Fatoumata Ba, a veteran in the African technology sector, said in 2019 that her firm, Janngo Capital, would raise €60 million ($63 million). The firm intended to “invest fifty percent of its revenues in enterprises formed, co-founded, or benefitting women” and expected to close the fund the following year after receiving €15 million from European Investment Bank (EIB) as an anchor investor.

The fund got €10.5 million from the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) and Boost Africa in December, despite the fact that things did not go as anticipated. Subsequently, other limited partners, including Proparco, Burda Principal Investments (BPI), Muller Medien, and an ex-KKR partner, invested a total of €34 million.

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“Janngo Capital Startup Fund plans to invest in startups that enable Africans to improve their access to essential goods and services and African small and medium businesses to improve their access to market and capital — and create sustainable jobs at scale, with a focus on women and youth,” the firm said in a statement.

How The Fund Will Invest

• The four-year-old venture capital firm does not invest only in female-founded and -led firms. Even while it wants to invest up to 50 percent of our new fund in firms started, co-founded, or benefitting women, it adopts a “gender-equal” strategy, Ba said. The fund’s existing portfolio is 56 percent female-founded and led.

• Some of the companies that have received funding from the fund demonstrate the fund’s concept. 

• Janngo Capital has so far backed eleven African firms, including Sabi, a B2B e-commerce platform in development stage managed by a woman, and Jexport, an e-commerce marketplace for shipping goods that is based in Ivory Coast and also founded by a woman.

• According to Bâ, the fund intends to invest in 25 different businesses over the course of its lifespan, with an ownership stake of between fifteen (15%) and thirty (30%) percent. 

• “The earlier we invest, the larger our ownership is going to be since we normally expect to follow on,” she added.

• The investment stages in which Janngo Capital participates range from angel funding through late-stage VC/PE. 

• Financing is available from €50,000 to €150,000 for the concept to pre-seed stage, and from €150,000 to €1.5 million for seed or pre-Series A funding from the company, which was formed by women. 

• Meanwhile, the company can provide between €1.5 million and €5 million to entrepreneurs in the development stage that are searching for Series A or Series B funding.

• Janngo Capital is industry neutral, as are most funds of this size that focus on deals of this size. In particular, it highlights developments in healthcare, logistics, financial services, retail, food and agriculture, and transportation that are taking place throughout both French- and English-speaking Africa. 

• Launch Africa, Oui Capital, Ventures Platform, Microtraction, and Google’s Africa Investment Fund are just some examples of similarly sized pan-African companies that have just completed the first closure of their respective funds.

• In response to a question regarding when Janngo anticipates completing the final closure, Bâ emphasised that “it is not a market norm to publish final close dates, therefore we are not going to be public about it; nonetheless, it is feasible to aim 2023”

A Look At What Janngo Capital Does

Janngo Capital is one of the few female-founded, female-owned, and female-led venture capital and private equity firms that sees a clear investment opportunity in closing Africa’s gender financing gap by making long-term commitments to support female-founded and female-led enterprises. FirstCheck Africa and Alitheia Capital are two other funds with identical plays; the AfDB and EIB are limited partners in the latter.

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According to Ba, being a female-founded, female-owned, and female-led fund manager means that “gender equality is both a moral and a commercial argument, since the $42 billion financing gap for women entrepreneurs in Africa results in a $300 billion GDP-related wasted opportunity.”

Approximately 58% of Africa’s self-employed population are women, and they contribute approximately 13% to the continent’s gross domestic product. Nonetheless, they face a $42 billion financing deficit, and women-only entrepreneurs garnered less than 1% of the almost $5 billion raised by African businesses in 2017.

Janngo Capital New Fund Janngo Capital New Fund

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. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexpert