Last week in brief...The venture capital end of Africa's private capital investment ecosystem saw most of the action on the continent last week. But we lead this with the news that the permanent capital vehicle launched by South African private equity firm Capitalworks in 2017 made its first deal last week. The $300 million vehicle, Africa Capitalworks, is taking a significant minority stake in Gaselia Industries Group, a bottler and distributor of proprietary and client beverage brands with operations in Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, and Guinea-Conakry.

Back to the venture capital deals. TLcom Capital announced the final close for the TIDE Africa Fund last week, hitting $71 million in total commitments to invest in early-stage and growth-stage businesses that are both scalable and have a track record of rapid growth. The final close added 4 additional LPs to the fund's investor roster - CDC, IFC, BIO and Sango Capital.

Having backed Elmenus’s Series A round in June 2017, Algebra Ventures is investing more in the food discovery and delivery startup, co-leading a Series B round alongside Global Capital. Since Cairo-based Elmenus raised $1.5 million from Algebra Ventures for its Series A, the firm has grown to number over 200 employees and it has introduced its own delivery service using an in-house fleet, competing with the likes of Uber Eats.

Partech Africa and Orange Digital Ventures have led a seed round for an Addis Ababa-headquartered startup that provides training and recruitment solutions for software developers and engineers. Along with a third investor, Consonance Investment Partners, the consortium is providing Gebeya with $2 million in seed funding. The capital will be used to support the startup's plans to build its business in Francophone Africa, scaling up its training services there and launching online recruitment platforms for the region.

A venture-backed startup made a deal of its own last week. Farmcrowdy is buying a majority stake in one of Nigeria's largest meat processors. The investment in Best Foods is part of a plan to diversify Farmcrowdy's operations which, to date, have consisted of providing a crowdfunding platform helping smallholder farmers buy improved seeds and other farm inputs. The financial details of the deal were not immediately available as we went to press.

In a private debt deal, SunFunder announced that it has made its first deal in Nigeria last week. The Africa-focused solar financing company is investing debt in Daystar Power, a commercial and industrial solar developer which is headquartered in Lagos. The deal forms part of a $4 million financing facility arranged for Daystar, which will use the capital to develop projects capable of generating up to 3MWp for a mix of Nigerian financial institutions and small and medium-sized enterprises.

The Competition Authority of Kenya has given unconditional approval to the planned acquisition of a controlling stake in AAR Health Care Holdings by an investment platform set up at the end of last year by the Investment Funds for Healthcare in Africa which is backed by several DFIs. The deal, if it goes ahead, would see Hospital Holdings Investment acquire a 54.237% stake in the operator of a network of clinics and hospitals in East Africa. While the financial terms of the proposed deal were not covered, some industry commentators have put the value of the deal for the 33-year old company to be as much as KSHs 5.4 billion or about $53 million.

And finally, a notable job appointment was made last week. DFC, the U.S. Government's new development finance institution has appointed Andy Herscowitz, one of the industry's most experienced professionals, as its first Chief Development Officer. He will be responsible for leading the agency's impact and development priorities, driving measurable results and making sure DFC's portfolio achieves its mandates at the strategic level.

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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