Investment banker Adesuwa Okunbo-Rhodes shares early career success, impact investing vision

Adesuwa Okunbo-Rhodes, managing partner at Aruwa Capital Management, shared that her career in finance began at 18 with an investment banking role at Lehman Brothers. This early experience, followed by a position at J.P. Morgan at age 20, laid the groundwork for her eventual focus on private equity and impact investing.

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I’ve always been interested in finance. My first job was in investment banking. I think I got my first job in investment banking at 18 years old at Lehman Brothers, and then at 20 years old, I was already working for J.P. Morgan.

Okunbo-Rhodes's journey into impact investing was sparked by her realization of the intersection between profit and purpose. She observed significant funding gaps in Nigeria, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) seeking between $1 million and $3 million. Many private equity funds deemed this segment too small, while banks required collateral, leaving a substantial growth equity gap estimated at $150 billion for Nigeria and Ghana alone.

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When I saw that intersection between profit and purpose, I said I wanted to do something like this back in Nigeria where I could use my finance knowledge and also improve people’s lives at the same time.

Furthermore, she identified a critical disparity in funding for women entrepreneurs. Despite Africa having the world's highest rate of female entrepreneurship, less than 2% of investment capital went to women-led businesses. This disconnect motivated Okunbo-Rhodes to establish Aruwa Capital in 2019, after buying out her former employers. The firm specifically targets women-led and women-focused SMEs.

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One gap that I saw was that small businesses were not getting funded. If you were an SME in Nigeria and you were looking to raise anywhere between one and three million dollars, the market had decided that that segment was not worth their time.

Initially, Aruwa Capital raised a $20 million fund to build a track record and prove its business model. This strategy proved successful, and the firm now manages $80 million across two funds, demonstrating a commitment to both financial returns and social impact in African businesses.

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There was less than two per cent of capital going to female entrepreneurs. That didn’t make sense to me because Africa has four times the rate of female entrepreneurship than Europe.