Ten fund managers active in Africa’s tech space have been selected from across the continent for the LAUNCH Capital Provider Fellowship Program, facilitated by the Collaborative for Frontier Finance (CFF), with the main objective of further advancing the capacity of these local capital providers (LCPs) to raise institutional capital. LCPs are first time fund managers based in market which can be a person or entity helping finance and allocate capital to businesses.
The LCPs are locally based fund managers or emerging capital allocators who are investing between $50k-$500k in tech or tech enabled, small and growing businesses. The majority of funds are targeting a >$20 million fund size providing early stage or growth capital in a mix of pre-seed, seed and Series A rounds. The funds are geographically spread across West, East and North Africa.
According to recent CFF survey of 90 LCP’s in Sub Saharan Africa, 96% have incremental funding needs and 85% expressed a need for technical assistance. There is an estimated $230 million funding gap in the LAUNCH cohort alone. FMO partnered with CFF to help address this challenge through the entrepreneurial ecosystem building efforts of the FMO Ventures Program Technical Assistance Facility, co-funded by the Dutch Government and European Union.
This LAUNCH Capital Provider Program will take a market-based approach to fund manager resourcing meeting fellows where they are on their development trajectory and moving to investment readiness. It is about enhancing their opportunity to be recognized and valued by institutional capital holders as potential managers to advance the capital holder’s own mission and investment objectives.
The insights generated from LAUNCH will inform both sets of stakeholders on how to best match capital with investment opportunities in this market segment. The funds selected include (in alphabetical order) Actawa Ventures, Brightmore Capital, Five35, Ventures, Jaza Rift Ventures , Kenya Climate Ventures , Lotus Capital , Mirepa Capital, Ortus Africa Ventures, Unicorn Growth Capital and WIC Capital.
Dr Susan de Witt, CFF Director Frontier Capital Learning Lab
“The LAUNCH program will allow CFF to work closely with this talented group of fund managers, not only for the purpose of improving their individual prospects of raising investment but also to raise the profile and understanding of these types of capital providers amongst institutional investors for future cohorts.”
Marieke Roestenberg, FMO Ventures Program Manager
“Local fund managers typically play an instrumental role in VC ecosystem development; we are thrilled to support CFF in helping these emerging fund managers from across the African continent to build out their fundraising and fund management capabilities so they can become a new generation of much needed capital providers for early-stage start-ups and scale-ups.”
The LAUNCH program starts in April 2022 and runs for 15 months.
About Collaborative for Frontier Finance (CFF)
CFF works to (i) facilitate a Local Capital Provider (LCP) network of over 75 active participants across 26 countries and 5 regions sharing best practice, and working collectively to find innovative solutions to the challenges faced by members (ii) provide actionable market insights to “demystify frontier finance” for investors and (iii) provide linkages to capital for LCPs including the set-up of a catalytic $10 million wholesale investment vehicle, Nyala Ventures.
