Last week in brief...An exit to a global multinational, a new debt facility to underpin businesses through the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic and plans for a major Africa-focused off-grid platform lead the items we reported on last week. As country lockdowns continued, deal activity may have been muted, but it was notable nonetheless.
Adenia Partners scored their third exit for their third fund, selling Mauvilac, a paints and coatings company they first backed in 2014, to global paint manufacturer AkzoNobel. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, we can get some sense of the size of the deal. According to the buyer, Mauvilac's revenues topped €20 million in 2018. Adenia's value creation initiatives have reportedly helped boost the company's EBITDA by some 60%.
Impact investment firm Vital Capital announced the establishment of a debt facility to support SMEs across a number of sectors that will need support to weather the downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. With $10 million of initial capital, the firm plans to expand the pool of capital by encouraging participation from other fund managers. The facility will generate risk-adjusted returns by providing loans to sound companies whose services are impactful.
Plans for a significant new platform company were outlined last week. Renewvia Energy is establishing a holding company to consolidate its off-grid solar holdings in Africa and raise up to $350 million in equity and debt. The capital will be used to achieve its ambition of installing a thousand off-grid solar power systems in Kenya and Nigeria over the next five years. Renewvia Energy Africa Holding will be able to out-compete the smaller players in the market, many of which are unable to secure reliable financing.
We covered two venture capital deals last week. Mobiz, a 5-year old mobile marketing startup, has raised $1 million from Kalon Venture Partners with the expectation of landing an additional $1 million from HAVAIC within the month. The capital has been earmarked to support Mobiz’s hiring plans as well as invest in planned marketing and software development initiatives. The firm provides its clients with a simple-to-use customer marketing platform that allows their marketing teams to create and distribute personalized, interactive campaigns by SMS.
Finnfund has agreed to make an investment in Kasha, an e-commerce platform selling personal care products to women across East Africa. Again, the amount being invested is $1 million which will be used to expand the firm’s reach within its two core operating markets, Kenya and Rwanda.
And finally, we've excerpted the third piece from the ImpactAfrica report for our series ESG and Africa's Unlisted Companies. This time, we look at impact tokens; what they are, the technologies that underpin than and the uses they can be put to.
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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