Last week in brief...The largest deal in Africa was an investment of (mainly) debt and equity in the consumer solar sector. Greenlight Planet, distributors of Sun King-branded home energy products in Africa and Asia, landed a total of $90 million from a group of development finance institutions and other institutional investors. ARCH Emerging Markets Partners is the only member of the consortium investing equity, while all the others - CDC, FMO, Norfund, responsAbility, SIMA Funds, and Symbiotics - are all providing debt. The terms of any of these investments are not being made available.
Having received the go-ahead from South Africa’s Competition Commission to acquire Brait's majority stake in DGB, a large independent wines and spirits production and distribution companies in late February, Capitalworks concluded the deal in the last couple of months. According to an announcement put out by Brait in mid-May, the sale of the 91.3% stake was expected to be “largely in line with the carrying value applied in the Group’s interim results”. Capitalworks Private Equity Fund III is buying the asset in partnership with Tim Hutchinson, DGB's CEO, who has overseen the company's significant expansion over the past 30 years.
Now news of a first. Vuna Partners has made its first deal for its first fund which held an initial close last month. The fund, Vuna Partners Fund I, is spending R110 million (or about $6.5 million) to acquire an 80% stake in 4PL Groupfrom Mergon Group, an investment company founded by Infotech founder Francois Van Niekerk. 7-year old 4PL offers its customers end-to-end logistics services spanning both specialized and bulk road, rail, sea, and air freight.
AfricInvest Private Credit has provided a trade finance facility to a Rwanda-based medical supply business, Africa Medical Supplier (AMS). The SME debt financier's investment is the largest trade finance facility AMS has received to date and will be used by the firm to increase its ability to expand the volume of medical supplies it imports and distributes around the country.
Endeavor Catalyst has announced the final close for its third fund, surpassing its original goal by $14 million to raise a total of $134 million for deals in emerging and under-served markets around the world. Fund III is Endeavor Catalyst's largest fund to date and lifts the total amount of assets managed by the group to $250 million. As with Endeavor's prior funds, the fund will invest alongside other venture and growth capital in the Series A through C rounds of startups led by Endeavor Entrepreneurs, a cohort of startup executives whose new businesses Endeavor has been identified as ones which could have a significant impact on the economies and people of their countries.
In venture deals, Egypt's Sawari Ventures has led a group of existing investors in the latest pre-Series A investment round for Elves, an app-based concierge service. The $2 million investment lifts the amount raised by the startup to $5 million so far.
The Elves app allows users to have access to an on-demand human "personal assistant" without hiring anyone. Users can use the app to make travel arrangements, settle up accounts, or to fulfill specific, less common requests such as ordering and delivering gifts to personal or business associates.
Africa-focused VC VestedWorld has made a pre-Series A investment in Viamo, a mobile engagement and information platform. The $500,000 growth capital investment is being made via VestedWorld's $11 million Fund II and is structured as a convertible note, a bridge to the startup's eventual Series A round. As part of the deal Jeff Stine, VestedWorld's Managing Director who led the investment, takes a seat on Viamo's board of directors.
Viamo will use the capital to expand its geographic reach and invest in further product development. Founded 7 years ago, the firm now has 180 employees and a client base of more than 300 organizations.
And finally this week, impact investor Investisseurs & Partenaires has opened an office in Nairobi, establishing its first permanent operational presence in East Africa. The move is intended to boost the number of deals it transacts and build on its existing portfolio of East African investments. In particular, the office will focus on making deals on behalf of I&P Afrique Entrepreneurs 2, a €92.8 million SME fund backed by several DFIs and other leading institutions.
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 Africa
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