By Eric Osiakwan
Mike Macharia transitioned from Sevenseas Technologies to Ponea Health, Ian Kabiru rose from a Marketing Director role at Popote Wireless to founding Horizons Offices. Delila Kidanu, moved from Koa Technology to Okoa Rescue last year, whilst Tesh Mbaabu recently transitioned from Marketforce to Chpter.
Sitting between these leading founders from Kenya, the Silicon Savannah of Africa, on November 7, 2024, was Rachel Macauley, Principal at the DRK Foundation, who moderated the transitions panel that lighted up the 11th Angel Fair Africa aka AFA@11, according to Achumboro Ataande, an angel investor from the United States who was participating in the event for the first time.
“These are soul-searching stories that are hardly told in the entrepreneurial circles that I invest, so it is refreshing to return to Africa and hear them told at AFA@11 – they are similar to the real-life stories our elders told us by the fireside when I was a kid in my native home of Ghana before my family relocated to New York where I grew up”.
Mr. Ataande runs two companies that have made him enough money that in 2018 he started angel investing in the US. In 2022, Ataande began investing in African founders, courtesy of an encounter with Eric Osiakwan at the Georgetown Africa Business Conference, where he offered to help Ataande transition to investing in African founders – a dream he had hoped to realize beginning in 2024.
Ataande, who has so far invested in seven African startups, was sharing his experience on the opening Angel Investors panel, alongside Rodrique Msechu of Serengeti Angel, who has made four investments in Tanzania startups, Thomas Festerling, co-founder of Germany-based Greentec Capital Partners who also invests his own capital as an Angel and Mia von Koschitzky-Kimani, Managing Partner of Future Africa, a dynamic firm founded in Lagos, Nigeria that is currently deploying its third angel fund through Accelerate Africa, an early stage accelerator launched earlier this year.
Abigail Komu, Manager of the Nairobi Business Angel Network (NaiBAN) which invests in startups moderated the panel which dived into how these investors find the founders, invest in them and add value to get them off the ground.
Thomas, Rodrique, Achumboro, Mia and Abigail on the investors panel at AFA@11
This was followed by the entrepreneurs panel moderated by Micheline Ntiru of Delta40, a Nairobi, Kenya headquartered ventures studio that also invests in startups with value added services.
The exciting panel featured Isidore Kpotufe of Rivia, Ghana and Chisepo Chirwa of Bosso, Zambia, both of whom pitched at the 10th Angel Fair Africa (AFA@10) in Cape Town, South Africa last year and have since closed their pre-seed rounds with some investors they met at that event.
The panel included the resourceful Jit Bhattacharya, founder and CEO of Basigo, operators of the first electric fleet of buses in the silicon savannah. According to Jit, “I had earlier launched a similar business in Silicon Valley that did not work out, but I now find myself doing the same in Africa but this time the context is different, and the timing is right for success”.
Isidore expressed his appreciation to the AFA@10 team that helped him re-engineer his business model which led to Chanzo Capital believing in him to lead the Chanzo Rivia syndicate that brought in the first $50K, opening the flood gate for others to come for a total of $200K first close with an extension. Chisepo said “we were in discussions with some of these investors, but it was not until we met them at AFA@10 that we closed our pre-seed round of $400K including the investment from Chanzo Capital”.
Chisepo, Isidore, Jit and Micheline on the entrepreneurs panel at AFA@11
All this started at 10am on the 7th of November 2024 at ONESPACE in the TRIFIC North Tower of Two Rivers with Dr. James Mworia, CEO of the Centum Group, the first keynote speaker in a hearty fireside chat with Lizzie Biney-Amissah, an Angel and VC Investor, to open AFA@11. Dr. Mworia joined Centum as a filing clerk and rose through the ranks to become the company’s CEO at a prime age of 30.
According to him, “I did not see it as a job but an opportunity to prove myself because I wanted to make a difference, and the proof of the budding was in my ability to get results that affected the bottom line of the business. I grew the asset base from $69M to $350M within six years and today our Asset Under Management (AUM) is $500M, through strategic investments and adding value to our portfolio companies.”
