Female-led Startups // Zidi Circle’s New Programme to Help Bridge Capital Gap

Open Call for Diaspora Women Professionals to bridge the capital gap for female-led and female-owned startups and SMEs!

It’s often challenging for female-led startups to get the funding they need, especially because female-led or female-owned ventures often draw low attention from investors.

Zidi Circle is calling on all Diaspora Women professionals to get the skills and knowledge to invest in these underserved entrepreneurs.

Through an 8 week Virtual programme, you will receive training on how to start functioning as an angel investor who invests either individually or collectively thus minimizing the risk. The training will take a very practical approach where you will have real case studies to evaluate and invest in from the Green project.

This programme is intended to help reduce the financing gap within the Green female-led and female-owned SMEs thus supporting sustainable growth, development and financial inclusion of female green entrepreneurs through diaspora investment, mentorship and portfolio management.

#AfterOfficeHours with Mercy Kyallo

This programme is solely focused on certain sectors in the Green Economy namely, Food & Agriculture, Renewable Energy and WASH(Water, sanitation, Hygiene)

As part of this program we want to bring together successful, motivated, and passionate women professionals with a broad interest in the venture investing space who are driven to find and fund exceptional Green Enterprises from SNV and Zidicircle cohorts incubation and acceleration programmes.

The programme will cover three thematic areas with 3 sub-topics per thematic area

The programme is offered free of charge and upon completion of the training, the venture backers start to invest in tickets of  1000 Euros as a minimum into some of the incubated businesses through the Zidicircle Diaspora investment Coop– a special purpose member-driven investment vehicle that enables angel investors to aggregate their investments. All the due diligence and investment support will be provided post-training.

At the conclusion of this training, the venture backers will have broad latitude in identifying, evaluating, and engaging compelling investment opportunities. They will also be able to:

•   Develop own investment strategy
•   Draft a short investment memo (Term sheet)
•   Select a small portfolio of Green SME’s currently under Incubation
•   Make first Investments
•   Make Cross border investments
•   Become certified Angel Investors

Programme Dates:

The inaugural cohort took place in September-November  2021 and they have already made their first investments.

The next cohort will start on 6th April 2022.

Qualifications & Requirements 

Interested candidates should meet the following criteria:

•   Have business or professional experience
•   Have a strong interest in developing skills and experience as investors
•   Be dedicated to change the current funding ecosystem
•   Be able to dedicate approximately 2 hours per week for 8 weeks for the program
•   Be willing to invest in Ghana’s green sector
•   Be ready to commit funds in first investments

The Diaspora Women Green Venture Backers programme was created in partnership with SNV Ghana under the  Boosting Green Employment and Enterprise Opportunities in Ghana (GrEEn) project.

The GrEEn project is a four-year action from the European Union, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Ghana, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, and the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and aims at creating greater economic and employment opportunities for youth, women, and returning migrants by promoting and supporting sustainable, green businesses in two selected regions in Ghana: the Ashanti and Western regions.

Read more about the partnership with SNV. Register here to join the programme.

Through out the year, Zidi CIrcle has a number of events lined-up that enterpreneurs in different sectors can plugin.

One of the programmes is the Green Venture Backers Programme whose main aim is to train aspiring angel investors both in #diaspora and in #Ghana on how to invest in Green startups and SME’s in Ghana. Applications for Cohort II will open up starting on 6th April 2022.