Novastar Ventures, a Pan-African venture capital firm, has launched a new investment vehicle, the Africa People + Planet Fund, with a $25 million equity investment from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). The fund will focus on backing startups that provide solutions for agriculture and climate change. While the details of other limited partners who made commitments are not yet available, the Nairobi and Lagos-based VC firm plans to raise over $200 million, making it one of the largest funds in the region.

This is Novastar’s third fund after the $108 million Africa Fund II, which expanded its geographical reach to include West Africa, and the East Africa Fund, an $80 million fund that invested in 15 startups within the region. The previous funds financed tech-enabled startups in various sectors, such as agriculture, education, and renewable energy.

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With the new fund, Novastar will invest in marketplaces, financial and supply chain services that enable access-to-market and resilience in the face of climate change. The fund will focus on climate techs, clean techs, marketplaces, and initiatives that contribute to community resilience. The clean techs that Novastar plans to back include clean utilities, clean construction technologies, electric mobility, smart logistics, the circular economy, and alternative materials.

Novastar also plans to back climate techs that use innovative business models to deploy regenerative forestry, agriculture, and aquaculture, biofuels, and biochar that protect biodiversity, improve soil health and capture carbon, while generating more opportunities for smallholder farming.

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According to Novastar co-founder and managing partner Andrew Carruthers, the firm will use the same tools and strategies to support sustainable, planet-positive, mass-market business models across Africa that the rest of the world can learn from. The firm sees immense opportunities in the three categories, driven by population growth, rapid urbanization, and the vast amount of arable land on the continent. Clean techs in Africa were the second most funded startups in the region last year, after fintechs.

Planet Fund Novastar Ventures Planet Fund Novastar Ventures

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