A new pan-African fund will give a boost to Francophone Africa’s fledgling startups
Partech Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital (VC) firm, has launched an Africa-focused fund which will look to provide early-stage funding to promising startups and founders on the continent. The fund has raised $70 million of its $100 million target, making it one of the largest Africa-focused funds.
Partech Africa is backed by French bluechip corporate partners with “a strong footprint in Africa” including Orange, Edenred, JCDecaux Holding and Bpifrance, a French investment banks as well as multilateral financiers: International Finance Corporation and the European Investment Bank.
The new fund plans to differentiate itself by not limiting operations to Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, the continent’s leading ecosystems.”We think the impact of a local VC should also be to widen the scope and look at other markets that people know less of,”says Tidjane Dème, general partner at Partech Africa. This includes Francophone African countries Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Cameroon as well as Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda. Full Story
