In honor of International Women’s Day, we recognize the undocumented venture capitalists of the African diaspora.
While traditional banking institutions historically shuttered their doors to immigrant communities, West Indian and African women were busy engineering their own financial infrastructure. Through informal savings clubs known as “Susu” (West Africa) or “Partner” (Caribbean), these women-led micro-economies provided the essential liquidity that transformed back-room dreams into the first wave of Black-owned brick-and-mortar establishments across the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
The “Susu”—derived from the Yoruba word “esusu”—operates as a Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA). The system is elegantly simple: a group of trusted individuals contributes a fixed amount of money into a central pool at regular intervals. Each month, one member receives the “hand,” or the total sum collected.
Unlike predatory lending in the West, the Susu is interest-free and built entirely on social capital. According to research from the University of Oxford (2021), these lifelines were not just “rainy day” funds; they were strategic financial instruments used to bypass systemic “redlining” and credit bias in the mid-20th century. For many Caribbean “Windrush”-era nurses in the UK or West African entrepreneurs in New York, the Susu was the only viable path to a down payment on a home or a storefront.
The transition from informal saving to commercial ownership is the hallmark of the “Circular Diaspora” economy. In the 1960s and 70s, the emergence of Black-owned grocery stores, barbershops, and hair salons in cities like Toronto, London, and Brooklyn were rarely the result of a bank loan.
Instead, it was the “Partner” system—as it is known in Jamaica—that acted as the primary engine for capital. Women organizers, often referred to as “Bankers,” managed these pools with a level of fiduciary rigor that rivaled formal institutions. As noted by the Black Business Network (2023), these women-led collectives funded the initial stock, lease deposits, and equipment for businesses that served as cultural hubs for the community. By “circulating” the dollar within the diaspora multiple times before it left the community, they created a self-sustaining economic loop.
Source: Minding Our Own Business: How Women-Led Savings Clubs Built The Black Middle Class
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