The Catalyst Fund has marked a significant achievement by securing the initial closing of its ambitious $40 million fund, dedicated to supporting climate-focused startups in Africa. In an announcement, the fund proudly revealed an initial capital infusion of $8.6 million, courtesy of backing from FSD Africa Investments (FSDAi), Cisco Foundation, USAID Prosper Africa, and the tech-savvy investor Andrew Bredenkamp.

With a clear mission in mind, the Catalyst Fund has charted a course to invest in an array of sectors crucial to addressing climate challenges. These sectors encompass agtech, insurtech, climate fintech, as well as startups specializing in fishery management, food systems, cold chain logistics, waste management, and water management. Operating across the African continent, this pan-African fund has set its sights on nurturing pre-seed startups. Notably, it has already extended its support to ten promising startups spanning six African nations, including Egypt, Senegal, and Morocco. The fund is resolute in its commitment to back 20 startups this year, with a long-term vision of supporting a total of 40 such enterprises.

Underlining its dedication to catalyzing early-stage growth, the Catalyst Fund is poised to provide pre-seed startups with an initial investment of $200,000. This initial capital injection paves the way for subsequent follow-on investments, with up to $500,000 available during the seed stage and an impressive $1.5 million earmarked for Series A rounds.

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Maelis Carraro, Managing Partner of Catalyst Fund, articulated the strategy behind these investments, stating, “In essence, our commitment of approximately $2.2 million per startup makes sense because we enter at a very early stage to act as the catalyst for other investors. At the pre-seed stage, we utilize a standard SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) instrument.” Carraro further emphasized that pre-seed investments will also include an invaluable $100,000 allocation for “dedicated technical support from a team of experts and operators, spanning all the functions essential for a startup’s growth.”

The Catalyst Fund’s journey began in 2016 as a pre-seed accelerator, aiming to address challenges such as funding, talent acquisition, and market access for startups. It achieved this through philanthropic collaborations with organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).

However, the fund underwent a transformation last year, transitioning from an accelerator to a venture capital fund. Carraro explained that this shift was a natural progression, enabling the fund to offer longer-term support to founders. She noted, “The transition from an accelerator to a VC fund for us was quite a natural one. We have a unique model because we will continue to provide hands-on venture-building support at the pre-seed stage.” She further emphasized that this transition was motivated by a recognized need for ongoing capital and support, unlike the time-bound nature of grant accelerators.

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The Catalyst Fund is part of a growing wave of capital pools dedicated to addressing climate change in Africa. Other notable initiatives include the Africa People + Planet Fund by Novastar Ventures, Equator, and Satgana.

Carraro underscored that the imperative of climate change challenges naturally steered the fund toward solutions focused on resilience and adaptation. The fund’s broad sectoral focus reflects its belief that every facet of the economy must adapt to climate change impacts. Some of the startups backed by the fund include Octavia Carbon, a direct air carbon capture startup, and Sand to Green, which is pioneering the transformation of deserts into arable land.

Carraro concluded, “Our latest fund is entirely geared toward supporting tech startups dedicated to building a climate-resilient future. We are laser-focused on climate adaptation solutions across sectors, with the overarching goal of enhancing communities’ resilience to the effects of climate change. The first closure of our venture fund is an extraordinary milestone, as very few philanthropy-originating accelerators can make this transition.”

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Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert. 
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard

Catalyst Fund, a pre-seed venture capital (VC) fund and accelerator, has announced a $2 million investment in ten startups working to strengthen the resilience of climate-vulnerable populations in Africa. This is the initial cohort of Catalyst Fund’s new $30 million venture capital fund, which is anchored by financial sector development agency FSD Africa and aims to support early-stage innovators in developing technologies that will make Africa more resilient to the effects of climate change.

Each of the ten startups will receive $100,000 in equity investments as well as $100,000 in hands-on venture-building assistance.

These businesses will be added to Catalyst Fund’s current portfolio of 61 startups in emerging markets, where they will receive funding, specialised and expert-led venture development support, and direct access to investors, corporate innovators, and talent networks that can help them scale. The portfolio firms of Catalyst Fund have so far raised over US$640 million in additional capital and today provide services to over 14 million people worldwide, including MSMEs.

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“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with ten groundbreaking African startups working to build a more resilient and sustainable future,” said Maelis Carraro, Managing Partner of Catalyst Fund. “Our goal is to back mission-driven founders that share our vision of a world where every individual has the tools and opportunities they need to thrive. From agtech to insurtech, waste management, disaster response, and carbon finance, these startups display finance, tech, and business model innovations that will help communities better adapt to climate impacts and grow their resilience.”

The ten companies joining this next cohort of Catalyst Fund are:

• Agro Supply [Uganda]: a mobile layaway system that helps farmers save money gradually using their mobile phones and to cash out in order to purchase farm inputs such as hybrid (drought-resistant) seeds, from maize to sorghum, sunflower and soybean during the planting season.
  
