The state of Angel investing in Africa in 2015.
Last year, I wrote about the state of the Angel investing in Africa in 2014 , I thought it would be good to look at the same issue and look back on the state of Angel investing in Africa in 2015.
Alot has changed from an ecosystem point of view but there is still alot that need to change .
Our year in review :
At the beginning of 2015 I shared our plans with DisruptAfrica and subsequently kicked off the “MeetInvestor series” for the publication and I am very happy to see the wonderful job that Tom and Gabriel have done with that platform .
We started a series of investment dinners called #FrontierInvestorsDinner in London and it was an excellent opportunity to curate great conversations and meet some people that are shaping our world today . Please see some of the photos from the July’s dinner with the Rwanda High Commissioner to the UKhere and we are looking forward to expanding this series to 5 cities around the world in 2016 .
AngelfairAfrica that took place in Accra, Ghana was the highlight of our events calendar because we were able to directly participate as investment partners and add value . Please find the full report and pictures here
NewGenFund was also established with the aim of investing in up to 10 over the next 18 months . The objective here is to give retail investors an opportunity to witness professional angel investing in practice. Our goal is to activate 1000 angels by 2020 .
In other news :
Africa Business Angel Network came alive in 2015 and run a number of workshops across the continent ,find out more about them here
Crowdfunding adoption is still low .
Infodev reports on lessons learned through East African startups, and it makes a very interesting reading , find the full report here
Predictions for state of Angel investing in 2016.
This is a long term play so hold tight because we are just getting started as an ecosystem so this is not the time for us to start cracking champagne .Having said that we expect the following things to happen :
- More deals will be done and they will be unprecedented in size. There are a few seed funds and micro funds have been raised capital in 2015 that will need to be deployed.
- More local investors will start doing some interesting deals , as more stories emerge.
- More corporate venture capital will be made available to more startups ,Safaricom and Interswitch have led the way but more corporates will be getting involved in 2016. You can read more about Safaricom’s CVC fund known as Spark here
- More impact investors will come out and stand up to be counted , our colleagues at RenewLLC have had a fantastic year and recently announced their 7th investment in Ethiopia .
- More small size acquisitions will be done in 2016 , looking at these top 5 acquisitions done in 2015 ( mind you that there were others that were completed but not publicly announced) . I can predict that more sub $20M deals will be done throughout the year across sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa .
- The three funds that I am really excited about are:
- 1)VentureGardenGroup -Nigeria
- 2)CRE Venture Capital -Pan-African
- 3)Chanzo_Capital -Ghana
- Last but not the least ,more governments will need to take a leaf out of Rwanda’s book and put together policies that are friendly to startups and investors .
If you Want a ticket to startup heavens, Here are 4+1 reasons to become an angel investor in Africa today .
How we made it in Africa also did a great feature on NewGenAngels and our progress so far ,please find it here
Wishing you a profitable #2016 !
By Sean Obedih, Founder, Diverse Code
