Based in Lagos Venture platformone of Africa’s most active early-stage investors has raised $64 million so far for its second fund, with an ultimate goal of $75 million, founding partner Kola Always says TechCrunch.
Investors include the Nigerian government, through its company Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises (iDICE) Scheme.marking this government’s first investment in a VC fund. This is significant because Nigeria’s growing startup community is home to the largest number of startup unicorns on the continent.
Other limited partners in the second Ventures Platform fund include IFC, British International Investment (BII), Proparco, Standard Bank, MSMEDA and AfricaGrow, in addition to European family offices reminiscent of Alder Tree Investment and distinguished global backers reminiscent of former Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel. Aina claims that 70% of investors from the previous fund have returned.
Nigeria’s alternative of this company as its debut investment is probably not a surprise. Since its founding in 2016, the Ventures platform has built a popularity for early detection of disruptive startups in the country, something it hopes to copy in other African markets.
In 2022, Ventures Platform launched its first institutional fund value $46 million, which is expected to focus primarily on pre-seed and seed rounds.
For the second fund, the company may even proceed its Series A investments, “investing with greater conviction” and searching for larger ownership stakes, Aina said. This should have been excellent news for the region’s founders, as Series A funding later became harder to come back by years of withdrawal from Silicon Valley corporations.
While Ventures Platform plans to deepen its presence in Nigeria, the company has began to strengthen its presence in French-speaking West Africa and North Africa, regions where it has already made several investments to achieve early access to promising deals.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
To date, the pan-African enterprise capital firm has funded over 90 startups across the continent. Most of these investments, the company says, are “pain reliever” corporations in fintech, healthtech, agritech, edtech and AI – corporations that solve non-consumption problems or, put simply, serve markets where people have little or no access to services.
Aina points to portfolio corporations backed by Visa-backed unicorn Moniepoint and Stripe-owned Paystack, two fintechs that have opened recent markets for online payments and banking for small businesses.
“Many small businesses couldn’t sell outside their immediate neighborhood before Paystack because they couldn’t accept online payments,” he said. “Moniepoint, on the other hand, has brought financial inclusion to the corners of this country. It is a market-creating innovation.”
Other notable portfolio corporations include Left Lane-backed money transfer app LemFi, backed by the Gates Foundation Seamless HRpowered by Norfund OmniRetail, powered by QED fintech Raenest and healthtech Remedial Health.
Even though innovation is accelerating and funding in the African tech ecosystem has exceeded $12 billion since 2015, stakeholders are expressing recent concerns about the scarcity of exits and liquidity events. This reality has hampered the fundraising efforts of many VCs on the continent, most of whom are emerging executives who have faced a difficult environment as a global collective over the past two years.
However, Ventures Platform managed to draw each local and international investors to the two funds during this time, despite market uncertainty.
“We have investors who understand how venture capital ecosystems have developed in other markets and know that we will be able to achieve this in the long term. Another reason is that we have recovered capital from our previous syndicates,” Aina said, referring to the company that returned 4 of its six vintages (including five angel syndicates) between 2016 and 2022. The investor also claims that the first fund is among the world’s best performers on a TVPI and IRR basis for its vintage.
Still addressing the issue of exits and the continent’s funding slowdown (from $5 billion in 2021 to $2 billion last 12 months), Aina adds that Africa’s long-term potential has not waned and describes the continent as “the purest asymmetric play for non-consensus alpha” – a enterprise term for high-risk, high-reward bets.
“If you are a global capital allocator looking for real diversification, Africa is the place to be,” he said. “By 2050, one in four people will be African. Our GDP growth rate is twice that of the US, and yet most of the value is still offline. The opportunities are enormous if you have patience and local context.”