Africa’s Compound Interest: The Women Who Gathered in Nairobi to Talk Ownership, Not Just Opportunity

Africa’s Compound Interest: The Women Who Gathered in Nairobi to Talk Ownership, Not Just Opportunity

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 Africa Soft Power Summit, a series of frank, data-grounded conversations signalled a shift in how the continent’s economic future is being framed

In the years since summits on African development began multiplying on the international calendar, a persistent question has gone largely unanswered: who, precisely, captures the value of that growth? At the seventh annual Africa Soft Power Summit in Nairobi this May, women executives, entrepreneurs, policymakers and creative industry leaders spent two days making the case that answering that question correctly is both a matter of equity and economic logic.The summit drew speakers from across finance, investment, technology, government and the creative industries. Themed Africa’s Compound Interest: Aligning Ecosystems of Finance, Creativity and Human Capital for Growth, it ran from May 20 to May 23, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency Nairobi Westlands; across its many conversations, those of its women participants formed a coherent thread worth tracing. Its founder, Dr. Nkiru Balonwu, opened proceedings with a question she framed as structural, not rhetorical: not simply how Africa grows, but who captures the value of that growth.
“Countries and regions that shape the world,” she told delegates, “align theircapital with their culture, their talent with their market, their innovation with ownership.”
From L-R: Ummi Bashir, CBS, Kenya’s Principal Secretary for Culture, The Arts and Heritage; H.E. Zainab Hawa Bangura, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Director-General of the UN Office at Nairobi.
 A keynote that placed culture at the centre
Before the panels began, Ummi Bashir, CBS, Kenya’s Principal Secretary for Culture, The Arts and Heritage, set the philosophical terms. “Culture is not a backdrop of development,” she said. “It is the very foundation.” Her call was for the conversations formed at the Summit to translate into lasting collaboration across Africa and the diaspora, a framing that would recur, in different registers, throughout the two conference days.The keynote address came from H.E. Zainab Hawa Bangura, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Director-General of the UN Office at Nairobi, a figure whose career in diplomacy and peacebuilding has spanned some of the continent’s most complex environments. Her remarks were notably confident in register.

“Africa is no longer waiting to be discovered,” she told delegates, “but instead, shifting global conversation and debate, not merely reacting to them.”

Women’s leadership as economic infrastructure: the systems argument The first full conference day, May 21, 2026, opened with “Designing Power: Women’s Leadership as Economic Infrastructure,” a panel that made clear early it was not a discussion about representation. It was a discussion about how organisations function when their information flows are distorted.
From L-R: Uche Ofodile, CEO, MTN Benin; Joyce-Ann Wainaina, Managing Partner, Chui Ventures
Uche Ofodile, CEO of MTN Benin, framed the argument in operational terms.

“Leadership determines what gets magnified in the organisation. Diversity and inclusion ensures that the information leadership gets is really solid.” Her sharpest formulation: “You can’t measure what was never unlocked.“

The funding data came into stark relief through Joyce-Ann Wainaina, Managing Partner at Chui Ventures, who observed that Africa has more female entrepreneurs than any other continent, yet female-founded startups received less than 1% of venture capital deployed across the continent in 2025. “Capital exists,” she said. “It’s just not going to who needs it.“
Beauty, wellness, and the question of who captures the value
The panel on Africa’s beauty economy addressed what is, on the numbers, one of the fastest-growing consumer markets on the continent, and one of the most persistently underinvested.
From L-R:Sneha Mehta, CEO, Uncover; Cheryl Itemere Arunga, Head of Entrepreneur Experience, Endeavor Kenya
Sneha Mehta, CEO of Nairobi-based skincare company Uncover, described the cultural work embedded in her brand’s commercial proposition.

“For generations, our societies have been anchored in standards of perfection and skin-fairness that do not serve us.” Uncover’s approach, she explained, is to sell healthy skin rather than the appearance of perfection, an editorial decision made concrete by a Nairobi billboard featuring a model with active acne. “Part of Uncover’s mission is to give disadvantaged women in the beauty sector confidence through our products, to uncover themselves and be proud.”

The investor case was made by Cheryl Itemere Arunga of Endeavor Kenya, who argued that category bias, not market weakness, explains the underfunding of beauty enterprises. “A significant portion of the investment community still mischaracterises businesses built within the beauty industry as merely ‘aspirational’ rather than life-changing.” These enterprises, she noted,are actively constructing value chains, generating real revenue, and driving substantial employment.
The gap between presence and participation
The afternoon panel, “From Presence to Participation: African Women and the Economics of Access,” examined the gap between visibility in the economy and actual ownership of its returns.
From L-R: Catherine Muraga, MD, Microsoft Africa Development Center & Engineering Director, Microsoft; Wangari Kebuchi, Founder & Managing Director, Expertise Global; Eme Essien Lore, Co-Founder, Wealth4Impact; Senior Advisor, ESG Africa

“The critical question remains, where is the value being captured? It is in North America.” The assessment came from Catherine Muraga, Managing Director of Microsoft’s Africa Development Center, who acknowledged Microsoft’s investment in African engineering talent before naming its limitation: training people for global technology companies is not the same as building for the continent. “I look forward to the day when we leave Microsoft, take that excellence, and start our own startups.”