Dr. Mworia continued “The approach was to build key assets that can be acquired over time and according to the East Africa Venture Capital Association’s (EAVCA) report of investment returns in East Africa between 2013 and 2023, Centum alone did 25% of those exits with a 21% Internal Rate of Return (IRR) in USD.” Ms. Biney-Amissah observed that Dr. Mworia is the kind of entrepreneur she calls “intrapreneur” because his manifestation is within an organization that he did not start.
The day was energized with entrepreneurial pitches from ten startups; Emmanuel Noah of BenBen (Ghana), Daniel Adidwa of HitTheRoadToday (South Africa), Lucy Kimani of Noma (Kenya), Caroline Wong of ZOPA 254 (Kenya), Precious Okafor of Wenzo (Nigeria), Anthony Munyi of Rocket Jobs (Kenya), Koya Matsuno of VunaPay (Kenya), Marvin Kiragu of Luka (Kenya) Christabel Osei-Agyeman of Alleb Productions (Ghana) and Nyambura Mwangi of My Everything (Kenya).
Roselyn Spencer, former CIO and ED of the Baltimore Employee and Elected Officials Retirement Pension Fund was the second keynote who opened the second day of AFA@11 sitting down with Tinyiko Valoyi, Partner at Chanzo Capital to discuss her 10-year tenure at the fund.
“Before joining the fund, I had worked in the financials services industry in the US with a focus on emerging markets so I knew that was a good diversification strategy”. “My diversification approach leaned towards emerging managers because they are hungry and eager to get top performance and in emerging markets because there are unusual opportunities there though they are high risk” said Mrs. Spencer. “I successfully diversified the fund’s portfolio across key asset classes, optimizing returns whilts managing risks.”
Kanini Mutooni, Africa Regional Managing Director of the DRK Foundation, who sponsored the event, followed their sponsorship message with her all-female investor panel aka Queen Warrior Investors of AFA@11, made up of Mobola da-Silva, Partner at Capria from Nigeria, Wakiuru Njuguna, Managing Partner at Heva Fund from Kenya, Lyndsay Handler, CEO at Delta40 from the US and Polo Leteka, Managing Partner of IDF from South Africa.
This best-in-class panel dived deep into the elements of what makes for finding women founders and the biases displayed by male investors towards female founders. According to Kanini, “you need to feel the fear and ignore it: ask investors for more than you need and focus on building a great company that can absorb this!”
This was followed by pitches from the scaleups who are looking for expansion capital and they ranged from Nnamdi Uba of House Africa (Nigeria), to Aziz Omar of SaveApp (Kenya), Mary Njue of Epicenter Africa (Kenya), Peter Kironji of Twiva (Kenya), Levi Obeiro of Paycloud (Kenya), Titus Marenye of Chumz (Kenya), Daniel Kamiri of Wonderkid (Kenya), Alexandre N’djore of Digitech (Ivory Coast), Jones Amegbor of PayAngel (Ghana) and Renee Ngamau of CheckUPS COVA (Kenya).
The scaleup entrepreneurs panel, which was moderated by Diana Gichaga of Private Equity Support, comprised Kamal Budhabhatti of Craft Silicon, which owns Little Cab, one of the sponsors of the event, Barclay Okari from Grobox and Endre Opdal from Hotelonline. Each of them acknowledged the unique challenge of scaling their companies which required different elements of capital deployment, capacity building and connecting to the business community of their new markets.
Diana, Kamal, Endre and Barclay on their entrepreneurs panel at AFA@11
All these culminated in the Mergers, Acquisitions and Exits panel which featured Sonia Kabra of Kenya-based BuuPass, which recently bought QuickBus of South Africa, Erick Asuma of HISA, Kenya, which was acquired by Risevest of Nigeria, Adam Camenzuli, CFO of Chanzo Capital and Justus Kariuki of the Two Rivers International Finance and Innovation Center (TRIFIC), a sponsor of the event. Moderated by Marie Nielsen from Antler who summarized the event as “the best I have ever attended”.
