.To Empower Women-Led Enterprises –
African Media Agency (AMA) in a move to significantly strengthen the pipeline of scalable women-led businesses in Africa, African Business Stories (ABS) launched its inaugural Scale Ready Bootcamp in Lagos.
The Bootcamp, which took place on early November 2025, followed a high-level morning Roundtable hosted at Microsoft Nigeria under the theme “Positioning for Scale in Nigeria and Beyond.”
The Roundtable convened policymakers, financiers, and private-sector leaders, including Hon. Mrs. Folashade Ambrose-Medebem, Lagos State Commissioner for Commerce, Cooperatives, Trade & Investment; Mr. Gbenga Oyebode, MFR, Co-Founder, Aluko & Oyebode; senior representatives from the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade & Investment; Afreximbank; Microsoft West Africa; and members of the private sector.
ABS Founder, Akaego Okoye, noted that the Bootcamp builds directly on insights from the Roundtable. “We had a powerful dialogue about the structural barriers that continue to limit the growth of women-led businesses. The Bootcamp is our practical response, equipping founders with the financial, digital and trade capabilities required to scale in real terms.”
The ABS Scale Ready Bootcamp hosted twenty selected women-led enterprises operating in sectors including manufacturing, agrifood, logistics, technology, services, and consumer goods. The curriculum covered four critical pillars of business scale: Digital Readiness, Finance Readiness, Trade Readiness under AfCFTA, and Founder Readiness.
Facilitators included experts from Shecluded, Afreximbank, the AfCFTA Secretariat and Data Science Nigeria (DSN), who delivered practical sessions on investment readiness, export certification, cross-border trade frameworks, digital optimization and data-driven operations.