Introducing
Ndeye Thiaw
Brightmore Capital is an impact investment fund focused on Francophone West Africa. Based in the region’s two economic hubs of Dakar and Abidjan, we are focused on making investments across Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, Togo, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.
We would like to introduce you to our Managing Partner and co-founder Ndeye Thiaw. In this interview we sit down with Ndeye to get to know her a little more:
Q. What is your background?
A. My name is Ndeye Thiaw; I am based in Dakar, born and raised here. I studied in the US. And I started my career in Development Finance.
Q. How did you get into investing?
A. So after a couple of years in Development Finance, I veered into entrepreneurship. While working with a couple of ventures, I realized that there was still a lot that I could do in the Investment Finance world at home, in Francophone West Africa. So that’s what I did. I decided to go into investment. First through advisory, and now through direct investment.
Q. What drives you on a daily basis?
A. What drives me on a daily basis is the desire to inspire women and young people to know that they can create wealth for themselves, despite all the hurdles that they face in their professional or entrepreneurial journey.
Q. Can you tell us your favourite investment or ecosystems story?
A. I don’t have one yet. The entrepreneurial ecosystem here is still so young, still growing into maturity. We have a lot of stories in the works. A lot of good investments in the pipeline. So hopefully in one or two years, I’ll have a favourite investment story to tell you about.
Q. What is the one thing you would change about the VC or investment world if you could?
A. I would love to see more women funders. I think that would truly change the paradigm for the scarcity of funding available for African women.