When Adesuwa Okunbo-Rhodes left a lucrative career in global finance, many questioned the wisdom of trading Wall Street certainty for the perceived risks of investing in underserved African businesses. Yet her conviction was rooted in a simple observation: some of the continent’s most promising SMEs were not failing for lack of potential, but for lack of access to the right-sized capital needed to scale. In this personal reflection, Adesuwa shares why she believes the so-called “missing middle” represents one of Africa’s greatest investment opportunities—and how backing women-led and women-focused enterprises can deliver both strong financial returns and meaningful economic impact.
“I left a six figure salary at J.P. Morgan to write smaller cheques in markets most investors won’t touch. People then thought I’d lost my mind.
Here’s what they didn’t understand. There is a generation of SMEs building real businesses across Africa companies with rapidly growing revenue, sticky customers, high gross margins of above 40%, that cannot raise growth capital.
Not because they aren’t bankable. Because the cheque sizes they need fall into a gap the industry decided wasn’t worth its time.
The industry calls it the “missing middle”. I call it the largest mispriced opportunity on the continent.
At Aruwa Capital Management, we back women-led and women-focused SMEs in Sub-Saharan Africa that are starved of growth capital ranging between $1-3 million. Not as charity but commercial growth equity that happens to close one of the most stubborn gaps in the market.
Returns and impact were never a trade-off. That framing was always lazy.
16 portfolio companies later, I’m more convinced than the day we started 7 years ago.”
© Adesuwa Okunbo-Rhodes 2026
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