• Assuraf [Senegal]: a digital insurtech platform offering end-users access to a range of insurance products (e.g. agriculture, automotive, health, housing, natural disasters) from over 20+ insurance companies with a fully integrated claims management system.
  
• Bekia [Egypt]: a tech-enabled waste collection solution enabling companies and households to exchange their waste (plastic, paper, electronics, metals, cooking oil) against a financial incentive paid on a digital wallet.
  
• Eight Medical [Nigeria]: a cloud-native Emergency Medical Services (EMS) platform that provides on-demand urgent care when and where it is needed. This “911 for Africa” connects emergency medical responders on motorcycles to users in distress in 10 minutes or less, including for climate-induced crises.
  
• Farm to Feed [Kenya]: a food supply chain company that is providing a digitally-enabled solution to food loss/waste. Their climate-smart solution focuses on providing a market for imperfect and surplus produce from farmers, contributing to food security and greenhouse gas emissions reduction.
  
• Farmz2U [Nigeria, Kenya]: an agtech enterprise driving sustainable agriculture. Through Farmz2U, farmers can access personalized farming advice (especially on regenerative farming practices), affordable credit, quality and traceable inputs, and direct buyers for their harvest.
  
• Octavia Carbon [Kenya]: the Global South’s first Direct Air Capture (DAC) company that is building the world’s lowest-cost DAC hub. Octavia is currently building DAC machinery to capture carbon from the air for resale as either carbon dioxide or carbon credits to off-takers.
  
• PaddyCover [Nigeria]: works with established insurers and digital platforms to design and offer bespoke products via their platform that facilitates flexible insurance packages, including health, life and, in the future, index-based crop insurance. The offerings are built into the lifestyle touchpoints of the customer, either as a convenience or as complementary value-adds.
  
• Sand to Green [Morocco]: transforms deserts into cultivable land using agroforestry methodology and a solar-powered desalination system to design climate-smart regenerative farms.
  
• VAIS [Egypt]: a precision agtech startup committed to climate resilience and food security by providing data intelligence to farms via their FarmGATE application, which is powered by proprietary artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML)-based virtual field probing (VFP) technology, to enable better use of water and other farm inputs to produce better yields.

“At FSD Africa, we believe that by harnessing the power of tech, and specifically fintech innovation, we can help to spur the development of climate resilience solutions for Africa, thereby helping deliver on COP27’s core themes of adaptation and implementation,” said Juliet Munro, Director of Digital Economy at FSD Africa. “These companies are strong examples of the innovation we need to enhance the resilience of vulnerable communities across the continent.”

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“COP27 in Egypt this year called for more private sector financing to fill the >$330B funding gap for adaptation and resilience by 2030. It also called for more local innovations to support communities in building resilience to climate impacts. The Catalyst Fund’s new cohort exemplifies what these innovative climate solutions for the most vulnerable could look like. We are also thrilled to be backing companies in Francophone Africa and Northern Africa for the first time. We intend to back many more startups like them across the African continent in the years to come,” said Aaron Fu, Partner at Catalyst Fund.

Catalyst Fund Africa Catalyst Fund Africa

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert. 
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard

PanAfrican Capital Holdings ‘PAC Holdings’ has established a venture capital fund called The Catalyst to identify and invest in growth to product-expansion stage African companies with compelling business models and market opportunities, as part of its vision to deliver exceptional services in chosen markets and create value for stakeholders.

“The Catalyst Project has been set up to facilitate and finance the delivery of technology enabled solutions, as well as promote African entrepreneurship. Our industries of primary focus are pivotal gears of a digital African economy, and these include finance, education, health, agriculture and logistic,” Toluwalope Oni, the Global Coordinator of The Catalyst, said. 

Given current macroeconomic circumstances, the project will focus on sectors which provide the primary underlying trigger for Sustainable Economic Growth in emerging and frontier economies. 

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Selected enterprises who succeed will have access to PAC Holdings’ community of strategic investors and mentors, as well as product/service synergies.

“The project’s target is to inject an initial sum of $1,000,000 into ‘growth stage’ businesses that meet its criteria of; a clearly defined minimum viable product, solving a need/gap either on the demand or supply side in Africa, generating revenue enough to cover direct costs, seeking capital to boost expansion required to achieve exponential scale and little or no debt balances in the company’s balance sheet,” the Global coordinator added.

According to the Venture Capital in Africa Report, “90% of all reported VC deals between 2014 and 2020 were in technology-enabled companies operating across a variety of sectors. Financials accounted for the largest share of VC deals by both volume (22%) and value (26%) from 2014–2020, with Information Technology (18%) and Consumer Discretionary (16%) accounting for the second and third largest share of VC deals by volume within the same timeframe.” In a post-covid future, this trend is projected to continue, with more potential for technology solutions appearing.

Catalyst fund PanAfrican Capital  Catalyst fund PanAfrican Capital 

How To Apply

Visit https://www.TheCatalystAfrica.com

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer