Today, five women founders took the stage at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange to claim their share of over $100,000 in equity-free funding. The winners of Naspers and Prosus’s Tech FoundHER Africa Challenge represented a cross-section of the continent’s innovation economy: from AI-powered agricultural tools in Kenya to gender-based violence support platforms in South Africa.

For Naspers, the event marked more than just another corporate responsibility initiative. It signaled a strategic pivot away from a troubled past that saw the South African technology investor face sharp criticism over diversity failures in its flagship venture fund.

The Foundry’s troubled legacy

When Naspers launched Foundry in 2019, the R1.4bn fund was positioned as a game-changer for South Africa’s tech ecosystem. With Africa’s most valuable company by market capitalization backing local startups, expectations ran high.

But by the time Naspers wound down the fund in mid-2023, citing challenging global and local investment conditions, Foundry had become a case study in missed opportunities.

The numbers told a stark story. Of the R700m deployed to 23 founders, only 13% were people of color and 8% were women, according to South Africa’s Competition Commission. In a racially tense country, these figures sparked outrage.

The Commission’s July 2022 report specifically called out Naspers Foundry for having no mandate to support historically disadvantaged persons. The fund’s first investment in SweepSouth, co-founded by CEO Aisha Pandor, would also be its last in a startup with a woman of color in the founding team.

A leaner, more targeted approach

Enter Tech FoundHER. Launched in September 2025, the challenge represents a fundamentally different approach: equity-free grants instead of equity investments, a pan-African scope instead of South Africa-only, and an explicit focus on female founders.

The initiative, first piloted in India earlier in 2025, partners with Lionesses of Africa, a 1.8m-strong network of female entrepreneurs, to source applications. Over 1,160 applications poured in for the inaugural African edition.

“The Tech FoundHER Challenge is about closing one of Africa’s most urgent gaps in entrepreneurship — the lack of funding and visibility for women-led startups,” said Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, South Africa CEO of Naspers. “What they need now is the capital, networks and market access to scale.”

The winners announced on 19 November span multiple sectors and countries:

First place went to Esther Kimani’s Farmer Lifeline (Kenya), which provides solar-powered, AI-enabled devices to detect crop pests and diseases early, helping smallholder farmers reduce losses.

Second place was awarded to Folayemi Agusto’s Tix Africa (Nigeria), a self-service platform for event ticketing, sales and payments.

Joint third place went to Margaret Wanjiku’s Pollen Patrollers (Kenya), developing smart beehive technology, and Jenny Ambukiyenyi Onya’s Neotex (Democratic Republic of Congo), offering AI tools for small livestock farmers.

The AI for Good category winner was Leonora Tim’s Gender Rights in Tech (South Africa), providing tech and data tools supporting survivors of gender-based violence.

Addressing a $42bn gap

The focus on female founders targets one of Africa’s most significant funding disparities. Women-led startups receive less than 3% of venture capital funding on the continent, despite women comprising over a quarter of Africa’s entrepreneurs. 

This $42bn funding gap, if closed, could unlock as much as $316bn in GDP growth, according to the same research.

“For women founders to succeed, access, capability and visibility must come together,” said Prajna Khanna, Chief Sustainability Officer at Naspers and Prosus. “This challenge is designed to give proven women-led startups the platform, connections and confidence to scale sustainably.”

To be eligible, startups must have at least one woman founder in a leadership role, be tech-focused or tech-enabled, be at pre-Series B funding stage, and be generating revenue with proven market traction.

From equity to grants: What’s changed?

The shift from Foundry’s equity-based model to FoundHER’s grant-based approach reflects both practical and strategic considerations.

Mahanyele-Dabengwa has acknowledged that debt capital isn’t suitable for early-stage tech companies. “People with startup businesses struggle to raise capital, because the type of capital needed is not debt capital but real equity, or even grants for some businesses,” she stated.

Equity-free grants eliminate dilution concerns while providing the runway founders need to reach their next milestone. The approach also sidesteps some of the governance and compliance complexities that reportedly hampered Foundry’s operations.

However, the funding quantum represents a significant scale-down. Where Foundry deployed tens of millions in single deals — Planet42’s most recent round saw Naspers contribute to a $100m raise — FoundHER’s total prize pool is $100,000 split among five winners.

The question remains whether this leaner approach can generate meaningful impact at scale, or if it represents a retreat from the kind of patient, substantial capital that African startups need to compete globally.

What comes next

Tech FoundHER represents an attempt to turn the page on Foundry’s controversial legacy. But questions linger about whether grants alone can address the structural barriers facing African tech founders, particularly women and people of color.

The initiative does offer what many founders desperately need: non-dilutive capital, access to networks, and visibility. Winners receive mentorship from experienced investors and access to the Naspers and Prosus global ecosystem — potentially more valuable than the cash itself for startups seeking to scale.

Yet the challenge also highlights a broader tension in African venture capital. While Naspers’s retreat from direct equity investing may be strategically sound for the company, it leaves a void in an ecosystem already starved of patient capital willing to back African founders through the long, uncertain journey to scale.

Whether Naspers’s new approach can consistently identify and support such founders at scale will determine if Tech FoundHER truly marks a departure from the past, or merely a well-intentioned interlude before the next strategic pivot.