The big news of the week was that Actis, after months of industry speculation, announced that it had agreed to take over the management of a pair of private equity funds from its former arch rival, the now-insolvent Abraaj Group. The funds' LPs and Abraaj's liquidators gave their approvals this month, adding almost $2.6 billion and several investment professionals to Actis's operations in the Middle East and Africa. Both funds have capital left to deploy, but exactly how much was still unclear as we went to press.
Other fundraising news last week was of a much smaller order of magnitude. The European Investment Bank has approved a commitment to a first-time fund being marketed by Okavango Capital Partners. The DFI is investing $20 million into the planned $75 million fund which will back conservation-focused SMEs in eastern and southern Africa.
South Africa's $100 million SA SME Fund is anchoring 4Di Capital's latest fund. The new venture fund will target investments in early- and growth-stage businesses primarily in the FinTech, InsureTech, HealthTech, EduTech, and AgriTech sectors, co-investing alongside 4Di's Exponential Fund I which focuses on some similar sectors, where appropriate.
In deal news, EXEO Capital announced that they had completed an investment in a Tanzanian packing manufacturer last month. The deal, the financial terms of which have not been disclosed, is the fifth for Exeo's Agri-Vie Fund II and gives the private equity fund a significant minority stake in PPHL, whose subsidiary PPTL produces woven polymer-based bags, sacks, and tarpaulins for the agriculture and cement industries.
Fresh from their investment in Footgear last month, Old Mutual Private Equity is funding the specialist footwear retailer's acquisition of the Edgars Active and High Key store chains from the Edcon Group. The deal dramatically expands the retailer's network of 63 outlets to almost 200 stores, making it a formidable player in South Africa's retail sector.
CrossBoundary Energy Access (CBEA), a mini-grid project financing facility set up earlier this year, has struck its first deal. The blended finance investment structure is investing to acquire and finance 60 existing and planned mini-grids operated by PowerGen Renewable Energy in Tanzania. By selling the mini-grids to CBEA soon after completion, PowerGen can then recycle the capital and focus on developing more projects more quickly.
AHL Ventures and DOB Equity are backing Crop Nutrition Laboratory Services (or CropNuts) with equity. The capital will be used to fund the company's expansion plans for its laboratory and agronomy technology platform which provide soil, water, plant and food safety testing services to farmers operating farms of all sizes and agribusiness investors and governments.
Finally XSML Capital has almost deployed all the remaining capital of the African Rivers Fund with its latest deal. The Amsterdam-headquartered fund manager is backing Uganda's Ice Industries, a producer of the flake ice needed to keep produce fresh and cold whose main clients are the thousands of small fisherman on Lake Victoria. The capital will allow the firm to more than double its ice production capacity and provide its clients with greater volumes of cheaper ice.
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 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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