Last week in brief...While the volume of deal and fundraising news may have been on the light side last week, a couple of items were among the more notable of the year so far. In deals, First Chartered Securities is selling a piece of ICEA LION Insurance to the $350 million investment platform set up by LeapFrog Investments and Prudential Financial. It's the second deal for the platform, LeapFrog Strategic Africa Investments, which will hold a 24% stake in the insurer once the necessary regulatory approvals have been granted.

In North Africa, Humania, a healthcare platform set up by Bait Al Batterjee Medical Company has landed over $100 million in equity financing from a trio of DFIs led by the IFC. With this investment, Humania has now raised $360 million which it will use to expand the number of beds it operates, buying one of Bait Al Batterjee Medical's existing hospitals in Egypt and developing three greenfield projects - two in Egypt and one in Morocco.

Honoris United Universities, a specialist education platform company set up by Actis, has acquired Nile University of Nigeria from MBU Capital. The deal is the first by Honoris in Nigeria and the broader West African region, marking a significant step for the 3-year-old platform company as it expands its pan-African footprint.

Well in its way to its $500 million goal, AfricInvest's fourth pan-African fund garnered another $70 million in commitments last week, taking the total amount raised so far to $202 million. The LPs joining the roster are two DFIs - CDC and Finnfund - who join a number of their peers who have backed the fund in the last few weeks. The fund will back midcap companies that have the potential to expand into regional champions.

IFC has approved an investment in a fund targeting opportunities in SMEs and midcap companies, primarily in Egypt, committing $25 million to LCP Fund II, a private equity fund sponsored by Lorax Capital Partners. This is the latest investment in the fund by a development finance institution following commitments from the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in October last year.

The only venture capital-related deal we covered last week was in the fintech space. MFS Africa, a digital payments startup has acquired Beyonic for an undisclosed amount. MFS Africa’s API connects over 200 million mobile wallets across the whole continent whilst Beyonic’s services are focused on domestic payments and collections for businesses. In combining both businesses, micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises will be able to manage digital transactions with individuals and businesses in markets around the world.

Having spent the past 5 years as IFC's global private equity head, Maria Kozloski has joined The Rockefeller Foundation as Senior Vice President of Innovative Finance. Among other things, she’ll be responsible for setting up a global capital asset management unit as well as directing the strategy and activities of the foundation’s impact investment platform.

And finally, once again, we ran a piece from Ocorian analyzing why the continent’s digital divide could continue to expand. While Africa has seen some of the world's fastest increase in e-connectivity in recent years, still only 25% of its population has access to the internet. John Félicité and Novan Maharahaje discuss the problem and highlight the role of private sector financing and corporate governance in helping to bridge the gap.

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

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