TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2025: Janngo Capital

Time​ Magazine

2 days ago

Sub-Saharan Africa has the world's highest rate of female entrepreneurship—from venture capitalists to the roadside tomato seller. Yet African women entrepreneurs face a $42 billion funding gap. In a market where, according to the World Bank, $25 is invested in startups led by men for every $1 invested in those led by women, Janngo Capital has consistently defied the odds. Founded by Senegalese-born Fatoumata Ba, Janngo is an African venture capital firm that commits to putting 50% of its investments in companies founded, co-founded, or significantly benefiting women.
Ba, who founded Janngo in 2018 after more than four years in leadership roles at the e-commerce company Jumia, began raising its second investment fund in 2020 after securing $10 million for its first fund. Last year, Ba and her team secured another $78 million for Janngo's second investment fund—one of the largest ever raised by an investment firm led by an Africa-born woman—despite a broader funding crunch in African venture capital. (In 2024, African venture capital firms raised $3.2 billion—a 7% decline from the previous year—according to Partech Partners.) Fundraising for an African tech VC as a thirty-something francophone African female 'is not for the faint of heart' Ba says. Last year also saw a continued decline in deal activity, but Janngo completed its second successful 'exit,' as purchases and IPOs are known, following the cash sale of Tunisian startup Expensya in 2023.
'We have actually executed three exits and are closing our fourth one,' Ba says. With its second fund, the company plans to invest up to $5 million per startup in multiple installments, focusing on West Africa and key sectors such as healthcare, logistics, and financial services. Janngo's current 21 portfolio companies are 56% female-founded and led. With the new fund, Janngo's goal is to back 25 to 30 companies, primarily at the seed and Series A stages.