In addition to opening a new office in Lagos and seeking to expand its team, global technology investment firm Partech has announced the final closing of its second Africa fund, Partech Africa II, with a hard cap of €280M ($300M+).
All major investors from its predecessor fund, as well as top-tier investors, have made their first commitment to the Partech Africa platform and the African VC ecosystem, and the final closing of Partech Africa II has reached €280M ($300M+), following a strong first closing announced last year.
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The parties involved
Pension and sovereign funds from the United States and the Middle East are among the new types of global institutions that have been able to take advantage of this final closing’s oversubscription. In addition to the early backers of Partech Africa—Orange, AXIAN Investment, and the African Development Bank Group—new strategic investors Dubai Future District Fund (DFDF) and Africa Re are also part of it.
Forty-plus foreign investors, including family offices, large Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), and commercial investors like South Suez and Bertelsmann, have shown their support for the fund. Among the development finance institutions (DFIs) in this group are KfW, the German Development Bank, the EIB, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a World Bank Group member, FMO, the Entrepreneurial Development Bank of the Netherlands, Bpifrance Investissement, BII, DEG, the UK’s development finance institution and impact investor, and Proparco.
With initial tickets ranging from $1 million to $15 million on Seed to Series C rounds, Partech Africa II will ramp up its investment strategy across Africa. The goal is to back African founders and companies as they grow in local and international markets. The Fund has made three investments thus far: an e-commerce platform in Senegal, a payment orchestration startup in South Africa, and an Egyptian realty platform. Across the continent, the group plans to amass a portfolio of more than twenty companies.
General Partner, Tidjane Deme of Partech, has announced that the firm is increasing its team size and geographic reach across Africa. With offices in Dakar, Nairobi, Dubai, and now Lagos, Partech is better able to provide entrepreneurs with hands-on support.
Besides this growth, Partech Africa is also looking to hire an Investment Analyst in Lagos and a senior profile for “Portfolio Strategy & Operations” to help with value creation and exit planning.
According to Partech’s most recent 2023 Africa Tech Venture Capital Report, the number of investors involved in the African tech ecosystem has dropped by half, coinciding with the final closing announcement of Partech Africa II. It is more important than ever before to be able to anchor rounds at all stages, from Seed to Early Growth,” Collon said. It furthers our goal of facilitating the establishment of tech companies that will profoundly impact the future of innovation on a global scale and on the African economy in particular.
About Partech Africa
Partech Africa is one of Africa’s top venture capital funds that focuses on supporting tech startups. Its headquarters are in Dakar, Senegal. Startups in Africa are reshaping many industries through the application of technology; Partech Africa invests in seed and series C equity rounds in these companies.
About Partech
Partech is an international technology investment firm with branches in Berlin, Dakar, San Francisco, Dubai, Lagos, and Nairobi. The headquarters are in Paris. Everyone on our team is free to think as they like. Efforts are not limited by passing fads, fad methods, or established practices. We are firm believers in the transformative power of solidarity, standing shoulder to shoulder with the founders whose ventures we fund as we strive for common goals.
From the seed stage all the way through to growth, we back entrepreneurs by providing them with capital, operational expertise, and strategic support. We began in San Francisco forty years ago and now manage a portfolio of two hundred companies across forty countries and four continents, with a total asset under management (AUM) of €2.5 billion.