Last week in brief...Komaza, a sustainable forestry business based in Kenya, raised the most amount of capital from investors in private equity and venture capital deals in Africa last week. The round was an initial close for Komaza's Series B, which is eventually aiming to raise $33 million - between them, Novastar Ventures, AXA Investment, FMO and Mirova's Land Degradation Neutrality Fund have provided the tech-enabled forestry business with an initial $28 million.
This investment is the second in the business for Novastar which led Komaza's Series A round three years ago. Since the company was launched, it has planted over 6 million trees with 25,000 smallholder farmers, an annual planting rate nearly double that of Kenya’s commercial tree planters. The startup will use the fresh funding to expand from its first site on Kenya's coast to two additional sites, invest in additional wood manufacturing facilities, and develop a new direct-to-farmer app to drive new farmer enrollment.
In another venture deal, Partech Africa co-led an investment round in TradeDepot, the business it first backed in 2018 in what was then the $120 million fund's maiden deal. The other investors in the deal were IFC, MSA Capital, and the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, and the four investors are investing combined $10 million in the Lagos-based SaaS FMCG distribution platform. The capital will be used to expand the business in Nigeria as well as other African markets as well as to develop a suite of financial products and credit facilities that the retailers in its network.
For the second investment for its €75 million venture fund of the past two weeks, Energy Access Ventures is backing ZIZ Energie, an electrification company based in Chad. Now fourteen years old, the company has emerged as one of Chad's leading suppliers of electrical equipment distribution, EPC services, and energy services for secondary cities and commercial and industrial clients. ZIZ is now developing MW scale ‘metro-grids’ by hybridizing diesel sites through solar and storage to extend their distribution network and increase population coverage and operating hours. The company also wants to expand its electrification efforts across new cities in Chad, North Cameroon, and other Central African countries.
Last week Futuregrowth announced that its Development Equity Fund backed SweepSouth in June, joining Naspers Foundry, The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Vumela, and CRE Ventures in the ranks of the startup's shareholders. How much was invested and what size stake was acquired has not been disclosed.
SweepSouth’s technology platform started by connecting clients with pre-vetted cleaners in several South African cities. Now it has added gardening and pool cleaning, heavy lifting, fixing and maintenance, and, most recently, commercial sanitation to its services. SweepStars, as the workers are known, have flexibility over their hours and availability, and benefit from pay rates significantly higher than the national minimum wage.
In a private equity deal, Kuramo Capital Management has reportedly doubled the amount of capital it's putting to work in Nabo Capital, a subsidiary of Centum Investments. According to the reports, Kuramo is investing an additional KShs 535 million (or almost $5 million) in the business, doubling the amount it's invested in the firm to KShs 1.07 billion or approximately $10 million. No additional terms of this latest deal have been disclosed.
A take-private deal we reported on earlier this year got the go-ahead from South Africa's competition commission last week.Capitalworks' deal for Peregrine reportedly values the firm at R4.5 billion or approximately $255 million, making it one of the largest private equity-related deals so far this year. Peregrine, which was founded in 1996, is made up of a number of financial services businesses, including Citadel Holdings, Peregrine Capital, Stenham, and SA Alpha.
Only six months after launching a fifth energy sector-focused private equity fund, Actis has reportedly raised almost $3 billion from investors, leaving the firm's team a little over $1 billion more to raise to hit its final close goal. Sources tell the Wall Street Journal that Actis Energy 5 held the first close last week, raising $2.9 billion from a group of more than 20 institutional investors. The fund will back wind and solar investments across Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia. Typically, Actis likes to take control positions in power generation and/or distribution businesses that offer healthy scale, diversification, and growth potential.
DFC is establishing a regional team of investment advisors in Africa to develop new investments, support transactions, and monitor the agency's portfolio on the continent. The advisors will be recruited and employed by impact investment and advisory firm CrossBoundary which won the mandate to establish the team following a competitive tendering process. The team will be based in five city hubs - Addis Ababa, Dakar, Johannesburg, Lagos, and Nairobi - from where they will support DFC's initiatives in each of the city's broader regions.
Enko Capital Management's Managing Partner Alain Nkontchou has been named as the new Chair of Ecobank Transnational's Board of Directors. He succeeds Emmanuel Ikazoboh whose 6-year tenure as Chairman has come to an end. Nkontchou is no stranger to the financial organization and its business, having joined the board in 2015 as a non-executive director. He assumed the role on June 30th.
In other job-related news, Verod Capital announced the hire of two senior executives last week from leading capital markets businesses focused on Africa. Yanish Bondahjagalu joins Verod as Chief Funds Operations Officer for the private equity firm from LeapFrog Investments. He will be based in Verod's office in Mauritius.
And Wale Odusanya, who has spent the last 13 years at Stanbic IBTC Capital, most recently as Head of Financial Advisory, joins the Lagos-based private equity firm as a Vice President. He will be based in Lagos, where he will be a senior dealmaker on the private equity firm's investment team.
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
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