange of real-time financial information between customers, applications, and banks. In April 2021, the fintech firm again announced that it closed a seed round of $3.5 million to expand its data infrastructure across Nigeria.

FaraAshiruJituboh and her partner, David Peterside founded the company in June 2019. Since its launch, Okra has aggressively pushed by connecting to all banks in Nigeria and even claims to have a 99.9% guaranteed uptime. The company says it has recorded an average month-on-month API call growth of 281%. Okra has also analysed more than 20 million transactions.