Emily Fanday Wins $5000 from Mercury Fempreneur Pitch Night

Emily Fanday emerged as the first $5000 grant prize winner of Mercury International’s Fempreneur Freetown Pitch Night on Wednesday, April 26, 2023. 

The 27-year-old founder’s winning idea is ‘The Community,’ a lending marketplace where individuals invest for profit, and borrowers get easy access to micro-loans at competitive rates. 

“We’re trying to tackle financial literacy and make it easier for both formal and informal businesses to access credit,” said Fanday. She was up against six other women for the grant from Mercury.

While Freetown Pitch Night has been around for years, this “fempreneur” edition is a partnership with Mercury International which pledged a $25,000 grant to support Sierra Leonean startups in 2023. Ideas pitched by women entrepreneurs last week included job provision, waste recycling, environmental protection, agricultural technology, and microfinance. 

The Managing Director of Mercury International, Martin Michael, said the grant extends their corporate social responsibility. Over the years, they’ve built schools, provided scholarships, subsidized medical expenses, and Freetown’s tree planting. This is Mercury’s first time providing seed capital to support the entrepreneurial ecosystem. 

“The important thing about what we’re doing is the impact.  Once the winner gets the money and they start developing their business, they create jobs, pay taxes, and they can help the community. So it’s not only about what happens here today; it’s about what will happen in the future,” said Michael. 

Francis Stevens George, MD of Innovation SL and the Freetown Pitch Night said Mercury has broken new ground with the grant.  

“For entrepreneurship to work, you need an ecosystem; for an ecosystem to work, you need to have a pipeline of new ideas as well as old ideas; to have new ideas, you need angel investors, and Mercury International is doing something no one has done here,” said George. 

Mercury and Freetown Pitch Night will co-host four more pitching events this year. Future participants should look for the pitch night announcement on Mercury’s social media pages.