Nigeria’s female-led startups are attracting increased attention from impact-focused investors, as new data shows gender-lens capital is becoming a stronger feature of the country’s private investment landscape.

According to the Nigerian Impact Investment Landscape (2025) report, a growing pool of domestic fund managers, including Aruwa Capital, Alitheia IDF, Verod, and Sahel Capital, are leading the shift toward more intentional investments in women-led enterprises.

Despite a wider slowdown in private capital flows caused by FX volatility and global venture headwinds, gender-focused funds continue to prioritise sectors where women entrepreneurs are active, particularly financial services, consumer, and agribusiness.

The report notes that gender-lens investment (GLI) “flows cluster in financial services and consumer/agribusiness,” even though other segments such as manufacturing, creative industries, renewables for MSMEs, and the care economy remain underfunded.

Aruwa Capital and Alitheia IDF remain some of the most active local investors deploying gender-smart capital, as domestic general partners (GPs) rise in prominence.

The report highlights an expanding pool of Nigeria-based GPs implementing gender-lens investment strategies, which signals a shift from foreign-led capital flows to more domestically anchored impact financing.

These local investors are increasingly leveraging blended finance, guarantees, and catalytic capital mechanisms such as first-loss capital and partial credit guarantees to reach more female-led SMEs, which often struggle with short-term and FX-exposed financing.

However, challenges continue to limit the volume of capital flowing to women-led enterprises.

Read also: Stears, Ventures Platform unveil first-ever liquidity index for African private markets

The report identifies several systemic gaps, which include no gender-labelled bond on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX), which is a missing instrument that would enable large-scale wholesale financing for women-focused SME lending.

Also, short-term and FX-dependent loans, which create mismatches for women-led MSMEs that need flexible, long-term financing and fragmented data, as Nigeria lacks a unified GLI ledger, and banks inconsistently tag gender-focused portfolios.

These gaps mean female-led startups still operate in what the report calls ‘underfunded segments’ despite the rising interest among investors.

Despite these challenges, there is still an opportunity for a gender bond and scaled financing as the report recommends extending existing local-currency guarantee capacity through institutions like InfraCredit, DBN, and BOI, to gender-focused segments.

It also calls for the introduction of a Nigerian Gender Bond currently being explored by industry partners, which could open new institutional investment channels for female-led businesses.

With Nigeria attracting roughly 66 percent of West Africa’s deal volume and domestic GPs strengthening the gender-lens ecosystem, the market is poised for growth if structural barriers are addressed.

The report noted that a coordinated chain of policy, incentives, and catalytic capital could accelerate gender-smart, green, and inclusive finance, putting women-led startups at the centre of Nigeria’s next investment wave.