A quieter week last week than the week before. We can attribute that, in part, to the holidays. What we did get was news of two new funds. Among the deals that were sealed, there was also an exit which marked its fund's final realization and helped it maintain a healthy IRR for its investors.

We'll start with the funds. The bigger of the two, by some considerable margin, comes courtesy of Kasada Capital Management, the hospitality investment platform set up by AccorHotels and Katara Hospitality in July last year. It announced a first close of more than $500 million for greenfield and brownfield projects in the sub-Saharan region. The major backers of the fund are the two sponsoring companies themselves.

It seems that Okavango Capital, a Nairobi-based private equity firm, is in line for a potential commitment from the European Investment Bank for its first fund. The Okavango Fund, a private equity impact fund which aims to deliver commercial returns as well as improve nature conservation and rural livelihoods by investing SMEs in East and Southern Africa, is ultimately looking to raise $75 million.

Adenia Partners gave us the exit this week. The SME-focused private equity fund is selling its control stake in Socolait, a Madagascan dairy producer which it held via two of its funds, Adenia Capital II and III, to a couple of trade buyers. The sale is the final realization for the €37 million Adenia Capital II which the private equity firm reports has now achieved top-quartile returns for its LPs.

On the western side of the continent, Oasis Capital Ghana is making an investment in Sinel Specialist Hospital which focuses on obstetrics and gynecology which is located in Tema, some 25 kilometers east of Accra. The fresh capital will be used to upgrade the hospital's facilities to meet modern medical standards as well as expand its capacity further.

In a venture capital deal, Sidai Africa has raised a significant Series A round. The Nairobi-headquartered agricultural inputs business has landed $2.25 million, largely from Devenish, a global agricultural firm based in Britain, with a debt component provided by Global Partnerships. The fresh capital will be used to broaden the firm's product offering and expand the company's distribution network. The new investors are in good company - the Gates Foundation and AHL Ventures are both earlier backers of the firm.

Finally, a couple of interesting, but unrelated, studies caught our eye this week. Both worth a read. A short report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies came out on the challenges and opportunities facing the Trump administration's Prosper Africa initiative. And Knight Frank’s inaugural Africa Horizons report finds that Africa's real estate investment opportunities are set to command the attention of the sectors yield-hungry, global investors.

That's it for this week. As always, you can review these and other stories by clicking through to this week's preview edition of the newsletter.

Allan Cunningham

Allan Cunningham is a senior media executive who has spent the last 15 years of his career working for some of the world’s most respected M&A and Private Equity media companies including Dow Jones’s publications Private Equity Analyst and VentureWire and most recently, The Deal. He has built a number of successful digital and event content businesses, both subscription and sponsor-supported, delivering information and content-marketing services to clients in the M&A and broader deal ecosystem. He recently struck out on his own and launched Rowayton Press, a multi-platform media company focused on the private capital opportunities in emerging and frontier markets. Mr. Cunningham holds a Bachelors degree from Liverpool John Moores University in the UK.

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