Across Africa, the barriers faced by women looking to reach the highest levels of business vary enormously. According to Grant Thornton, in 2025 South African women held 47.2% of senior management roles – well above the global average of 34%. By contrast, the 2025 Ghana Board Diversity Index reveals that, while women made up 25% of board seats across listed companies, the number of female CFOs had fallen to 19% – down from 23% in 2024.
The barriers faced by women in Nigeria and Kenya in particular are starkly set out in a report by consultancy McKinsey. Women in the Workplace 2025: India, Nigeria, and Kenya, produced in partnership with nonprofit LeanIn.Org, found that women in both countries remain highly underrepresented at managerial and C-suite levels.
Limited participation
In Nigeria, less than a third (29%) of managerial and C-suite posts in the private sector are held by women – which the report largely attributes to women’s limited participation in formal employment. Women are employed in just 33% of entry-level roles in the Nigerian private sector. Those who do ascend to senior levels will usually have made lateral moves to other employers, possibly due to frustrations over progress.
‘There’s an expectation that your career must be uninterrupted’
Obianuju Nwaobi-Onyekwere FCCA, CFO of Lagos-based Manifold Computers, acknowledges that the Nigerian finance profession has struggled to attract women. In recent years, however, she’s seen impressive progress in terms of women entering the profession and being promoted to senior roles – progress she attributes to a rise in female role models. ‘They see other women doing very well in finance,’ she says. ‘So, they’re inspired and think it’s a gender-friendly profession.’
As it happens, Nwaobi-Onyekwere is an excellent role model, having been named ACCA 2025 Africa CFO of the Year for the micro, small and medium enterprise category. But even she admits that it can be challenging to balance leadership responsibilities with personal priorities such as looking after a family. ‘I have to juggle and it’s a lot to handle,’ she says. As a senior leader, she has influenced policies and practices to become more gender-friendly. For example, in one organisation she advocated for a weekly meeting to start at 3pm rather than 5pm to better accommodate the needs of women with family responsibilities.
Nwaobi-Onyekwere, who is deputy chair of the ACCA Women’s Network Nigeria, coaches entry-level career professionals and provides technical support and mentoring to middle-level women. She also speaks to girls at secondary school about the importance of staying in education.
Credibility bias
Nkiru Okobi FCCA, group head of tax management at Dangote Cement in Lagos, believes that while gender inclusion is now part of the conversation in many Nigerian organisations, true equality is still some way off. Meanwhile, women in finance face cultural and structural challenges to progression.
‘My competence was questioned more than that of male counterparts’
‘Culturally, women can be expected to stay at home and take care of the children,’ she says. ‘Structurally, they can have limited access to high-impact and high-visibility projects, which restricts their promotion opportunities. There’s also an unspoken expectation that your career trajectory must be uninterrupted, which can be a disadvantage to a woman who takes maternity leave or a caregiving break.’
Okobi believes that bias plays a part. ‘I’ve had to navigate credibility bias, which is where my competence was questioned more than that of male counterparts,’ she explains. She’s also had to navigate visibility bias – ‘where I’m expected to be present, but not visible’.
Okobi’s ACCA qualification has played a major role in enabling her to overcome credibility bias – as has her professional competence. ‘When you bring in your A-game, and show you can do your job, people start to rely on what you’re doing,’ she explains. Overcoming visibility bias requires sponsorship, according to Okobi. ‘I advocate for competent women in rooms where decisions are made,’ she says, ‘especially when they’re not present.’
Okobi argues that organisations should be transparent about promotion criteria, provide women with structured mentoring programmes and offer flexible work models that recognise ‘a woman can be ambitious and be a mother or caregiving daughter’.
Double-dip challenge
McKinsey’s report found that women start off relatively well positioned in Kenya, holding 41% of entry-level positions in both the public and private sector. But as they move up the career ladder, representation rapidly declines, with just 36% making it to manager roles and only 27% progressing to C-suite level. The report notes that women in the private sector face a ‘double-dip’ challenge, first struggling to progress into management and then failing to advance into senior leadership roles.
Hadijah Nannyomo FCCA, tax and trade partner at EY, based in Nairobi, sees a similar double dip occurring within the Kenyan finance profession. ‘A lot of women join the profession as graduates,’ she says, ‘but they often leave after three years or so because they get married and have families. Then there’s a drop-off at manager level because it’s a huge transition.’
‘I don’t sit back and wait for someone to approach me for support’
EY has adopted several strategies for helping its female employees in Kenya to overcome cultural barriers, offering flexible working hours, providing nursing rooms and ensuring that family-related leave is not considered in performance appraisals. Thanks to these initiatives, women make up around 50% of tax practitioners at manager level and above.
Employers should be more strategic in helping women advance to senior roles, Nannyomo argues. Last year she helped to launch the EY Woman to Woman forum, enabling female employees in Kenya to share experiences and benefit from mentorship and development opportunities. She also seeks out other women to mentor. ‘I don’t sit back and wait for someone to approach me for support,’ she explains. ‘I’ll see someone who is struggling, and I’ll try to find out what is happening behind the scenes and what I can do to help.’
When women progress in their finance careers, it is not only them and their employers who benefit; their wider communities benefit, too. As Nwaobi-Onyekwere puts it: ‘By helping women, I can achieve my personal vision of helping Africa to become more prosperous and poverty to become a thing of the past.’
