71 Startups. $2 Million in Revenue. Now Standard Chartered Is Opening Applications Again — And Nigerian Founders Have 5 Days.
Last year, 71 women-led startups went through the Women in Tech Accelerator. By the time the programme ended, those businesses had collectively generated over $2 million in additional revenue, acquired nearly 16,000 new customers, and created more than 430 jobs. That is not a projection or a target. That is what actually happened.
The 7th cohort is now open for applications, and Nigerian founders have until 26 April 2026 to get in.
What The Results Actually Mean
It is worth sitting with those numbers for a moment. Early-stage women-led startups in Nigeria operate in conditions that are not designed for their success. Access to structured capital is limited. Investor networks are hard to break into. And the kind of business training that turns a good idea into a scalable company is expensive and unevenly distributed.
What the 2025 cohort results show is that when those barriers are removed, even temporarily, the growth is real. Over $2 million in revenue generated across 71 startups is an average of roughly $28,000 per business in a single programme cycle. For an early-stage founder bootstrapping in Lagos or Abuja, that kind of uplift is not small. It is the difference between surviving and scaling.
Yazmin Jumaali, Senior Programme Manager at Village Capital, put it directly. “When founders have access to structured, locally embedded support and catalytic funding, they can strengthen their strategies, engage investors confidently, and unlock sustainable impact,” she said, per TechCabal.
What The Programme Offers
The Women in Tech Accelerator is a partnership between Standard Chartered Foundation, Village Capital, and Enterprise Development Centre at Pan-Atlantic University. Now in its 7th cohort, the programme targets women-led, tech-enabled startups at early stage and provides three things: catalytic grant funding, structured business training, and tailored mentorship.
Over $600,000 in grant funding is available across 12 markets in this cycle, including Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, Egypt, Bahrain, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. The programme runs from June to August 2026. Nigerian founders can apply now at g.co/acceleratorafrica.
The Gap This Is Trying To Close
Programmes like this exist because the funding ecosystem has a documented problem with women founders. In MENA alone, women-led startups raised just $500,000 out of $941 million in total startup funding in Q1 2026 — less than 0.1 per cent of available capital, according to data from Wamda. The picture across sub-Saharan Africa is not materially different.
Grant funding and accelerator programmes are not a permanent fix for a structural problem. But for individual founders trying to build right now, they are a real and immediate resource. The 2025 results make the case better than any pitch could.
Applications close 26 April 2026. Nigerian founders can apply here: reg.smetoolkit.africa/witi7
