Angie Madara was poised to launch a fund to test a new credit scoring model designed to unlock investment in women microentrepreneurs in Africa when the bottom fell out last year.
First, the USAID funding she had secured to underpin the fund evaporated. Then other funders she approached said they were on pause as they navigated the Trump administration’s potential threats to philanthropies. Some corporate backers withdrew entirely, saying they were no longer funding inclusion initiatives.
“It’s been tough and I know it’s going to get even tougher,” Madara, a serial entrepreneur, told Devex. “We had to think without depending on anyone’s financing coming in, what can we do? How can we make money? And we never wanted to charge women entrepreneurs because I have been in those shoes.”