Ventures Platform has closed its second fund with more than $83 million in commitments, a vote of confidence from limited partners who are demanding far more evidence of returns than they did three years ago. The Pan-African firm, headquartered in Nigeria, is using the new capital to push beyond its home market, already writing checks to startups in Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt.
Founding partner Kola Aina told TechCrunch the fund will back early-stage founders across fintech, healthcare, SaaS, and other sectors “where technology can address essential needs and build large, enduring businesses.” The thesis is deliberately broad, but with a sharp edge: AI is now central to how the firm evaluates opportunities.
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“We’re particularly interested in where AI changes the economics of serving African markets,” Aina said, pointing to its potential to cut service delivery costs and address labor shortages. “For us, AI is most interesting when it is not simply a feature, but an enabler of an entirely different cost structure, business model or market.”
From a $46M first fund to a broader mandate
Ventures Platform’s first fund raised $46 million in 2022 and focused almost exclusively on pre-seed and seed rounds in Nigeria. That narrower scope was deliberate, Aina said: “It allowed us to demonstrate that our approach to early-stage investing in Africa could work at an institutional scale and laid the foundation for Fund II.”
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Fund II is larger and geographically wider. Check sizes will reach up to $3 million, and the firm expects to deploy the capital over the next three to four years. The expansion into Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt reflects a conviction that technology can “expand access to essential products and services, address critical infrastructure gaps, and create entirely new categories of consumption,” Aina said.
The fundraising process took roughly 18 months, a timeline that reflects a far more skeptical environment than the one that greeted Fund I. “LPs are asking harder questions about performance, portfolio construction, liquidity, manager discipline, and differentiation,” Aina said. The venture bust of a few years ago left many limited partners cautious, and they now want proof that managers can convert portfolio value into realized returns rather than simply raising successive rounds.
African startups face a more selective market
The new fund lands at a moment when the continent’s venture market has cooled considerably. African startups have raised about $930 million across more than 200 deals so far this year, compared with $1.16 billion across 447 deals in all of last year, according to data cited by TechCrunch. The market has become a barbell, with capital flowing to a small group of top-tier firms and a handful of emerging managers with demonstrable track records.
“Three years ago, there was still a significant amount of curiosity around the African opportunity. Today, LPs expect proof,” Aina said, adding that the discipline is healthy. “The conversation has moved from ‘Why Africa’ to ‘Why you and how exactly are you going to generate returns.'” Simply calling a fund pan-African is no longer a strategy, he said. LPs want to understand access to talent, how the firm navigates individual markets, and “why you have the right to win.”
That pitch resonated with existing backers: 70% of Fund I’s LPs returned for Fund II. Investors include the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Norway’s Norfund, and Ghana’s Ashesi University Foundation.
For founders, the shift means capital is available but harder to secure. Aina said the current generation of entrepreneurs has experienced both abundant and scarce funding, and that resilience is now a key part of the firm’s evaluation. “There is a much clearer understanding that building valuable companies and generating venture returns require more than simply raising successive rounds of capital,” he said.
The firm’s edge, he argued, lies in combining local depth with global connectivity as the ecosystem matures. That combination, along with a sharper focus on AI-driven cost structures, will define how Ventures Platform deploys its largest fund yet.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. The venture capital and startup markets are volatile and uncertain; past performance is not indicative of future results.
