Last week in brief...The biggest private equity deal of the week took place in Nigeria. In what's the last transaction for their second fund, Verod Capital Management's bid to acquire Metropolitan Life Insurance Nigeria from Momentum Metropolitan Holdings has been now been given the go-ahead by the country's regulatory authorities. The country's insurance market seems primed for growth on the back of government-backed changes that will encourage more people to buy the company's products.
Two European DFIs were involved in a couple of smaller deals last week. Finnfund made its first direct equity investment in Zambia, backing Yalelo, a tilapia fish farming business on Lake Kariba. The firm will put the fresh financing towards its plans to double its annual production capacity to some 25,000 tons.
FMO is backing a subsidiary of Ghana's largest independent cocoa processor with debt. The Dutch development bank has agreed to provide Niche Confectionery with a multi-million dollar credit facility which it will use to purchase equipment to expand the range of confectionery products it offers. These are planned to include a line of ready-to-drink chocolate beverages, chocolate spreads and chocolate powders for the consumer market.
In the venture space, Flourish Ventures has led a group of investors backing FairMoney's Series A. The FinTech firm will use the fresh capital to hire more engineers in support of its plans for a mobile banking service in Nigeria. Eventually, the company will roll the service out to other African countries as well as other emerging markets. The other members of the consortium included DST Global and FairMoney's seed investors, Newfund, Speedinvest, and Le Studio VC.
Britain's CDC Group has made a significant commitment to Development Partners International's latest fund, African Development Partners III. The DFI is investing $80 million in the planned $800 million fund which will back growing, cash-flow positive businesses which sell their products and services to the growing ranks of Africa’s middle-class consumers with equity. CDC backed both the fund's predecessors which have now been fully deployed.
The SA SME Fund is teaming up with the South African government's Technology Innovation Agency to invest in three venture capital funds. The three funds in question are the OneBio Seed Investment Fund, the country's first biotech-focused fund, Savant's Venture Fund, and the University Technology Fund, a new fund set up to invest in and commercialize technology innovations developed in South Africa's higher education institutions. All three are based in Cape Town.
The African Development Bank's Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) is supporting the launch of a new Nigerian private equity energy fund being developed by All On, an impact investment firm backed by oil major, Shell. The new fund, which is named the Nigeria Energy Access Fund, is the beneficiary of a $500,000 grant from SEFA which will be used to finance the initial set-up costs of the new fund, including supporting its engagement with both private and public sector investors.
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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