4G Capital Secures Prestigious 2X Challenge Qualification, Confirming Industry Leadership in Gender-Lens Investing and Financial Inclusion for African Women

NAIROBI, KENYA — A strategic investment by the Global Innovation Fund (GIF) has catalysed a landmark international qualification: 4G Capital, East Africa’s leading neobank serving women-led micro-enterprises, has been officially added to the 2X Challenge’s public database of qualified investments, placing it among an elite global cohort that meets the world’s most rigorous standards for women’s economic empowerment. 

The qualification is a proof of concept: that pairing high-quality institutional capital with a gender-focused, technology-driven financial services platform in sub-Saharan Africa delivers outcomes that meet the bar set by the world’s leading development finance institutions. To qualify for the 2X Challenge, a rigorous global framework launched by the G7 Development Finance Institutions, an investment must demonstrate measurable performance across entrepreneurship, leadership, employment and supply chain criteria. 

For 4G Capital, qualification confirms that a business built around women’s access to capital, built by women, and run with women at every level of leadership represents not a concessionary bet but a commercially rigorous and scalable one.

Today, over 129,000 active borrowers rely on 4G Capital’s mobile-first, unsecured lending and financial literacy programmes to grow their businesses across Kenya and Uganda. 

GIF’s investment in 4G Capital was grounded in a conviction that gender-smart fintech, done properly, can simultaneously expand financial access for underserved women and generate sustainable commercial returns. That conviction is now institutionally validated.

With this qualification secured, 4G Capital is now positioned to access a significantly expanded pool of gender-lens capital from DFIs, institutional investors and development banks globally.  It also positions 4G Capital as a reference investment: a model that other gender-smart fintech platforms and their backers can look to as evidence of what rigorous, commercially viable impact looks like in practice.

ENDS

About 4G Capital

4G Capital is East Africa’s leading neobank, founded in 2013, which provides profitable financial infrastructure for the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise (MSME) economy. It blends human customer service with proprietary machine learning technology to deliver 100% unsecured working capital loans and customised business training to micro-enterprises across Kenya and Uganda. This client-centric approach has enabled 4G Capital to maintain a 95%+ collection rate, with over 80% of clients returning for repeat business, and customers increasing their average revenue by 82%. As a leader in gender-lens investing and financial inclusion, 73% of 4G Capital’s micro-enterprise clients are women-led businesses. The company has been recognized as the Best Fintech at the African Banker Awards 2025 and holds the highest B Corp score of any financial services company in Africa. For more information, please visit 4G Capital Website.

About the Global Innovation Fund

The Global Innovation Fund is a non-profit, impact-first investment fund headquartered in London with offices in Nairobi, Singapore and Washington, D.C. GIF invests in the development, rigorous testing, and scaling up of new products, services, business processes, or policy reforms that are more cost-effective than current practice and targeted at improving the lives of the world's poorest people.

Through grants and risk capital, GIF support these breakthrough solutions from for-profit firms, non-profit organisations, researchers and government agencies to maximise their impact and catalyse meaningful change.