• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Solape Akinpelu – Co-Founder/CEO at HerVest

Solape Akinpelu – Co-Founder/CEO at HerVest

Solape Akinpelu is a certified financial education instructor and a member of the Personal Finance Speakers Association (USA). Solape is Founder, HerVest, a women-focused and inclusive fintech platform for the underserved and excluded women in Africa. HerVest enables women to participate in savings, impact investments and credit, and credit, particularly for smallholder women farmers in Nigeria.

By addressing Africa’s $42bn gender funding gap with over 36% trapped in agriculture, HerVest provides growth opportunities for specific crops, grain banks, livestock, and digitised e-extension services for female small farmers in rural places. Their cooperative members enjoy substantial returns on investment while strengthening the financial capacity of women farmers through access to capital, training and markets. HerVest savings are placed with VFD Microfinance Bank and the bank is regulated by the CBN.

HerVest’s women agro finance is to strengthen the capacity of urban and peri-urban women in making decisive impact investments, particularly in female small-scale farmers, while also strengthening female small-scale farmers who mostly lack access to capital and market.

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As a financial feminist, Solape is pro SDG5 and SDG10 who believes in achieving gender equality and reducing inequality through financial literacy, technology and access to capital.

For over 12 years, Solape has worked on Nigerian’s top financial brands including Skye Bank, Sterling Bank, Wema Bank, Leadway Assurance, and FCMB before moving to the client side of communications at Meristem, a leading investment firm, as the head of corporate and marketing communications.

Solape is the Nigerian chapter director of Women in Tech®, an international organisation with a double mission: to close the gender gap and to help women embrace technology.

As former Head of Marketing and Corporate Communications at Meristem Nigeria, she led the brand & marketing communications’ team to tell their stories through integrated marketing strategies for brand love. She ensured an upward climb of the brand’s visibility through messages that are clear and forward in their chosen markets. They cover varying 5 wholly independent subsidiaries in the group creating a beautiful symphony for their most treasured stakeholders.

Solape is fiercely pro-women. She believes in the women agenda towards building resilient and sustainable communities globally.

She is also a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (UK). She has attended impactful executive programs at prestigious institutions including The Lagos Business School and INSEAD, France.