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African fund managers who are quietly reshaping investment systems while running disciplined, high-performing funds.
Advanced Practice framework
Introducing Advanced Practice
Financial systems are not neutral; they are shaped by choices and practices that either reinforce or dismantle systemic inequities. Advancing gender equality through finance takes more than moving capital. It means addressing how power, privilege, and bias operate in financial systems.
Criterion Institute’s system of Advanced Practice makes these shifts visible and replicable, turning isolated innovations into models that asset owners, investors, and policymakers can demand and adopt. It rests on four interconnected principles.
Create change in their own organization and demand it of investees.
Align behavior and goals, and address power dynamics consistently.
Allow scrutiny and be transparent in the assumptions that drive analysis.
Honor diverse voices and expand who holds decision-making power.
The case studies
Market-rooted gender intentionality
Elevating market-level analysis to shift power in agricultural finance. Sahel begins every investment with value-chain power dynamics – who sets prices, who absorbs risk, who is excluded – treating gendered market realities as material to risk and return, not firm-level blame.
Embedding gender throughout thesis design
A Kenya-focused VC fund that builds gender and power analysis into the core of its thesis – anchoring on safety, productivity, and well-being, and prioritizing locally-rooted founders – so gender becomes analytical rigor, not a compliance overlay.
Gender intentionality by design
Uganda’s first resident, women-led gender lens private equity fund. Inua reframes governance as a power-shifting engine – board-level ESG oversight, named gender leads, recusal protocols, and contractual action plans that extend accountability across the investment chain.
These fund managers show that integrating power and gender analysis into the core of investment decision-making is not a trade-off against performance: it is a driver of more durable, more inclusive outcomes. Documented through Criterion Institute’s Advanced Practice framework, the series makes visible what excellence in investing can look like.
