Last week in brief...A trio of development finance institutions played significant roles in Africa's private equity fundraising news last week. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which hasn't backed that many Africa-focused private equity funds in the past, is mulling the biggest commitment of the week. It's for Lorax Capital Partners' second fund, a generalist fund that'll target opportunities in SMEs and mid-cap businesses in Egypt.

The European Investment Bank also announced it was considering a fund commitment - this time it's for African Rivers Fund III, XSML Capital's latest fund which, according to the firm's website, is aiming to raise $75 million in time for its first close at the end of this year. The new fund will follow much the same strategy as its two predecessors, backing well-managed and growing SMEs in Central Africa.

Four and a half months after announcing a potential commitment to CardinalStone Capital Adviser's maiden fund, the IFC confirmed that it's investing $10 million in the planned $100 million private equity growth investment vehicle. The investment is being made via the IFC's SME Ventures initiative, a program that backs funds in frontier markets that provide risk capital to entrepreneurs. CardinalStone hopes to hit its final close by the end of this year.

At the very end of the week, TLG Capital announced it had received its biggest investment to date, this time from a Middle Eastern family office. The London-based investor will use $25 million of capital to back opportunities sourced by TLG's investment team across all its investment platforms. TLG's primary investment vehicle, the Credit Opportunities Fund has backed deals in the healthcare, retail, fintech, and telecoms sectors, so perhaps we'll see them making more deals in these sectors before too long.

In deal news, Agile Capital IV, a private equity fund managed by Agile Capital with backing from RMB Corvest, announced its first deal. The fund is acquiring a significant minority stake in Averge Technologies, a South Africa provider of communications and energy solutions to the telecoms and power sectors. The fresh funding will be used to push growth at the firm, which is primed to take advantage of the forecast growth in South Africa's ICT sector.

Fresh from making its last deal for its second fund a couple of weeks ago, Verod Capital announced the first exit for the same fund last week. The Lagos-based private equity firm is fully exiting its stake in UTL Trust Management Services, a business it first backed in 2015 following a change in Nigeria's banking regulations. The price realized by the sale is not being disclosed.

In portfolio company M&A news, Travelstart has acquired Club Travel Group and its subsidiaries from Thebe Tourism Holdings. The deal adds a corporate travel and franchise capability to Travelstart's overall market offering while bringing digital expertise to Club Travel, helping both the grow.

We report on two VC deals from last week. In Egypt. Sawari Ventures led a group of investors backing Alimentor's Series A round. The e-learning platform raised $4.5 million for the round from a group of 5 investors, bringing the total amount of capital raised since its launch in 2016 to $8 million. The fresh capital will be used to accelerate the firm's development of courses and content as well as expand its roster of expert mentors.

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation has become the latest and last investor in SweepSouth's recent funding round, lifting the total amount raised by the online cleaning platform to R50 million or about $3.4 million. The firm will use the cash to support its push into other home services as well as penetrate other markets outside South Africa.

And finally, the Investec-managed Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund is making its first investment in the affordable housing sector in Africa, anchoring the debt issuance being raised to finance the construction of student accommodation in Nairobi. The debt will be used to finance the construction of clean, safe and affordable accommodation for up to 5,000 students in and around Kenya's capital city.

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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