A PIONEERING AND INNOVATIVE WOMEN OWNED AND LED GROWTH EQUITY FUND CLOSING GENDER GAPS IN AFRICA
Changing the face of investing and entrepreneurship in Africa
About Us
Aruwa Capital Management is Lagos based, female founded and led, growth equity, impact investment company. As one of the few women owned investment houses on the entire African continent, the team have identified an untapped investment opportunity, investing in rapidly growing companies that either provide essential goods and services to the rapidly growing female economy or businesses that are founded or co-founded by women or have gender diverse teams.
Aruwa Capital Management was founded based on the conviction that the gender imbalance amongst capital allocators provides an untapped opportunity for women as capital allocators to invest in untapped segments of the economy with a natural competitive advantage.
With less than 10 private equity funds owned or led by a woman in the entire continent of Africa, Aruwa Capital Management aims to unlock untapped investment opportunities that have historically overlooked due to the fact that women have not been in investment decision making roles.
The team based in Lagos is led by the Founder, Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes and combines international best practice skill sets from global institutions with deep local networks, operational know how and on the ground presence to unlock untapped investment opportunities. The team is made up of investment professionals and operators that understand how to support and improve businesses in our markets.












Team

Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes
Founder & Managing Partner

Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes
Founder & Managing Partner
Adesuwa is the Founder and Managing Partner of Aruwa Capital Management. Prior to founding Aruwa, she was the Managing Partner & Co-Founder of Syntaxis Capital Africa, a provider of growth capital to SMEs in Nigeria and across Sub Saharan Africa. Syntaxis Africa was part of Syntaxis Capital, a private equity fund active in other emerging markets with $300 million in AUM from global institutional investors. Prior to co-founding Syntaxis Africa in 2014, Adesuwa was in the Leveraged Finance and M&A teams at J.P. Morgan in London, where she was involved in $5.6 billion worth of transactions across emerging markets including Nigeria. Prior to J.P. Morgan, Adesuwa worked in Africa-focused PE fund, TLG Capital as an Investment Professional, involved in transactions across Anglophone Africa. She was named as an Agent of Impact in 2019 by Impact Alpha and named as one of the Top 35 Women Moving Africa Forward in 2020 for her commitment to gender equality in private equity and across the society through Aruwa Capital’s investments.
She currently sits on a number of boards in Nigeria across hospitality, healthcare and agriculture sectors. She started her career at Lehman Brothers and holds a BSc in Economics from the University of Bristol.

Teslim Ogundiran
Investment Associate

Teslim Ogundiran
Investment Associate
Prior to joining Aruwa, Teslim led the Investment Banking division at NOVA Merchant Bank where he was responsible for closing capital market transactions in excess of N50billion ($120m). He also worked as an Investment Analyst at Silk Invest Limited, a company regulated by the FCA-United Kingdom, where he was lead analyst in the partial divestment of a portfolio company to a global DFI. At Silk Invest, Teslim worked directly on investments with cumulative value of $10million and he has closed deals of more than $200m.
Teslim started his career as an Investment Banking summer analyst at Bank of America Merill Lynch’s London office.
Teslim believes that with patient and flexible capital, local entrepreneurs can drive sustainable solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing the African continent.
Teslim holds a Law degree from Nigeria’s premier university, the University of Ibadan.

Chidinma Okoli
Investment Analyst

Chidinma Okoli
Investment Analyst

Oyedade Shokunbi
Investment Associate and Portfolio Manager

Oyedade Shokunbi
Investment Associate and Portfolio Manager
Prior to joining Aruwa, Dade led the Venture Capital team at The Oak Capital where she was actively involved in institutionalizing the Fund, Deals sourcing, Deal evaluation and investment as well as providing oversight to a team of Analysts. Before then, she was an Investment and Operations Associate at Consonance Capital Management where she managed the day-to-day operations of a $20 million Fund through active Investors relations. While at Consonance, Dade managed and invested in deals worth over $7 million cumulatively.
Oyedade is a Chartered Accountant and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria. She commenced her career as an Investment Banking analyst at First Ally Capital Limited where she worked on several capital market transactions, notable among which is the N20 million TSL REIT.
Dade is a certified Financial Modelling and Valuations Analyst and she holds a Bachelors degree in Economics from the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University.

