Last week in brief... Last week investors in the United States featured in a couple of private equity-related investments in Africa. On the fundraising front, we reported that Philadephia's Board of Pensions & Retirement approved a commitment to African Development Partners III, DPI's latest fund, back in December. Their investment advances the fund a further $50 million towards its $800 million final goal. The pension fund joins a group of development finance institutions who have already backed the fund, including CDC, European Investment Bank, FMO, and Swedfund, as well as Axian, the Madagascar conglomerate that committed to the fund last November. In common with its two predecessors, ADP III will focus on backing businesses selling products and services to Africa’s middle-class demographic.

Brown Advisory, one of the US's largest privately held investment management firms with over $100 billion under management has struck a strategic partnership deal with CrossBoundary, part of which gives the Baltimore-based firm a minority stake in the frontier markets investment and advisory group. Both firms are strongly aligned on emerging investment trends such as the opportunities offered to investors by frontier markets as well as the elevated role of ESG and impact in capital allocation decisions.

Gemcorp Capital is making its first diamond mining investment in sub-Saharan Africa. The investment firm has agreed to back the development of the Mulepe diamond deposit in Angola's Lunda Norte province. The project will be developed by Gemcorp in partnership with ENDIAMA Mining, a subsidiary of Angola's state-owned diamond company. The total capital investment needed to reach full production is estimated to be $150 million. Gemcorp will be the project’s major shareholder and will oversee the development and operation of the asset.

Janus Capital, the investment arm of Africa-based conglomerate Janus Continental Group (JCG) is one of three strategic investors investing a combined total of $70 million in Highview Power, a British-headquartered renewable energy firm. (The other two are Sumitomo Heavy Industries and engineering firm TSK). The investment allows Great Lakes Africa Energy, one of JCG’s subsidiaries, to license Highview’s cryogenic energy storage technology for use in the development of large-scale renewable energy generation and storage projects, providing them with multiple gigawatt-hours of storage. As part of the deal, Rikin Shah, JCG's CEO, takes a seat on Highview's board of directors.

In Ethiopia, Zoscales Partners announced a follow-on deal for its first fund in one of its five portfolio companies. The private equity firm is investing an additional amount in Pioneer Diagnostics Centers (PDC), a healthcare business they first backed in May last year. PDC, which is already the largest private healthcare diagnostics firm in Ethiopia, will use the capital to expand its services to other parts of the country beyond Addis Ababa. Zoscales's Esete Lulseged joins her colleague Fredd Kambo on PDC's board.

International Finance Corporation features in three Africa-related transactions last week. The DFI signed off on an equity investment in Adumo, a payments and merchant acquiring platform business that came into being following the acquisition of Sureswipe by Apis Partners and Crossfin Technology Holdings in June 2019. In total, the IFC is putting $15 million to work in the firm. The second of the three deals is a potential investment mix of debt and equity into EthioChicken, a producer of day-old-chicks and poultry feedstuffs in Ethiopia. If approved, the investment of $16.2 million would be used to build an additional two breeding farms and a new hatchery for the firm, all in Ethiopia’s SNNPR and Amhara regions.

The third sees IFC in the final stages of approving a $10 million investment in Salt Equity I, a generalist fund sponsored by Salt Capital that'll back SMEs across sub-Saharan Africa looking for expansion capital. The new fund’s final goal is $100 million. According to Salt Capital’s website, the fund manager’s strategy is to invest between $5 million and $15 million in its deals in exchange for holdings ranging from significant minority to control stakes in size.

South Africa's Mineworkers Investment Company is making a commitment to Knife Capital's new Africa Series B expansion fund, Knife Fund III. The Black-owned investment company is investing $10 million in the fund which is ultimately aiming to land a total of $50 million in commitments by the time it reaches its final close. The fund will target deals in business-to-business technology startups that have successfully made it through seed and Series A capital raises and now need significant risk funding to support their aggressive scaling and growth plans.

In other venture-related news, audio equipment manufacturer Bose Corporation's venture capital arm has led a group of investors backing a Series A round for hearX, a 5-year-old startup whose technology was developed at the University of Pretoria. Bose Ventures is investing $3 million of the $8.3 million round, which also saw participation from Futuregrowth Asset Management, HAVAIC, and Sphere Holdings. The startup will use the capital to expand its position in the USA's hearing aid market, where it has already struck an agreement with Walgreens, a nationwide retail pharmacy chain, to sell its products directly to consumers both over-the-counter and online.

And finally, fresh from closing a Series A round in December last year, solar irrigation firm SunCulture has arranged a syndicated debt facility backed by a group of investors led by SunFunder. The company received the first disbursement from the $11 million facility last week. Others backing the facility include the Nordic Development Fund, Triodos Investment, AlphaMundi, and the Lion's Head Global Partners-managed FEI OGEF, an investment vehicle sponsored by the African Development Bank.

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

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