Wangari Kebuchi of Expertise Global brought research showing that women and men enter the financial services sector at equivalent rates but diverge sharply at middle management, as the structural absence of childcare support creates departures that institutions have failed to address. Her macro argument, that women reinvest approximately 90% of their income back intofamilies and communities compared to 35 to 40% from men, made investment in women “the most efficient mechanism” for maximising the velocity of capital in local economies.
On the state of the capital landscape, Eme Essien Lore of Wealth4Impact was cautiously optimistic. The 2X Challenge has scaled from a three-billion-dollar target to over thirty billion. “The capital is actively looking for women-led criteria. Our challenge now is positioning our businesses to capture it.” Her appeal to the room was direct: “It has to start with us.”
A fashion entrepreneur announces a factory
The day’s final panel, “The Female Economy: Africa’s Most Undervalued Growth Engine,” produced the summit’s most concrete development.
From L-R: Rita Dominic, co-founder of The Audrey Silva Company, Actor & Filmmaker; Rukky Ladoja, Founder and Creative Strategist of Dye Lab; Wandia Gichuru, CEO & Co- founder, Vivo Fashion Group

“Visibility gets you hired. But ownership gets you paid for life.” Rita Dominic, co-founder of The Audrey Silva Company and a central figure in Nigerian cinema, offered this not as inspiration but as structural analysis. Her account of the DVD era of Nollywood, in which enormous cultural reach generated almost no financial return for practitioners, illustrated the point precisely. “Visibility is a spotlight. Ownership is the house that owns the switchboard.”

Wandia Gichuru of Vivo Fashion Group made a complementary argument through a telling detail: her company had spent over half a million dollars in a year on Meta advertising, capital that left the continent entirely. “Our vision is to see an Africa that is dressing herself.”
The announcement most likely to travel beyond the summit’s walls came from Rukky Ladoja, Founder and Creative Strategist of Dye Lab. She revealed that the Lagos-based fashion company, built around indigenous dyeing techniques, is establishing a production facility and innovation centre in Ibadan, South-Western Nigeria. Dye Lab currently operates across more than ten factories; the consolidation is driven by persistent quality and coordination issues. “It is time to bring this in house. It is time to train more tailors.” In Ibadan, where Ladoja is from, she identified an absence of technical specialists across the full garment value chain. The facility is designed to address that, with ambitions around sustainability and the potential to serve as a consultancy resource for other fashion brands within and beyond the continent. “Hopefully that inspires a wave of training across the country.”
Day Two: Technology, storytelling, and the architecture of ownership
On May 22, 2026, the summit turned to the AI economy and the creative industries.
From L-R: Charlette N’Guessan, Lead, Data Solutions, AI Ecosystem and Government Partnerships, Amini; Founder, Afrokwary; Founder & Fmr. CEO, BACE Group; Neneh Diallo, Founder, NDG Agency/Fmr. Chief Diversity Officer, USAID; Mildred Okwo, Co-Founder, The Audrey Silva Company; CEO, GlazedLens Limited; Bolanle Austen-Peters, Founder Terra Kulture and Lagos International Theatre Festival; Artistic Director/Producer BAP Productions
On the AI panel, Charlette N’Guessan of Amini addressed a gap between government rhetoric on technological sovereignty and the reality of procurement portfolios. “Sometimes when I see governments claiming they want sovereignty, but when we check the portfolio, they’re working with foreign companies and there’s not even one local talent involved, that’s just talking.”
Her model at Amini is built around genuine capacity transfer, ending with governments in full ownership of the systems they commission. On the investment agenda panel, Neneh Diallo, Founder of NDG Agency and former Chief Diversity Officer at USAID, trained her focus on narrative control.
“The narrative has been controlled by the West. We hear things like ‘emerging markets,’ ‘risk,‘ ‘developing world.’” Changing that framing, she argued, is prerequisite to changing the behaviour that follows from it.
In the creative economy session, Mildred Okwo of GlazedLens and Bolanle Austen-Peters of Terra Kulture arrived at the same conclusion from different vantage points. “Financial institutions move with the speed of a caterpillar truck on a village path,” said Okwo. Austen-Peters was equally direct:

“Content is the new crude, and no one is going to come and help us. Africans have to stand up to help ourselves.”

What Nairobi Made Clear
Across two days in Nairobi, the summit offered a coherent, data-grounded proposition: that the women in the room were the most instructive lens available for examining where African growth capital goes, and why it so consistently fails to compound for those who generate it. The questions were not rhetorical. Where does value go once it is created? Who controls the narrative that determines what counts as a bankable opportunity? In at least one case, Rukky Ladoja’s announcement in Ibadan, the answer was not deferred. It was announced, with a site, a rationale, and a plan. Dr. Balonwu had said it at the outset: “The good news is that many of the people who need to do that work are already in this room.” Over two days in Nairobi, that room made a credible case she was right.

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