The big bucks flying around Africa's private capital ecosystem last week were reserved for the fundraising crowd. And they involved some of the most high-profile investors doing deals on the continent and elsewhere. What transactions there were tended to be early-stage venture capital-sized by comparison.

So to fundraising. There was a final close (more or less), a change in fund management and a couple of new funds that caught our attention. The close involved LeapFrog Investments. The private equity impact investor handily exceeded its final close target for its third fund, securing $700 million in commitments from a mixed group of LPs.

The new fund's LPs come from across the institutional investment community and most of them had invested in LeapFrog's earlier funds. They include insurers, corporate and public pension funds, DFIs, and foundations among their number. LeapFrog could possibly win an additional commitment - the firm has extended the fundraise for one particular potential investor who could add to the fund's total amount of capital by the end of May.

Abraaj's liquidators have been busy looking for managers to take on the different funds in the private equity fund managers portfolio. The $1 billion healthcare fund at the center of the financial turmoil which led to Abraaj's provisional insolvency filing in the middle of last year, has a new manager. TPG will now manage the fund, rename it the Evercare Health Fund and continue its mandate of making investments in healthcare opportunities in Africa and South Asia. The global investment giant now inherits a portfolio of assets made up of hospitals, clinics, and diagnostics centers in India, Pakistan, Kenya, and Nigeria.

Helios Investment Partners' potentially record-breaking fourth fund is in line for a commitment from the IFC, which also backed the fund's three predecessors. The fund, Helios Investors IV, is looking to raise a total of $1.25 billion by final close, which would make it the largest Africa-focused private equity fund ever raised. The generalist, growth equity fund's strategy will be to make mid to large-cap investments ranging from $30 million up to $200 million in size in exchange for significant minority or control stakes in diversified platform companies in Africa.

Metier's second sustainable capital fund looks like it may be in line for a commitment from the EIB. The private equity firm is eventually looking to raise $200 million for the fund, which it will invest in equity, quasi-equity and equity-related deals in the distributed generation, grid-tied generation and resource-efficiency sectors in Southern Africa, including its home country of South Africa.

And so to the deals last week. Allianz X has announced its first investment in an African-headquartered company. The digital investment unit of global insurer Allianz is co-leading a Series B investment in SafeBoda, a motorcycle ride-hailing company based in Uganda. SafeBoda, which was founded in 2014, offers the people of Kampala the opportunity to order up and pay for reliable, safe transport.

DOB Equity is investing in a producer and distributor of clean drinking water in Tanzania. The Dutch family-backed impact investor is investing an undisclosed amount into Jibu Tanzania, a well-established producer and distributor of water in branded and refillable bottles of differing sizes. With its technology and process, the firm is able to offer its products to its customers at a significantly lower price than competing bottled water products.

AfricInvest is leading the Series A investment round for an enterprise AI startup which was launched in Tunis in 2014. The private equity investor is partnering with Endeavour Catalyst, a New York-based co-investment fund on the deal.

InstaDeep, an enterprise AI business, will use the fresh capital to make further investments in its product offering, which helps enterprise customers leverage deep reinforcement learning and other advanced machine learning technologies to optimize business decisions and improve their overall efficiency.

And finally, MYDAWA has secured capital to fund its expansion plans in its home country of Kenya. The e-healthcare platform has raised $3 million from the Africa Healthcare Master Fund, which was established in 2017 and is managed by Asia Africa Investments & Consulting or AAIC. The capital will be used to accelerate the rollout of MYDAWA's products and services across Kenya and provide customers with affordable, regulation approved, high-quality medications in addition to its current portfolio of healthcare products.

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.

Subscribe to Directory
Write an Article

Highlight

Axon moves into Cloud Technology

by Axon Partners Group

cloud technology axon

Estrategias de Negociación con Inversor...

by Foro Capital Pymes

La negociación con inversores es un paso crucial y a menudo intimidan...

Photos Stream