Babatunde Usman
Investment Analyst and Portfolio Manager

Babatunde Usman
Investment Analyst and Portfolio Manager
Working with a sector agnostic investment approach Babatunde has developed industry knowledge across various sectors and business models including healthcare, renewable energy, fintech, education and media. Babatunde is passionate about changing the African investment landscape through deploying much needed capital in an ethical and timely manner to unlock the vast untapped potential across the continent.
Babatunde holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business and International Relations from Aston University and an MSc in International Business.
Investment Committee
The Investment Committee is composed of a high calibre and diverse group of investors and operators with significant investing and operating experience on the African continent.

Dotun Sulaiman

Dotun Sulaiman

Hannah Subayi

Hannah Subayi
Hannah Subayi Kamuanga is an experienced investor in Africa currently acting as the Country Officer for the Republic Democratic of Congo (DRC) within Proparco – one of the largest DFIs in the world. She is also in charge of all equity transactions for Central Africa for Proparco. Prior to that, Hannah was a fund manager in a $1bn African fund of funds, South Suez Capital based in Cape Town and prior to that was an investment banker based in London.
Hannah is also an Investment Committee member at Launch Africa a pan-African early stage investment fund, a board member of ABAN, the African Business Angel Network, a Pan-African non-profit association and a director of Dazzle Angels the first South African female angel fund investing in women-led tech businesses. She also acts as a host, guest, speaker, judge on various start-up competitions including Harvard & Yale Business School.
Hannah is Congolese from the Democratic Republic of Congo and she graduated from HEC Paris business school with a Master II in management as well as Paris I – La Sorbonne Law University with a Master II in Business and International Law.

Ramatoulaye Adama Diallo

Ramatoulaye Adama Diallo

Adesola Sotande-Peters

Adesola Sotande-Peters
Adesola Sotande-Peters is a seasoned finance executive with over two decades of experience leading global organizations including the BBC UK, Diageo and Unilever, in multinational markets. She has been the recipient of multiple awards including the Great Place to Work Exceptional Female Leader Award 2019, CFO Awards – CFO of the Year (FMCG Category) 2017, and Unilever Finance Recognition Award 2016.
She is currently the first Nigerian and first female Vice President, Finance in the almost 100 years of Unilever Nigeria and Unilever Ghana. Adesola oversees the Controls and Governance agenda in Unilever Africa, providing strategic finance leadership. She is also the Executive Board Director of Unilever Nigeria; Non-Executive Board Director of Unilever Ghana, LONADEK Nigeria, SYGEN Pharmaceutical, LEAP Africa and sits on various other committees.
Adesola is passionate about lifelong professional education and has a Business Administration and Economics degree from the American International University, London, and an MBA for Finance Professionals from Manchester Business School. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and the Institute of Credit Administration (ICA). She is also an alumna of the IE Business School, Lagos Business School and INSEAD programmes.
Her passion for professional development extends into mentoring future leaders through her website www.hearadesolaout.com and social media (#Hearadesolaout). She was an Advisory Board Member of Women on Boards (WIMBOARD) and Women in Manufacturing, Africa (WIMAFRICA) and is the Chairperson at Women Empowered for Leadership Advancement and Development (WELEAD).
The Opportunity
28 Trillion
Could be added to global GDP by 2025 if the gender gap is bridged
Source: McKinsey
70%
Women will be responsible for 70% of all consumer spending worldwide
Source: Boston Consulting Group
21%
Top quartile gender diverse executive teams were 21% more likely to experience above-average profitability than companies with low diversity
Source: McKinsey
20%
Gender balanced senior investment teams generated 20% higher net IRR than funds lacking in gender diversit
Source: IFC
63%
Across 300 companies team swith at least 1 female founder performed 63% better than all male founder teams
Source: First Round Capital
2.5x
For businesses founded and co-founded by women, for every dollar of funding raise, they delivered 2.5x more revenue than male founded startups
Source: Boston Consulting Group
Our Approach

Portfolio
News

ARUWA and WEMY $25,000 Female Distributor Grant

Aruwa Capital invests in Koolboks

Aruwa Capital invests in Crowdforce

Aruwa Capital Management recognised amongst global leaders achieving UN SDGs

Aruwa Capital Management invests in Pngme
