Last week in brief...Some of the deal and fundraising activities in Africa last week involved the same investors. Funds managed by Tunis-based AfricInvest were involved in an exit and a PIPE deal. The African Development Bank was behind two items of fundraising news. Bamboo Capital Partners exited one investment and announced the appointment of a new partner to head up operations. And we found a couple of venture capital-related trend and forecasting items to round out this week's issue.

We'll start with AfricInvest's deals. We lead with the news that the firm has made the second exit for their Maghreb Private Equity Fund III, selling its stake in a generic drug manufacturer in Morocco that it first backed in 2012. The acquirers of the firm, Polymedic, are two alternative investors - NBK Capital Partners and Foursan Capital Partners - both raised in the Middle East.

In Tunisia, AfricInvest is increasing, in fact, quadrupling, its stake in Land'Or of behalf of its Maghreb Private Equity Fund IV, which has acquired an additional 1.8 million shares in the publicly-listed company and increasing its holding to 21.6% of the business. We calculate its stake to be now worth around $6.5 million.

As we mentioned, the African Development Bank featured in two fundraising items last week. In the larger of the two, the Bank's board has approved a commitment to Metier's second sustainable capital fund, helping it get closer to its final close target of $200 million.

The Off-Grid Energy Fund, which is part of the African Development Bank-sponsored Facility for Energy Inclusion (FEI), announced last week that it had reached final close in November last year. The debt fund, which is managed by Lion's Head Global Partners, will deploy the capital in investments in distributors, manufacturers, end-user credit providers and other businesses in Africa's household energy access sector.

There were two private equity infrastructure deals last week. Africa Finance Corporation is expanding its stake in ARISE Integrated Industrial Platforms(ARISE IIP), acquiring part of Olam International's holding in the business. The deal forms part of the reorganization of Gabon Special Economic Zone (or GSEZ), a joint venture set up by Africa Finance Corporation, Olam, and the Government of Gabon to develop infrastructure assets in the country. AFC is buying 10% of Olam's stake and now owns 50.5%. Olam retains the balance of the company.

In Kenya, the Pembani Remgro Infrastructure Fund is participating in a deal for data center operator Icolo, ending up with a minority stake in the company alongside its management team. Interxion, a Dutch data center services provider which first backed Icolo in 2016 has increased its holding in the company to 70%. The company has grown rapidly on the back of strong demand from cloud and content platforms as well as other enterprises and in the process of acquiring additional land in both Mombasa and Nairobi to expand its data servicing capacity.

We report on two developments at Bamboo Capital Partners. The impact investment firm has sold its stake in Accion Microfinance Bank which it held indirectly for the last 7 years via its interest Accion Investments in Microfinance Nigeria. Bamboo has sold its holding to fellow impact investor Accion and Bamboo's partner in the holding company.

Bamboo also announced the appointment of Kim-Andrée Potvin as a Partner to lead the firm's operations. She joins them than two decades of asset management and fund services experience, most recently as COO for Landolt & Cie. She'll work closely with Bamboo's heads of risk and compliance and finance to optimize the activities of the firm's funds, staff, and offices as well as improving its IT and HR systems.

And finally, we've curated a couple of venture capital related items from other leading publications. Forbes breaks down the sector's record levels of investment activity last year using data from WeeTracker's latest report. And Ventureburn highlights 10 African startups to watch.

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.

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