Who We Are

The Oxford Africa Women Leadership Institute (OAWLI) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing African women in leadership, business, and entrepreneurship. Founded in 2023 by a group of women leaders, our mission is to provide technical, financial, networking, and mentoring support services, along with market access to bridge the gender gap and create opportunities for women’s success.

Headquartered in Ghana and active in 34 countries, OAWLI launched the Sheconomy Africa Project, quickly engaging 2,040 women across the continent. Our initiatives include training programs, partnerships with embassies and business chambers, and virtual pitch sessions connecting women with over 100 buyers and investors. We’ve collaborated with notable organizations such as the American Embassy in Ghana, Ghana-German Business Chamber, and the Ghana Export Promotion Authority.

Our vision is to create a community where women have equal opportunities to succeed in leadership and business in Africa. To achieve this, we require partnerships and networks across the world to reach 1,000,000 women-led businesses in all 54 African countries in a year.

We aim to become the leading provider of technical and financial support services for women leaders in Africa, with a focus on building strong partnerships with local and international organizations and businesses.

To achieve our goals, we have developed a strategic plan that focuses on three key areas: building partnerships, expanding our services, and measuring our impact. Building partnerships: Networking with key leaders across Africa, who can help us reach developing partners, investment companies, and experts across the world to support the 1,000,000 women we have targeted in the year.

Expanding our services: We will expand our range of services to include providing funding and other resources to support women-led businesses. Measuring our impact: We will implement a robust monitoring and evaluation framework to measure the impact of our work and ensure that we are delivering tangible results for our women-led businesses.

The Oxford Africa Women Leadership Institute targets 5 Sustainable Development Goals namely;