Last week in brief...Fund launches and fund commitments made up the lion's share of activity in Africa's private capital markets last week. Of the deals that were done, one confirmed a valuation in the unicorn realm, another delivered a healthy return on an exit while another continued an active year for its investor.

We'll start with the deal that was done at a $1 billion valuation. Visa has struck a deal to acquire a piece of Interswitch, a Helios Investment backed-payments company. The global payments giant is taking a significant minority position in the firm as part of an overall strategic partnership between the two companies which has been established with an eye to boosting digital payment capabilities across the continent and improving financial inclusion for Africa’s consumers.

Zoscales Partners continued with its investment pace, making its fourth investment of the past 12 months for their maiden fund. The private equity fund manager is investing fresh equity into Ethiopian biscuit maker Ahadukes Food Products, producers of several successful biscuit brands including Marie Gold, Ginger Crunch, and Tiger Creams. The fresh capital will be used to support the firm’s growth plans.

Vantage Capital announced a full exit from its 2013 mezzanine investment in Genser Energy, an independent power producer. The investor originally backed the company to finance the firm’s development and construction of a 30 MW power plant contracted by Kinross Gold Corporation’s mine at Chirano in Ghana. The exit is being financed by a group made up of South African banks, the Barak Fund and Africa50 which have agreed to provide Genser with $230 million of credit to refinance its debt and support the firm’s expansion plans.

Now to fundraising news. New asset management firm BluePeak Private Capital has launched the raise for its maiden fund, a significant, pan-African focused private credit fund. The firm, which was launched this year by Walid Cherif, who had previously headed Gulf Capital’s private credit business, is looking to raise $200 million to invest in junior debt opportunities in SMEs across the continent.

Canada’s development finance institution announced capital commitments to two private equity funds last week. FinDev Canada is investing $7.5 million in each of the funds, one of which, Alitheia IDF Fund, will back opportunities in women-led businesses, while the other, Criterion’s second Africa Forestry Fund, will help reinvigorate the continent’s forestry sector.

The European Investment Bank was also very active last week, approving commitments to two funds and starting the appraisal process on another. The two who had their commitments approved were XSML's African Rivers Fund III and Janngo Capital's maiden startup fund targeting startups in West Africa. The DFI has also started the appraisal process on a possible commitment to EuroMena's fourth fund. Having backed some of EuroMena's earlier funds, the odds for approval would seem to in their favor.

Finally, CDC has hired two senior executives to head its offices in Lagos and Nairobi. Benson Adenuga, who joins the British DFI from the International Finance Corporation, will head CDC’s Nigerian office while Seema Dhanani, who most recently worked for the Mauritius Commercial Bank, will head the institution’s office in Kenya.

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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