March 8, 2022 Dear African female founder: We know that at a time like this, with all the women’s month campaigns, panels and events coming at you from all directions, it’s easy to feel, well, flattered. These moments matter. You should take a beat to celebrate your potential and your hard work. But, the…

Celebrating Emerging Technology Ecosystem Leaders — Who inspires you? The stories of Africa’s tech ecosystem are still being written. And when they are told, the talented operators writing the playbooks will stand right alongside the visionary founders that we all love and admire. At FirstCheck Africa, we’re early believers in Africa’s women in tech. About one in five tech…

We started FirstCheck Africa about this time last year to write early-stage checks for startups founded or co-founded by exceptional women. We’ve made strong progress. This is our year 1 update. We’re invested in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt. We did our first follow-on and made our first two seed-stage investments. We’ve also tweaked and…

By Jesulayomi Adetola “Early-stage founders should focus on no-code tools and technologies that they can leverage to build faster, quicker and efficiently without spending too much money.” — Nelly Yusupova. Although most startups begin with an MVP, about 90% of them eventually fail — why? According to CB Insights’ recent…

“Remember that this started out as just a side project, so the company wasn’t incorporated and we didn’t have a bank account, but we were able to get our first 3 customers.” — Abdul Hassan (CEO/Co-Founder, Mono) “Zero To One” is a monthly conversation hosted by FirstCheck Africa on Clubhouse…

Back in January, when we announced that we were building FirstCheck Africa, we had what probably seemed like a risky plan. FirstCheck Africa would invest up to $25,000 each in “ridiculously early” startups led by women in Africa. Since then, we’ve been heads-down, meeting founders, evaluating startups and writing our…

“Release your product as early as possible and listen to user feedback.” — Ire Aderinokun (Co-Founder/COO, Buycoins Africa) A typical issue that many early-stage startups struggle with is customer acquisition. …

Happy International Women’s Day! A common misconception about working in tech is that you have to know how to code or be involved in some form of engineering. This is one of the reasons why, for International Women’s Day this year, we decided to speak to 30 brilliant women who…

About FirstCheck Africa — What is FirstCheck Africa? Founded by Eloho Omame and Odunayo Eweniyi, FirstCheck Africa is a female-led angel fund that invests “ridiculously early” in women in African tech. We’re also building a female-led investor community that creates opportunities for the middle tier of women, who are millennial or in their mid-careers, to invest in venture-backed…